MADAM – Having read the web comments by Phyllus Jones in the SNJ, I have to wonder whether she would also be in favour of following China’s example of one child per household.

This would eventually return us to the population total, or even less, of the 1950s, meaning we could start to remove these awful brick estates that Phyllus and her contemporaries have had to live with.

Of course, as Ms Jones has such a vivid memory of land as it was in the 1950s, then it must be fair to assume that it was hers or her parents’ generation who were responsible for the bulge years that exacerbated the housing shortage.

I suggest she takes the matter up with the publishers of The Three Little Pigs, that dreadful story that convinced us all as children that we should live in houses made of bricks, or more locally, stone.

As for the comment made by UAGFD, I have to question their language.

I have been to their webpage, where they choose not to give their names, and I see they have 12 followers, about the same number as the objectors, who live in relatively new houses built (some built by me) on the adjacent part of Grange Fields, and who attended their meeting a couple of weeks ago.

It is also interesting to note that no comments are allowed on their website, because it says: “comments are closed”.

Maybe this is because the only comment that was originally on there, and then removed, explained why their motives in stopping the development were questionable at best.

I am intrigued by the picture used at the head of your website’s column, as it has nothing to do with the site in question.

Is this another ploy to mislead people about what is being proposed on the land adjacent to Beeches Green?

I would suggest that where houses can be built directly adjacent to the town centre, and where that land is deliverable, next to major transport services, schools, shops, and leisure facilities, then these sites should be looked at objectively, not emotively.

When applications are forced to go to appeal for all the wrong reasons, then we all have to pay the price, and these small groups who pretend to speak for us all become self-defeating.

It is worth remembering the old adage ‘the most noise does not a majority make’.

At the UAGFD meeting, one of their advisers, who had been involved in objecting to another site which never went ahead, for several reasons, not the least of which was that it was an unreasonable place to want to build, made a very telling statement.

He said something like: “It is all hard work to object but is also a lot of fun”.

As I pointed out at the time, it is also expensive fun, especially when it is the people of Stroud who have to pay when they lose the appeal.

Bryan Billau

Stroud