SIR:-I have passed Westminster Lodge many times in the last month, either on foot or in my car and each time I have felt a growing sense of anger against the council for their cowboy land clearance for the new Bodge scheme. It looks and feels like the cabinet are sticking a collective two fingers up to residents and the many visitors who use or pass the park, using the stumps of the once glorious trees fronting Holywell Hill as their combined digits. 

You may not want this scheme but you are going to get it and this is where it’s going to be, is the message this visual scar is shouting out loud and clear to one and all. If it were not bad enough to blatantly breach numerous planning conditions, with the meek acquiescence of a seriously compromised planning department; but to leave the stumps there for about a month, in the green belt within the conservation area, looking like set for a film of the battle of the Somme is quite sickening.    

Now the school holidays are upon us and the weather has been fine and warm, many tourists must have seen this sight and must have wondered just how little care or respect we have for a well loved gateway to our city.  

As some of those responsible face the electorate, perhaps they too might suffer more than a light pruning in the ballot box for their appalling abuse of power.    

Yours faithfully 

James Gregory Tennyson Road St.Albans.