westernind | I wish this would all just go away

Another local area planning committee tonight. I suspect that the planning department just want Evil Property Developer to stop bothering them - as do I - and don't see any other way than to finally let him build something. So they've recommended that the latest plans pass, which doesn't much help our case for objecting.

At the last committee meeting our nice supportive councillor wanted it thrown out, but due to late running and a contretemps in a case earlier on the agenda ("let's take this outside! yeah! come on then...!") resulting in a 20 minute suspension, by the time it came to us it was nearly 10pm and they went for a site visit instead, thus prolonging the agony.

The site visit happened last Saturday, during which the planning officer was, frankly, a bit of an arse. It upset me for the rest of the day. The only upside is that I usually have to emotionally prop up Lin at number 71, and seeing the state I was in she decided to take the upbeat approach herself for once, in an attempt to prop me up.

In case anyone's interested, my text for my two-minute presentation is here. Don't tell me about any spelling mistakes, grammatical mistakes, better approaches or that it runs a bit over the allotted time (I know). Because it's taken me about an hour and a half to print off 14 copies on a misbehaving printer and I ain't doing it again. That's one copy each for 12 councillors - because visual channel reinforces aural, and also because there's a photo - one for the meeting clerk, and one for me.

I'm acutely aware of my privilege in being intelligent, articulate, and middle-class. If I weren't, we'd have had three two bedroom houses out the back well over a year ago. There are other things I could do to fight him, but I am so heart-weary of it all. It invades my space, my boundaries.