A ‘right to know’
Your front page article headed ''Approval for Park'' (SHN, Friday October 5) was about the recent qualified approval given to the proposed development called Holland Park in Bowral. What it doesn't say in its bland reference to a ''Park'' is that it is a substantial residential development valued over $20 million. The article refers to the applicant who brought the matter on appeal to the Land and Environment Court as ''Highlands builder Garry Turland''.
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His real identity is Wingecarribee Shire Councillor Garry Turland, a property developer who has served on council for six years, and on September 26 was elected as its deputy mayor. This councillor has now challenged and defeated his own council at court, and has incurred costs to the shire’s ratepayers of $70,233 to the end of August 2018 as reported in the council meeting agenda, September 26, 2018 - a proud achievement for a councillor and deputy mayor!
This is the second article on Holland Park and Councillor Turland to appear in the SHN without mentioning his inherently conflicted public office and occupation. Where is the public's right to know in your reports? Dear Editor, please amend the report and publish the facts.
Peter Edwards
Tourist frustration
Please note a photo of tourists parked in Rose Street (off Merrigang Street), Bowral each weekend during the Tulip Time Festival. Merrigang Street is worse and attempting to turn into Merrigang Street from any side street, let alone a private driveway is just hazardous!
You need to inch out bit by bit, because visibility is so obscured and then a vehicle is suddenly on top of you travelling at 60 kms/p/hr or more. In addition, I witnessed vehicles performing U-turns, parking illegally and double parking in the main streets. Perhaps they could have a designated parking area (a short distance away from Corbett Gardens) and run a shuttle bus service during this time?
Frustrated local
RELATED: Tulip Time 2019 dates announced
The land of Dystopia?
Dear citizens of Oz, here’s some Argy Bargy for you – ‘Once upon a time there was a land called Dystopia, where all the inhabitants worked hard to achieve the required state of dysfunction:
Dyspleasing scribes wrote screeds of instructions upon how to dystance people from other people, parents were dyscouraged from soothing crying babies, nurses were taught not to touch patients in pain, and teachers were forbidden to place a hand upon a student’s shoulder in encouragement.
Staff everywhere wore nametags that omitted their surnames to protect against stalkers, supermarkets struggled to find staff for checkout counters because people were reluctant to leave the dole, while Centrelink wouldn’t permit supermarkets advertising jobs on their premises, for God knows what reason.
Back yard swimming pools had to be registered with a licence so that if children fell in and drowned the government could say they’d done all they could…’ Sound a bit like this country? Does our ever more bureaucratic society encourage these dylemmas of inhumanity? So is it just me who’s disenchanted by all the daily dystopia? I don’t know – I’m off to a great Bowral pub to join real people for a drynk, sigh.
