Christmas is almost upon us and yet another year has passed. And what a truly terrible year 2020 has been on so many fronts, one most of us would rather forget.
However, some things never change. The Straitgate affair, saga, adventure, crusade, chronicles, folk tale, comedy, farce, tragedy, pantomime – delete as applicable – merrily goes on much as before. Aggregate Industries has been struggling for the best part of a decade with its plans for a quarry at Straitgate Farm, lurching from one problem to the next.
What progress has been made in 2020? In the time others have taken to develop life-saving vaccines, Aggregate Industries has – drum roll – submitted an application for "a new field gate". Ta-daa!
Don’t mock – they had words, pictures and all sorts of fantastical claims. Local people were most impressed how Aggregate Industries could claim 150 cows crossing Ottery's busy B3174 Exeter Road four times daily:
provides betterment to the current situation
...when the current situation is virtually no livestock crossing that road.
Amazing. What creativity. What chutzpah!
But more than 12 months to produce a few words and pictures doesn't show a company in any hurry. Perhaps Aggregate Industries has a cunning plan.
But what everybody wants to know is this: With as-dug sand and gravel having to be carted 23 miles off-site for processing, some 2,500,000 miles in total – the equivalent of 100 times around the Earth – doesn't Aggregate Industries have any scruples?
Of course, Aggregate Industries claims "sustainability is at the heart of our business, and is incorporated in all of our operations...". Yeah right.
Parent LafargeHolcim, a company emitting more CO2 than many countries but supposedly "making climate action part of everything we do", is no better.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all readers
