Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Local elections

It is not generally known that second home owners are entitled to vote in local elections if they are registered at their second home. If, as we are lead to believe, their numbers are increasing they could influence who is elected to represent them by using their vote.
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2 comments:

New To Old said...

I suspect that many permanent residents of Swanage may resent the arrival of second-home owners. Perhaps they are unacceptable face of Thatcherism or is it Blairism? I can't tell the difference! The meetings of planning and other committees and organisations I have attended in Swanage often comment (and sometimes whinge) about the Town's reliance on tourism and its allied business to keep the Town alive and thriving.

Well, you can't have it both ways. EITHER Swanage could reinvent itself - with massive investment - into a different place. I'm sure a major employer such as American Express who moved to Brighton in the last century might be found but rents and wages would have to be low!

OR it could embrace its position as a resort and celebrate, protect and enhance the amenities that make it such an attraction with all that involves -including second home owners.

What is not an option is errecting ramparts and pulling up the drawbridge to keep the "outsiders" out! The sea has washed away the sandy beach in Swanage. If residents are not careful, entrenched prejudices against second home owners could do the same for the future of Swanage itself.

So if you own a second home in Swanage - join in with local life and get your views and concerns heard and understood. And VOTE at the elections - after all you pay Council Tax.

And if you are a permanent resident, rejoice in your good fortune and welcome the people who are going to help you preserve Swanage for your children. Everyone has an interest in the future of this marvellous little town.

4/12/05 9:34 pm
Anonymous said...

The second home owners and their defenders in this thread all seem to have lost sight of what makes this area so special. It is the combination of the landscape and the people who have shaped it. If we want Purbeck to remain a beautiful and inviting place to live then we need to nuture both. Allowing a skewed market to drive out local young families will result in a sterile "theme park", devoid of character and empty of the life blood which sustains it. Do they want us all to live in Poole and be shuttled in to service their holiday/retirement village. Probably they do. After all we are the untidy, unsightly yokels with noisy children and unruly teenagers. If they could rid Swanage of us then their Council Tax could be reduced, their holiday rambles unspoiled by smelly quarry lorries and crawling tractors. Their political hegemony would remain unchallenged by upstart oiks. All the schools could be closed (except for Malthouse of course) and just think of all the property that would be available for even more of their friends to spend three lovely weekends a year in. We, the people of Purbeck, (all of us) deserve a stake in our future.
I'm not advocating an unchanging, time capsule Swanage. Change has shaped Swanage and Purbeck from the earliest stone-age hunter-gatherers, altering it's lanscape and character inexorably. Along side that process of change however, has been a continuity that we are really in danger of losing within a generation. Today I read a report of the falling school rolls in Purbeck. If this continues at the current rate then, in a very few years , there will be no one left warrant the services on which the majority of us rely. All the drivel about "nanny state", "ratepayers subsidising the poor", "envious locals" and so on, disguises the fact that second home ownership on the present scale (let alone on an increased scale) destroys communities. Retirement apartments and caravan parks and holiday cottages are not a community. The question is then, do we want a community?
Peverilpen

29/12/05 8:28 pm

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