FORGET dark satanic mills blighting this green and pleasant land and say hello to the satanic excrement of seemingly out-of-control house building spreading like a cancerous growth across the countryside, gobbling up valuable farmland and making residents' lives a misery. 

From north to south, Craven is becoming one big building site as local and outside building companies rub their hands in glee as they see their bank accounts overflowing. And who is this housing aimed at? Not, as far as I can see, local young people who are being priced out of the housing market and having to leave the area of their birth, with affordable housing - whatever that is - forming a laughingly small part of such developments.

In Skipton, the development off Aldersley Avenue looks like Hiroshima after the atom bomb and seems to stretch for miles. And with that road apparently the only acess to this ' new town' God help the Aldersley residents - and their cats and dogs which face being splattered all over the tarmac.

In Embsay, residents face living cheek by jowl with 100 new houses apparently on land owned by the Duke of Devonshire. Perhaps he could do his bit to solve the housing crisis by turning Chatsworth into social housing - and will Brackenley Lane be dual-carriagewayed and an Embsay bypass built to accommodate the increased traffic?

Indeed, you can't even rest in peace for eternity at Waltonwrays Cemetery surrounded as it is now by new housing developments. I'm surprised it has not yet been concreted over and built on.

Finally, how can big housing developments be allowed without the infrastructure being in palce to cope with them. What next? no water to drink, sewage in the streets, cholera, typhoid, the Black Death? As I tell people, don't stand still for too long or you will be built on.

 

Wat Tyler

(aka Josh Horne)

Skipton