I really can't believe that the "Government Planning Inspectorate" have announced that the appeal by Westbury Homes against the council decision to refuse development has been upheld!
Old Portsmouth is an old quaint area right next to the sea with tonnes on historic features. It's at the end of the country. There is really one road off and one road on. Having lived in London I couldn't grasp the concept that Portsmouth is an island as it's part of the mainland but living here now I understand... and the traffic is worse than London! It is in fact now the most densly populated city in Europe!
Just round the corner the've built Gun Wharf, a shopping precinct where people come to eat, drink, get pissed, club and basically embarress themselves!... and they're building MASSIVE blocks of flats here! They originally applied for 26 stories which was rejected and they changed their proposal and it was approved... for 29 stories!!!! How the hell did that happen???!!!
Anyway, right down on the point next to the quaint cobble stoned narrow little walkways (people used to get tapped over the head and end up in the Navy in the Nelson's time!) where there are a couple of nice pubs overlooking the sea and there are a handfull of gorgeous B&Bs and an old tram museum and a couple of Isle of White offices which have become a bit run down. Guess what???!!! They want to put 5 story houses on here, and develop the area to add another 70 (seventy homes!).
Have you seen the roads in Portsmouth??? I used to live in London and thought I would never complain about the trafiic here but in the three years I have lived here it has become worse than London! At least the traffic on London moved and you get from A to B by car. Here the roads are just gridlocked and I have to plan my personal life as well as my business around the congestion. What it will be like if these developments are allowed to continue I really can not begin to imagine. The addition of extra cars to this area will frankly become unbearable.
What I find particularly upsetting is that that the local council has sold this land to developers (and what did they really expect them to do with the land but develop or build?!) who put planning application in after planning application. When one is opposed they try and subtely 'tweak' details. There are 3 ongoing applications here which come up for approval week after week, tweak after tweak yet the bottom line is these developers, who don't even live in the area want to plonk ugly, unaesthetic monstrosoties in the middle of a beautiful and historic area of the country.
These proposals have received objection from local residents, businesses and associations so how is it that the Government can come in and uphold these rejections?! If these developments are allowed to go through this vandalism of the area is irreversible. This Government has made a mockery of so many things that they can not be allowed to continue to further ruin people's living standards like this.
Yes, the area in question needs some development, a lot of these buildings are vacant but a need for like-for-like, in keeping devlopment is much needed, not disgusting concrete and plastic monoliths!
This is Nelson land of course where we all witnessed the amazing firework display and reconstruction of the battle of Trafalgar which the world witnessed last year. How this would be obscured by tower blocks! England Expects That Every Man Will Do His Duty!
Check out some of the photos here...

Well, we spent the Easter weekend sweeping up the garden and power-hosing and arranging the pots.
Today we had our first barbecue of the season and it was very pleasant. I sowed some wild flower seeds in the gaps between plants in the corner of the garden but still have the big urns and the hanging baskets to design in the next couple of weeks.
Still quite a lot of work to do but looking really great.

Went to the Celebration of Steam today at the Dockyard. It was a good day out.

Sample a couple of tracks I've done at http://www.musofinder.com/users.php?u=sheilamusic1

Well I've just spent the last 3 hours playing with my Boss GT-8! Really, really cool.  I've played through all the different sounds but haven't got into programming it or editing the sounds and setting up personal preferences yet. There's lots of different varieties of distort (it is made for guitars after all!) and some really cool ones too like wave synth, synth sequence, speaker killer and funk food to name a few.
I'm really looking forward to using it in some recording projects.
I thought it was good value for money too.
Setting it up with my wireless system was really easy too and no problems.