ATTEMPTING to spin some good news for the council's joint 'Disasterthorpe' housing estate, council leader Steve Galloway welcomes the Joseph Rowntree Foundation's commitment to build an extra 27 "affordable" houses on the 53-acre wildlife site (April 22).

Interesting then that Coun Galloway's Lib-hypocrite party recently de-allocated a 600 house greenfield development carrying a 50 per cent allocation of affordable housing, moving the allocation to the York Central site from the original Huntington site.

Given that decision, which was surely correct, to use a brownfield site first, why is the greenfield site at Osbaldwick still under threat? Is it because it is council owned? Or was the decision to de-allocate the Huntington site made not for planning reasons but for political reasons on the back of "favourable officer recommendations for Lib-Dem areas", comments made by Labour group leader Coun Dave Merrett.

It does seem strange that supposedly fair and impartial planning decisions are being influenced by financial and political pressures.

We are already familiar with Coun Galloway's hypocrisy: only recently he berated Osbaldwick Parish Council for spending £23 of public money on "political" purposes while the Lib-hypocrite group have been advertising for a political assistant with a salary of £21,033 of taxpayers' money.

M Warters,

Yew Tree Mews,

Osbaldwick Village, York.

Updated: 09:49 Friday, May 06, 2005