Tesco Expansion Exhibition

There is to be a public exhibition of Tesco's expansion plans for it's Heanor store at the Old Peoples Welfare Club, Wilmot Street, Heanor, between 4.00 pm and 8.00 pm on Wednesday 16 December 2009. Representatives from Tesco will be available to provide further information about the application and to answer any questions.

Tesco Plan To Extend Heanor Store

Hot on the heels of ASDA's successful planning application to build a new store in Langley Mill, rival supermarket Tesco has applied for planning permission to extend it's store in Heanor, which was opened in 1995. The proposals include extending the store towards the car park resulting in an increase of almost 50% in total floorspace on that currently used for retail and warehousing. There will would also be a resultant loss of 37 car park spaces, though an extra 3 spaces would be reserved for disabled users.

Anti-White, Anti-Male, Anti-Christian Equality Bill

The Labour Government’s Equality Bill, announced in the Queen’s speech, will actively discriminate against all white people in business and put large companies under a legal obligation to employ Asians or blacks rather than whites.

The Catholic Church has also warned that other clauses could lead to public displays of Christmas being banned as offensive to other religions. The Equality Bill was one of a set of 13 bills and two draft bills mapped out in the brief opening of Parliament this week.

In terms of the Equality Act, companies will be “encouraged” to favour black and Asian candidates over white people when recruiting. In addition, where companies have a choice between equally qualified men and women, they are obliged to employ the woman.

To enforce compliance with that provision, the Equality Act will also order companies with more than 250 employees to have “gender pay audits.”

In effect this means that any company which does not actively discriminate against males will be in contravention of the “gender pay audit” section of the act. In effect it means that any large company must discriminate against males in order to comply with the law.

Meanwhile, Roman Catholic bishops have warned that Christmas celebrations could be banned under the Equality Act as well.

General secretary of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference, Andrew Summersgill, was quoted in the media saying that the bill will “fuel Britain’s risk-averse culture.”

He said the law will have the “chilling effect” of making local authorities halt Christmas celebrations out a fear of “offending other cultures.”

Mr Summersgill said there had already been a number of cases where councils had banned Christmas decorations. Oxford City Council had renamed its famous Christmas festival as the “Winter Light Festival” to make it more inclusive.

“Under existing legislation, we have seen the development of a risk-averse culture with outcomes as ridiculous as reports of a local authority instructing tenants to take down Christmas lights in case they might offend Muslim neighbours, or of authorities removing the word Christmas out of cultural sensitivity to everyone except Christians,” Mr Summersgill wrote in a letter to MPs.

“If this Bill is serious about equality, everything possible must be done to avoid it having a chilling effect on religious expression and practice.”

Senior Catholics have also complained that religious groups will be forced to accept homosexual youth workers, secretaries and other staff even if their faith holds same-sex relationships to be sinful.

The letter continued: “The Catholic Church has significant concerns about the practical implications of some parts of the Bill.”

ASDA Granted Planning Permission For New Langley Mill Store

This evening I attended the Planning Board meeting at which the planning applications for a proposed ASDA store at Langley Mill and an associated housing development were discussed.

There was widespread support from public speakers for the proposed store and most were also in favour of the housing development with some concerns about access routes being expressed.

Councillors were universally in favour of the proposed store, and the application was approved.

After discussions to ensure that a contribution was made towards funding any future doctors' surgery in Langley Mill, the housing development was also approved.

In Remembrance

The Soldier

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

Rupert Brooke 1914

ASDA Langley Mill Update

The Planning Board are to carry out a site visit on 16 November, followed by a meeting at 6-00pm at Ripley Town Hall to make a decision on both the store development and the associated housing development, though the decisions may be deferred to a later date. The public are able to attend the meeting at Ripley.

Loony Derbyshire County Council Decisions Continue Under Tories

There can't be many who don't remember the loony left days of Derbyshire County Council rule, with Bookbinder's 'Nuclear Free Derbyshire' perhaps being the lowlight. It now seems the Tories are keen to keep the tradition going with, no doubt, the first of many Loony Lewerisms - the banning of poppy sales in Derbyshire libraries.

All this comes from the party which, during the recent County Council election campaign entitled it's leaflets 'In Touch'! I would say that by now that very tenuous link by which they could claim to be 'in touch' with the ordinary people of Derbyshire is now well and truly broken.

Derbyshire Tories, unlike the Iron Lady, are well known for their love of turning, and have once again buckled under pressure and have already reversed the policy.