BRAVE new world? Apologies to Aldous Huxley.

Can I first offer my apologies by having to mention in the County Gazette, yet another complaint about a none-existent world created by an artist’s impression!

This time, it’s the artist impression of Coal Orchard, Taunton.

But not for the usual reasons.

This time, it’s the obsessiveness of architects to create images of a world straight out of Logan’s Run, a science fiction novel by William F Nolan and George Clayton Johnson, later a film, where the inhabitants on reaching the age of thirty are terminated by being fooled they are going to a better place.

(That should ring a bell with the people of Taunton and Somerset).

In the story they enter a device called a carousel! 

There was possibly two or three people pictured that looked over 30, but no obese, no ethnic minorities, no disabled and no homeless. 

Utopian setting becomes dystopian.

As for the buildings, they looked more like a college campus built in the sixties, and I loved the Californian touch of permanent sunshine.

All shorts and T shirts. All that was missing was the beach boys! 

Sooo not Taunton!


READ MORE: SPECIAL REPORT: Where are those artist impressions now?


Anyway, back to business. excellent letters in the County Gazette from Cllr Wedderkopp, Cllr Farbahi, David Patterson, Pippa Earl and many others in similar vein over the last year, who show a common denominator - sick of the Tory administration at Somerset County Council (SCC). 

Sick of TDBC and the inadequate way they deal with developers and the non-existent MP, whoever that is. 

At least Bridgwater has an MP who has the occasional original thought and is happy to express it.

Are you, who currently hold the reins, listening?

I hope you are - the message is simple; You have failed. You have failed your own voters, your own supporters and colleagues who sit alongside you. 

Mismanagement, poor decisions and worse, making no decisions at all. 

Better yet, ignoring the people of this county, Taunton Deane and all other towns and villages in Somerset. 

Not forgetting SCC tenant farmers whose families rented and worked the land now forced to either leave or buy (some hope) their farms

It is time you and your MP disappear into history, so we may begin a clear fresh start. 

Bring back our services, take control away from the developers and create social and affordable housing. 

It’s our housing, it’s our schools, it’s our libraries, our social services and our green belt and a hundred other things I could mention.

God only knows we have and are paying for them!

EAMONN LENISTON
Monkton Heathfield