General   (General discussion, talk about anything.)

Well let’s put democracy in action here and see if I can put an opposite point of view across without being savaged for it, somehow I don’t thinks so, but here is what I think…..

At one time going back over 20-30 years ago you could drive down Westwood Lane and through to Poolstock emerging where Westwood Power Station was situated, the road was little more than a dirt track but never less it was a public road and when you traveled down the road you had a good view of Westwood Hall cottage from all angles because you drove around it and I was always struck by how awful it looked, the property was an eyesore with all sorts of junk littered around it and I am speaking in the past tense because it is a few years since I last saw the place but looking at the published photos of the place it does not look any different now.

If Mr. Lillis had looked after the place better I would have more sympathy for him, but he has obviously not done so and he has had 40 years in which to do so and another thing about Mr. Lillis is that whenever anyone drove past his property he was very aggressive towards them, he did not like the road being used and he used to make out that it was a private road which the public were not supposed to use.

Another thing is the location of the place, it has absolutely nothing going for it in an aesthetic sense because it is located where the power station stood all the land surrounding it is covered in fly ash from the old power station with a thin layer of top soil over it to enable grass to grow so that it does not look as bad, but if you are walking over there and you look at the ground the grey fly ash can be seen mixed in with the grass so it has not been landscaped properly and it is surrounded by the railway line, canal, gas holders etc so you cannot say it is in a picturesque location and years ago there was a row of terraced houses at the side of Westwood Hall cottage on Westwood Lane and these houses were considered to be in the worse location possible, because they were surrounded by industrial structures on all sides such as Westwood Power Station, the railway line and gas works etc

Here is an aerial view of the location



The plan for the area is to build a technology park and to reopen Westwood Lane so that you will be able to drive through Westwood Park to Lower Ince thereby avoiding Wigan town centre, plans include having a bus service which will travel along the route and what annoys me is that the same people who want to picket outside this “scruffy dump of a house” to save it from demolition are probably and I know I am guessing here, but are probably the same people who object to new road building and things like that.

Every day I sit in traffic jams because of people like you who stop roads being built and in my opinion people like you have to much power in these matters in getting public enquiries into road projects etc but what gets me is that you people still drive your cars on the roads, you still use public transport, you still use flushing toilets, in other words you want the benefits of modern technology in terms of transport and your general standard of living, but you object to anything new being built, I would have more respect for you if you did what Swampy and his mates did a few years ago and shunned all aspects of modern living and went and lived in a forest, do you remember when Manchester Airport needed the second runway to be built and all the protests about it.

So why don’t you wake up and let the council demolish that horrible house without hindrance and get behind the council in promoting building projects which will make the town more prosperous and improve Wigan people’s standard of living