Dear Editor, How interesting that ex-Labour CounSteve Bedser, living in Edgbaston, should be stirred into action over the correspondence relating to Richard Burden, Mike Whitby and Nanjing at Longbridge.

Even more interesting is for Mr Bedser to suggest that the Tories are the nasty party when some of the tactics adopted by Mr Bedser and his Labour Party during his failed local election campaign were questionable to say the least.

As for Mr Burden and Longbridge car production, he should hang his head in shame as in his position of Chairman of the Parliamentary All Party Motor Group he has failed to support our great Midlands based car manufacturing companies such as Jaguar and Land Rover, choosing instead to kow tow to his Labour bosses in backing hybrid vehicles from abroad.

As one of the three Conservative councillors for Longbridge I am thrilled that cars are again being manufactured at the site and I am thankful, not only to Mike Whitby who has nurtured relationships with Nanjing and SAIC to an extent never imagined nor attempted by Labour, but also to City Council officers, AWM and St Modwens.

The closure of MG Rover three years ago was devastating and it is a credit to all the support groups that were set up that the Longbridge community has come through it all.

St Modwens have done a sterling job on site with the demolition and we have now reached the start of what should be very exciting times for the Longbridge area as finally, after three years of what can only be described as Government red tape, the developers can now get on with the long-awaited redevelopment. We already know that due to Labour’s handling of the economy, house building will be delayed but hopefully we will soon start to see the beginnings of what will be the transformation of the area with a new centre and many new companies demanding new skills coming to the area.

I and my fellow Longbridge Conservative Councillors will be doing our utmost to ensure that these companies make best use of local labour not only available now but those leaving our schools and colleges in the future.

Rather than trying to enhance his own standing by picking fault with Mike Whitby, perhaps Mr Burden would be better doing something useful - how about getting the long overdue report on the demise of MG Rover. Members of the Government might want to support the car industry in the same way that they have supported banks.

Coun Ken Wood,

Longbridge.

-----

Regeneration of cities will be put at risk by house building

Dear Editor, I write concerning the critical response to Paul Dales’s article (July 12th.), a subject I have followed closely.

The first sentence was “No final decisions about the overall level of distribution for new housing for the West Midlands have been made.”

That is not my reading of the Assembly minutes. In Jan 2006 the Government gave the Regional Planning Partnership (RPP) and Assembly three options:- lower 293,400 new dwellings, (continuation of ‘present trends’) Middle 376,700 new dwellings ( a ‘realistic assessment’) and upper 460,500 new dwellings (the level required to meet Government ‘projections’) to be completed by 2026. The RPP consulted all 41 authorities on their land availability and Plans, and chose the median as an achievable (i.e. local authorities’ assessments) level. The Government informed them that this was unacceptable, and so they would have to reconsider.

After an exhaustive in-house study it was concluded that if they agreed to the upper limit it would stretch all their plans to breaking point, and they would have to build on some of the Green Belt for lack of space.

Therefore, against better judgment they revised their targets to the Government’s higher figure. On that basis the Regional Spatial Strategy was drawn up, and the figures were devolved down to each authority (In Birmingham’s case it accepted 50,600).

For the next 18 months that direction fed through the planning process, and an enormous amount of work was done by planning staff across the region. Thus the “overall level of distribution” was dictated.

At the point where the phase 2 Strategy was out for final consultation a 2 page letter with no accompanying explanation was received from Baroness Andrews, demanding a further 80,000 housing units!

This ludicrous diktat was responded to by a collective local authority raspberry. Therefore a report was commissioned from Nathaniel Lichfield and Partners (released 8th. July 2008) to counter the strategy which was described in the critique as “unnecessarily constraining.” That report showed that one way (Option 4) the Baroness’s figures could be achieved was by building large (20,000 dwellings) “new settlements” in the Green Belt viz: Solihull/ Catherine de Barnes/ Balsall Common, South of Worcester and West of Rugby – together with the misnamed “eco-towns” such as Long Marston.r Lichfield. Even those with an NVQ level 1 in administration will realise that builders prefer the virgin soils of our countryside, for their uncomplicated base line profitability.

This would put at risk, if not cease, all the regeneration within our cities where the needs are greater, and where far more effort has to be made, because of the complicated nature of the sites. The Government should recognise their responsibility to the future by preventing building on the Green Belt (with its consequent extra car use), but allowing it in the cities, where the infrastructure is already present.

The citizens can walk or transit to work, and the consequent carbon footprint will be much, much lower.

Keely Huxtable,

Conservative Parliamentary spokesman,

Northfield.

-----

Northern suspicions

Dear Editor, There are some very strange and suspicious transactions going on between the Government and Northern Rock and one wonders if they are out to confuse the Inland Revenue and the taxpayer.

To make a loss again of £585 million, to purportedly paid back £9.4 billion to the government and then to borrow a further £3 million of taxpayers' money from the government seems to me to be the dealings one would expect from a back street dealer.

New Labour and old Labour before them were not good at managing money or anything else and they seem to be getting themselves into a deeper black hole of financial chaos! One can only ask the question as to whether we, the taxpayers, are paying for the politics of this government to please Labour's strongholds in the north.

It seems very strange for a building society, a bank and the government to be playing Russian roulette with our finances, just as credit customers pay some back and borrow again. To think Blair had the ultimate deceit to refer to Gordon Brown as the prudent Chancellor. Who is going to admit to the fact that we now unquestionably have an imprudent one, unless they can prove that two imprudent chancellors can make a prudent one by a bit of cross and double entry accounting that they seem so good at? And not very canny... no wonder Scotland has rejected them.

Douglas J Wathen,

Salford Priors, Nr Evesham.