For a man with no immune system, I’m doing alright.
- Bucket list Ben
Street protest over mast plans
Saturday 12th July 2008, 11:50AM BST.
Angry residents today packed into one of Shrewsbury’s main shopping streets in protest at controversial plans to build a communications mast in a village.Protesters from Bicton waved placards and handed out leaflets to passers-by in the town’s Pride Hill as they stepped up their fight against the proposed 12-metre high mast.
They were joined by Shrewsbury MP Daniel Kawczynski who has vowed to bring the matter up in Parliament following concerns over planning regulations for communications and phone masts.
Airwave Solutions has identified the site in Calcott Lane, Bicton, under a scheme to create a new national digital mobile network for the emergency services.
But residents say they are furious at the plans and claim the Tetra mast could cause childhood cancers, infertility and neurological disorders.
One campaigner, who wished to remain anonymous, said: “To say we are outraged is probably an understatement and we will not take this lying down.”
David Greenaway, another protester, hit out at the consultation carried out by Airwave and claimed the mast would put people’s lives at risk.
He also claimed the residents were not receiving the support of their ward councillor, John Cooke, who he said had failed to respond to e-mails and was not present at today’s protest.
Mr Kawczynski addressed residents at the protest and praised them for their campaign.
He said: “I am absolutely appalled at this mast and the government’s regard to planning for masts which gives councils little power to prevent them – that’s a serious issue because it should be down to local councils to make these decisions.
“It’s important that everyone supports you against this mast and makes very strong representation to the council. It’s absolutely vital that Shrewsbury and Atcham Borough Council works with me to stand up against the government on the policies within this issue.”
Mr Kawczynski said he would request an Early Day Motion on Monday and would also be approaching the speaker of the House of Commons for a debate.
By Russell Roberts
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It’s about time that people had more of a say on what gets put next to their homes and schools. Well done Daniel for sticking up for us all.
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Lets hope the Borough Council sit up and listen to what the residents want. Well done Mr Kawczynski.
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I hope none of these people use mobile phones, or their argument could be hypocritical.
They don’t want a communications mast yet are perfectly happy to put approximately 1 watt of radio directly into their heads, yet are not happy to have a transmitter a few hundred metres away.
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Will the Bicton anti-mast group ask the Health Protection Agency under FoI whether they’ve examined any health or mortality data around mast sites & compared with a “control” area which has no mast, no overhead cables & no industrial PM2.5 pollution?
Check out the HPA’s abysmla performance on incinerators via links on left hand side of home page at ukhr.org
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Nobody should have to have a mast near there home. They are everywhere and not everyone has a phone or demands coverage everywhere, but we are stuck with them. There is so much that is unknow about the health risks so surely planners should be cautious.
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mobile telecoms masts have not been proven to cause any type of childhood cancer and or any type neurological disorder and infertility, I wish people would get a grip and stop beliveing what they see on TV! Its only a mast & theres 3 of them in dawley and I havent developed any type of problem and none of my neighbours have aswell! just wait till the future when you have no reception on your phone and you complain, you will get told so, we tried but you complained!!
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perhaps the MP ought to consider 2 things,
First, it was his party that created this situation by the sell off by auction of the 3g technology with the associated need for the masts.
Secondly this mast is required for policing purposes not public mobile phone communications.
So does he,
1, oppose his party’s previous policy on mobile communications.
2, oppose the police having efficient working communications to enable a service to be delivered to the Shropshire public.
or is this just another bandwagon he has jumped on without thinking?
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Is there actually a lack of coverage n te Bicton area? If there was a situation where there was no coverage i could understand the issue but honestly I don’t think there is !
Until the dangers are disproved definitely these should not be sited near to childrens developing bodies.
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Has Mr J of Dawley noticed poor air quality due to emissions from Ironbridge power station?
He can read my e-mail to David Wright MP about Ironbridge at ukhr.org
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What’s this got to do with mobile phones, 3G etc ? The way I read it, it was a mast for Airwave TETRA which is the radio system for the Emergency Services
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nimby’s the lot of them, this is madness, we need that mast
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I demonstrated against the TETRA mast last saturday because I believe masts should require FULL planning permission and not simply be erected willy-nilly.Currently the process is NOT democratic.
An EXISTING site IS available that fulfills all criteria re: coverage etc.AND lies well away from homes and schools. If they had been forced to follow normal planning rules then the mast would have been sited there already!
WM police and fire services should point this out to their supplier, Airwave.(n.b. Shropshire Ambulance is not currently subscribed to O2Airwave)
Incidentally, the Home Office quotes Airwave has cost £2.9 Billion. I suspect this would have been better spent direct into the NHS. No point being taken from a crash scene/assault to find the hopsital under equipped, under staffed and teaming with superbugs!
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you appear to have a very handy mp up there, during a wet afternoon, i watched the parliament program, it was a bit like watching paint dry until daniel got up and mentioned shropshire 10 times in 3 seperate speeches. well done daniel nice to see local representation of the people in action. if this mast is for the emergency services, what is the problem,
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putting it in bicton is fine by me, so long as you don’t put it in my back yard
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Will any police officer comment about the fact that tumours have been detected where radio devices have been carried next to their bodies?
It could all be a strange coincidence of course, but it’s worth investigation.
Maybe the police have already carried out investigations & blamed something else?
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i read your email micheal, and what has the south telford suicide rate got to do with living near a power station…
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Having worn analogue and digital radios next to my torso for over 30 yrs did not have any noticable effect on me.
I just wonder what the people of Bicton would do if a police officer refused to enter the area due to insufficient radio coverage having carried out a generic risk assessment, if they don’t consider it safe there isn’t anybody that can do anything about it,remember officers have families they want to return home to also.
It may be a sad case of the residents reaping what they have sown. I hope not, but it may just happen.
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If Spencer asks Telford & Wrekin PCT for a copy of their 2004 public health report, he’ll see a graph showing the suicide rate with a huge increase projected.
If he saw my Shropshire Star letter of 17 June 2008, he’ll have seen that Professor Richard Weisler, a psychiatrist at the University of North Carolina, found two separate suicide clusters that were both linked to sources of industrial PM2.5 air pollution, ie toxic particles smaller than 3 microns in diameter that are small enough to get deep into the lungs and cause a range of illnesses, including asthma, stroke, depression, COPD, heart attack, cancers, diabetes 2, etc.
Professor Weisler hadn’t been looking for suicide clusters, he’d been wondering why his mother had died of lung cancer, despite the fact that she’d not smoked for more than thirty years. He found a cluster of cancers first and then got the suicide statistics and plotted the locations on a map and “Hey presto” it was the same cluster which “just happened to be” around an asphalt plant.
The second N Carolina suicide cluster found by Professor Weisler only occurred after a paper mill stopped discharging waste residues into a watercourse and began incinerating them instead.
If Spencer has been awake for the last twelve months or so, he’ll know that the world’s first online suicide occurred in Shropshire in March 2007 and that there have been many other sudden unexplained deaths.
The PM2.5 emissions from Ironbridge power station will be increasing the depression rates in parts of Telford and as the chimney stack is 670 feet high, they’ll reach well into Staffordshire where Gnosall is only fifteen miles away with a SW wind.
If The Samaritans put out a press release that air pollution might be a link with suicides in Bridgend, or Telford, or anywhere else, you can always say that you read about it in the Shropshire Star first.
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Michael Ryan get a life, the power station has nothing to do with suicide, Iv lived in ironbridge in a B+B right infront of the power station, and its fine down there.
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CB: My mother has smoked for upwards of 50 years and she is celebrating her 78th birthday next month. By you logic there are therefore no ill effects associated with smoking!
For years the industry did claim this, just as the industry is now claiming that there is nothing wrong with these high powered radio masts!
Where there is smoke there is fire!
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oh dear it looks like that we are all doomed to die in telford from PM2.5 from the ironbridge power station. More chance of being killed by PMT!!
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michael
Straight on the offensive with insults and aggression, anyone would think you lived near a power station.
good luck with your political career.
regards
Spencer
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CB, the Bicton site did not offer full coverage for the police services. The blackspot is in the Bicton Heath/Gains park area. The mast On Calcott lane would have been in a dip, which makes no sense at all. The site at Corner Farm is perfect, offers the correct coverage and isn’t anywhere near peoples homes. Surely this is the best solution alround.
The police federations own report, written by B Trower says there are serious problems with TETRA and masts should not be sited by people and schools. Maybe all those shouting ‘nimby’ should read that first.
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I wish people would stop using the arguement that if you use a mobile phone you should put up with a mast in your back garden. There are very few places you can’t get coverage, so why put up more. There are plenty of areas they can go away from homes and schools. We all coped for years without them, it’s not the end of the world if you can’t send a text, but it is terrible that some people have experienced ill health due to these masts.
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Mr J should ask Michael Gwynne, the Telford Coroner, if he can look at the register of suspicious deaths. Mr J could then eat his words when he sees the addresses of the suicides.
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it seems very strange these people protestinging about mobile masts when they are allowing there own children to use their mobiles at the side of there brain, which are producing up 1 million times more radiation .
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