HOW THE PLANNING COMMITTEE WORKS BY MR L. CARROLL(AUTHOR)

Sometimes a comment is of such wit the Dame has to put it on her 'front page'. Could this have anything to do with Mr Graham's plans for the Old Court House?

The Mad Hatter

‘But it must go somewhere,’ said Alice protesting again. ‘I am not a builder. But if all that stuff goes down a drain, it must go somewhere after. It doesn’t just disappear into space.’
The Mad Hatter was getting increasingly agitated. He took off his glasses so he could fix one of his frightening stares at Alice. “That’s just a technical question and we don’t need to bother with that,” he said dismissively. But in a flash he remembered that there was an expert in the room, and he turned towards the sound of heavy breathing from the far end of the table as the dormouse was once again falling asleep.
‘Perhaps you can answer this,’ he glared at the dormouse who was about to nod off. ‘You are the expert aren’t you.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t answer such a difficult question,’ yawned the dormouse. ‘And in any case someone much cleverer than me wrote lots of pages to show how all that stuff disappears. I could not possibly understand it.’
‘But these pages have been signed by you. See here,’ said Alice stubbornly. ‘See - it says, signed by the dormouse.’
‘But I can’t be expected to understand everything that I write,’ concluded the dormouse who promptly went back to sleep.
Alice was not about to give up.
‘The rules state that everything must be inside this line,’ she said, ‘and it’s not. You’re breaking the rules. See.’ She pointed to the illuminated plan shining from the projector. Everyone could see that she was right. Even the March Hare who was perched beside the Hatter began to look worried.
‘But the rule does not count here,’ argued the Hatter, ‘because some of the line is below ground. And a line is not a line if some of it is below ground.’
The March Hare decided it was time for him to speak. He had had enough of all this stuff and nonsense. Even a question of law had been raised. If they started to argue about that, this could go on for a long time – and it was getting late.
‘Look, we may not like this.’ He said, even though he already knew that his friend the Hatter did like it, and like it very much. ‘But I am a man of much experience. And I have dealt with many things like this. The fact that this project is enormous, that it will cause massive disruption, that it will make life a daily hell for all the residents and businesses in the area…..none of that matters. What matters is that it has happened before, so that makes it right.’
‘Time to vote,’ announced the Hatter triumphantly. ‘Those in favour?’ 
He raised one arm in anticipation of the others following suit – but none did.
What a strange meeting thought Alice. I didn’t think anyone was actually listening to me, but I’m glad they were.