JohnI appreciate that you absented yourself from previous debates on Ivybridge, but as you have entered the debate now you will hopefully permit me to address your comments.The Chronicle article about Ivybridge was, frankly, the biggest load of tosh that has appeared in that paper for many a year. A complete misrepresentation of the facts from start to finish. One can only speculate as to the Chronicle's motives for repeatedly promoting imaginary "wars" between residents on the estate, but there is not a grain of truth in the suggestion that there is a significant body of opposition on the estate to the new, united association - not a shred.Far from being a "war" between "groups of residents", this whole story is in fact about one individual (a former ICG committee member, as it happens) who has refused to accept the result of a democratic election for the post of Chair, conducted in the presence of scores of residents, members of both NITA and Ivytag, elected councillors and officers of Hounslow Homes.Having failed to persuade a group of disinterested neighbours to come along to an EGM to secure his election as Chair he then, several months later, managed to drag them along to a meeting of a committee of which they were not members and insisted that they be admitted, protesting loudly that they had in fact been present at the EGM and had been elected to the committee, a claim which he knows full well to be patently and demonstrably untrue.The current committee of 23 residents (plus several youth representatives) comprises former officers of the HH-recognised New Ivybridge Tenants' Association (NITA) and of the independent residents' group Ivytag. It is chaired by the former Chair of NITA and includes amongst its leading members two former Chairs of Ivytag.At the meeting which united the two groups after years of fighting, only one dissenting voice (a former NITA member) was raised, from a gentleman who was not prepared to accept unity with Ivytag. To this has now been added the voice of a former Ivytag member, who for some reason had been possessed of the peculiar notion that my agenda was to replace one exclusive and elitist association with another, run by him.These two residents, who oppose the united association separately and each for quite different reasons, apparently constitute an army engaged in a "war between residents' groups".I appreciate that this is probably of little interest to you, as it will be to most other posters, but from past experience it is unlikely that the Chronicle would publish any rebuttal of its absurd article and so I am grateful for the opportunity which you have given me to give a true account of events.If the other articles to which you refer attained a similar standard of accuracy then I would not be inclined to allow them to influence the council's policies and strategies.I do not, as it happens, think the current administration is perfect, nor that we have done evrything right. There will always be problems, there will always be difficulties. There will always be things which we will get wrong.The difference between ourselves and our predecessors is that we do not consider ourselves to be perfect or incapable of error, and we recognise that we are there for the benefit of the public and not the other way around.And, if we cock it up and are voted out of office, you will not find us blaming the voters as a certain former Leader of the Council and mutual acquanitance of ours did following his second drubbing at Hanworth Park.
Phil Andrews ● 6847d