What’s the true toll of work?
PROMISES, promises, miracles never cease ... we are awash with them in some West Lancashire villages following the arrival of Our Angel: Peter O’Dowd, owner of Maybrook Developments.
His first generous offering: the landfilling of Parbold Hill.
This involved a new (very dangerous) entrance at the brow of the hill.
“Only 20,000 tipper lorries and an enhanced visitor experience,” says his local agent, although no artist’s impressions of this proposed enhancement are available!
This offer of a “good deed” clearly set the bells tolling at Parbold’s Parish church and set tongues wagging down in the village, attracting over 1,000 objections.
Undeterred by the odd sceptic, Our Angel and his agent laboured on for the greater good of our beauty spot, with the promise of wildflower meadows and holiday lodges... but wait, this too, is not yet available!
Coming down from the hilltop, the focus of Maybrook’s charity continues inland to Appley Bridge, which is plagued on very hot days by the anti-social behaviour of visitors to the flooded East Quarry, which Maybrook also owns.
Here, in Appley Bridge, the miracles really “flow”... with plans to empty the water from the flooded quarry in just 12 weeks.
That’s less than a quarter of the time indicated by him to the Environment Agency.
If indeed it can be emptied at all?
Do Our Angel’s powers extend to stopping the rain?!
Not to mention the fissures which carry groundwater through the quarry walls... who knows, perhaps Our Angel will instruct his agent to paper over these cracks too?
Once we’ve all stopped marvelling at this particular miracle, things are to follow a more familiar route, albeit on an epic scale.
After all Our Angel and his agent don’t do things by halves!
No sooner will the quarry be empty then as if by magic, it will fill up again with inert waste.
He’d have us believe that this is an easy trick for him and his agent to pull off, it will be done in no time at all.
Whereas left to us mere mortals the landfilling of East quarry would take over a decade even at the somewhat swifter pre-pandemic pace of 12,500 tipper trucks an annum.
But hold on a moment... I’m not captured by his spell... there’s no rainbow over this quarry.
This is not the promised land, and our village will now be blighted for decades with all the pestilence that change on this scale brings in it’s wake.
This will destroy Appley Bridge for a generation.
Has Our Angel’s halo slipped down over his ears?
Has he not heard of cost benefit analysis?
Maybe it’s now time for the bells to toll in Appley Bridge?
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