For those that missed yesterday's meeting in St. Austell, to watch tax-funded out-of-Duchy "experts" dictate on how many more farms and green belts the developers should convert to unaffordable, unsustainable plasterboard boxes, here's an eye-witness account from one supporter: "A VISIT TO THE ST AUSTELL PLANNING CONFERENCE. I wanted to vomit having arrived as Betty was pitching for himself, he can certainly produce the bullshit, all menace and action, spouting statistics and assertively promoting himself as the latest messiah here to saaave the backward Cornish from themselves. Betty doing a passable imitation of a helicopter in his more enthusiastic moments was talking in hundreds of millions of borrowings to get his pet schemes off the ground without ever once mentioning the risks or who would be held accountable if it all goes horribly wrong. Mason who is obviously Betty's glove puppet chaired the subsequent debate where the sound of mutual backslapping was probably heard in Camborne. Some Cornwall Council hipster oik with a flashy haircut and pronounced northern accent questioned what Brand Cornwall was all about because he couldn't understand it. The place was heavily populated with wide eyed property and messianic LEP types. Dear Old Andrew Mitchell added a hint of the common people shuffling around like Bilbo Baggins in his crumpled baggy suit amidst all the smart casual gear and open neck shirts while planner Mason was resplendent in a lime green shirt and pink rimmed glasses. God help us all, the victory was declared it's open season and they will be coming to a town near you. There's one slight problem Mr Betty has several thousand increasingly angry ornery Rynners to deal with and dispose of if he want to slap a compulsory purchase order on Treliever Farm which has replaced Langarth as the frontline in the ongoing war. One of the audience mentioned Albert Einsteins definition of madness where he stated that '' true madness is repeatedly doing the same thing while expecting a different result each time'' Betty is adamant that he intends to do things differently, time will tell!" Another business supporter wrote: "Thank you for the information about the "Housing Growth and Delivery Summit 2017". I can confirm that I have not been contacted about this event and hence was not aware it was taking place. The sceptic in me says that is the way some want it to be. I have now run over 200 business events in Cornwall since September 2015. It is very clear to me from running these events that there are very many people in the county forced into self employment as there are not enough jobs paying a living wage available in the county. They go into business, not to fulfil an ambition, but to try and put food on the table. It is also very apparent that a large percentage of those people are hugely underemployed. As highly skilled as many of them are, some find it very difficult to gain meaningful contracts in Cornwall. Many of these run on a shoestring operations stand little chance of gaining contracts outside the county either. The events I run are called Collaboration Hubs and as the name suggests one of the core aims is to help businesses collaborate for mutual benefit, which can help them win business they would otherwise stand no chance of winning. We are trying to do our bit, without any support, to help improve life in business in Cornwall. With the ONS statistics showing that there are some 50,000 self employed people in the county earning an average of less than £10,000 per annum, we are obviously only scratching the surface. This is the huge problem that needs to be solved in Cornwall. Poverty brings with it a huge spiral of social problems. Sadly much of the attention for our "Future Economy" is in my view focused on ill researched vanity projects which will never have a meaningful positive effect on the man in the street. Until the challenge above is recognised and dealt with by those with their hands on the purse strings, home ownership will remain out of reach for huge numbers of people in Cornwall. Each year, young talent leaves Cornwall for the reasons outlined above. The result, we have an ageing population, with increased dependency on our healthcare systems. The 52 week population in the county has I believe fallen slightly over recent years. We apparently have 29,000 or so empty homes in the county. So I am puzzled as to why we need 52,500 more unaffordable homes! In my humble opinion, the efforts of some very well meaning people are not focused on the things that are going to make a real difference. Kind Regards" And finally, one Truro resident was scathing: "Dear Councillors, So I note we are now to have a "Housing Growth and Delivery Summit 2017", in St Austell, on Friday (tomorrow) I am lost for words... almost. Why do we need three "professionals" - Sandra Rothwell, John Bettie & Phil Mason - among others, I'm sure equally expensive ones, generally with either a limited experience of Cornwall, or partially responsible for the disastrous transition into a "modern" Cornwall, trying to lecture people (who's been invited??) about what "we" in Cornwall need?!!! Surely recent press, radio and social media attention, and even Phil Mason's disastrous public admission of the "mistake" at Threemilestone - which he and his team spent years creating (or how to turn a quiet Cornish village into a Western Corridor urban mess) should've alerted our wiser councillors to the need for decent planning, cost-cutting (not services, but surplus consultants and inept officers) and proper justification, rather than more unwise expenditure (it's always easy to spend other people's money!). I just can't believe that some of these people are actually employed to help deliver services to Cornish residents; the council only exists to serve & administer, not to waste, fob off, meet, meet, meet, employ more consultants, experts, professionals and other gurus, and obediently serve distant civil servants from one failed administration to another; all for the good of... what/whom/where??? We need communities, yes; well, guess what? We had them, until Phil Mason's planning department decided that Andrew Kerr was right: it's a developer's agenda - might as well say developers' paradise, given the billions pouring into their bottom lines... from governments, the EU (Obj 1???), councils, buyers, etc.... We need safe streets, villages and towns; guess what? We had them. We need a clean environment for us and our kids; guess what? We had that too. What does some over-egoed pensioner from Bristol know about how you might bring all these things to Cornwall, which already had all these things until quite recently, before chronic (mal-)administration by successive councils over the past 20 years, actually took it all away?? All the West Briton & Packet seem to report these days is chaos and carnage on roads, violence and crime - if that's "progress" and "modern" and "panning & development", no thank you! We didn't talk about community ; we didn't meet about them; we didn't plan for them; we didn't consult anyone; nor did we pay any experts to tell us; WE ALREADY HAD THEM, which is why people up and down the UK and beyond, chose to move to Cornwall to live. Your names - Mason, Bettie, Rothwell, Pollard, Taylor, Hanniford, Newton, Paynter, Teverson, Kerr, Kennally, Ansari and the rest of your phony army of clever nobodies - will go down in Cornish posterity as the ones that spent a lot of time and money running around with underpants on your heads and pencils up your noses, overseeing the complete dismantling of the very Cornwall we all loved... and for which you purport to be "planning"; aaaah, that magic word again, "planning". So let's talk about planning; how does a council, our council, use our taxes to support a man - Phil Mason - who's litany of well documented "errors" over so many years, and who seems to be such a hate figure due to his alleged questionable behaviour, especially within councillor ranks, who would in most business environments, warrant an instant dismissal? Instead, our council, led by Mr U-Turn Egerton (only just popular enough in his own village to gather a few hundred votes) & Mr Gullible Mitchell, decide to give this man their backing for yet another potentially disastrous scheme (Langarth?), which has time and again been shown to be a massive loss-making and destructive venture. If you thought you had popular backing, it was only thanks to the lies peddled about the phantom stadium for Cornwall, mainly by Inox, but swallowed by many others along the way. A bit like the famed farmers' market label on the unforgivable levelling of the beautiful and ancient Tregurra valley... which we now see achieved several sorry things: 1- An additional bill for taxpayers of some £4-6m (or more??) 2- A totally underused P&R (61%?) 3- A horrific traffic nightmare around Newquay roads and Union Hill 4- Housing with front doors overlooking a busy road (did you say ""safe, healthy and green communities??) 5- A nice profit for Duchy of Cornwall/Prince Charles & Cormac 6- The systematic destruction of Truro's East belt, opening up the whole valley to abuse by developers and planners. Will you PLEASE start working for your community, the same community that pays your wages, by concentrating on goals that matter: 1- Plan only for social housing (we have plenty of other homes, good and bad, in the private sector, at every price range). 2- As per the government's recent aim, designate greenbelts, before these are completely gone; why is Cornwall the only area of Britain without them?? 3- Look into bringing National Park status for Cornwall; something that many people want across the Duchy, and that the council has competent departments (AONB) and people to achieve. 4- Provide value for money to your community, instead of endless TLAs, meetings, consultants, or following the dubious agendas of predatory developers, morally questionable planning inspectors, inept planners, ambiguous and short-term government policies and other vested interests. Most of these people and organisations will be long gone, when our kids' Cornwall becomes a giant fume-filled car park and sprawling urban mess. Stop talking and start fighting for your community, for God's sakes!" Photos shows Falmouth and Penryn in 2003; how many productive farms have been lost to concrete in the past 14 years? And how many more to come?!!!