A second village is to hold a vote on whether to have a referendum to leave the UK in protest over plans to create a camp to house 1,250 asylum seekers in a former RAF base nearby. The Telegraph has more.
Barnham parish council in Suffolk is to invite villagers to decide on Saturday October 24th whether they should follow the lead of Piddington in Oxfordshire and stage a referendum on seceding from the UK.
Residents in the Domesday village of Barnham are up in arms over plans to convert its former RAF base into a camp to house 1,250 asylum seekers.
It follows Piddington residents’ vote last month by 285 to 26 to “secede from the UK and pursue self-determination” over the plans to house up to 1,256 asylum seekers in the former Ministry of Defence garrison no more than half a mile from the village.
John Bauer, Chairman of Barnham Parish Council, admitted that although the referendum idea would be put to a vote of the village, there had been a “lack of enthusiasm” from some councillors at a meeting on Monday night to discuss the proposal.
He said some councillors were concerned that staging a referendum could “dilute” their campaign message against the asylum camp based on the potential damage to wildlife in the area.
The proposed site for the camp in Barnham lies within the Breckland Special Protection Area, an internationally designated wildlife zone.
It hosts more than 200 breeding pairs of stone-curlews, which are so endangered that habitat regulations dictate no development should take place within 0.9 miles of their nesting sites.
The West Suffolk District Council, which is opposing the plan, claims that it would be “unlawful” and “unsuitable” to construct an asylum camp on the site on ecological grounds.
Bauer maintained that a referendum would not undermine the village’s campaigning against the damage it could cause to local wildlife including the stone-curlews.
“It’s a powerful opportunity to show the strength of sentiment within the village and get it out there. It is something that the Government, who will make the decision, would find it difficult to ignore,” he said.
“It could be fairly toxic for them politically particularly if there are more villages that join other than Piddington. I don’t mind what methods we use to stop the plan but I don’t think we should put all our eggs in the stone-curlew basket. It is a very powerful argument but we should not rely solely on that.”
Worth reading in full.
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Barn door?
You’ve voted/accepted this for decades.
No sympathy.
Replacement is in full motion.
Off topic slightly but we’re recruiting for a graduate software developer right now, offering what we think is a competitive package and attractive working environment. We’ve had over a dozen enquiries in just a couple of days, most of whom have first class degrees from good universities. All but one have non British names and from what I can gather only a couple are UK born. I guess white British young people study other stuff.
The stone curlews should be Barnham’s trump card. If HS2 can be delayed in order to build an expensive ‘bat tunnel’ the housing of a large number of illegals (whose diverse cultures could well see all wild birds as potential sources of food) will surely ring the alarm bells at the very top of Natural England, won’t it? Or is it – just possibly – politically biased? Surely not!
what is the problem, they have a liebor mp. time they had a few thousand illegals to go with him.
So, they hold their vote, elect to leave the UK, the government ignores the hell out of them and they don’t leave the UK (obviously).
Then what?
Strange how windmills and solar panels dont seem to be a problem to the local environment! climate campaigners just shrug and say its for the good of the planet! Until a migrant camp of thousands is to be plonked at the side of their houses then suddenly saving the Stone Curlew, the great creasted Newt or the Barbastelle bat becomes a major environmental cause!
Save the curlews! 1,250 single young males from east Africa are lovely and everything and we’re definitely not those far-right racist extremists, that’s not the reason, we just love the curlews! And the lovely young man from Eritrea I met yesterday said he doesn’t like curlews so it would also be unfair to expect him to live near the lovely curlews in any case. We Welcome Refugees For You!