You can, and I very much appreciate the cordial response, but - equally respectfully - you’d be wrong.
Look, I’m being a bit of a dick here (ok, a complete dick!) at the moment because I genuinely can’t see - beyond the kind of objections you’d 100% expect from Levy and Gant as local (ish) councillors - what the LDs *as a whole* have done to make people think the group is against the stadium.
Politics is sh!te.
Local v regional v national, etc. Of course Gant is going to object; he’s the local Cllr for one if the areas with the people most likely to be against it. If he doesn’t object, he’s never getting elected again, and the LDs lose a seat.
But much like Victoria Prentis, my MP in Bicester, will campaign for local issues whilst simultaneously *knowing* whatever it is will close because of cuts *her* Government are making, so uber local councillors will be allowed by their parties to object to uber local ‘stuff’ because it keeps the cllr a seat on whatever council they’re on, and keeps the party a seat. It’s dirty, it’s immoral, but it happens. That doesn’t mean that the regional party, OCC Lib Dems as a group, etc. are against whatever it is that the councillor is objecting to.
All I’ve seen is the Conservatives and Labour sniping from the sidelines about how easy it should be. So they want a lease and stadium with *no* conditions attached? So that the owners could sell the stadium from under us? So that (some of) the residents’ of Kidlington’s worst fears come to fruition, and the roads are gridlocked every other weekend?
This is a massive, massive project - it’s not putting up a garden shed. OCC are doing their due diligence to make sure their decisions don’t back fire on them.
I think some of the emotion need to be taken out of this because as I’ve said prevoulsy, whoever is in charge of CDC have to follow the planing guidelines as laid out by Government. If our application meets them, it’ll be approved.
But we need to make sure the club is focussed on meeting the conditions that were laid down in September 2023 by OCC so that OCC have no excuses for not cracking on with us.
Apologies to anyone whose heart rate I sent through the ceiling - it was probably the wrong to do what I was trying to do.
PS I genuinely can’t find where McIvor is standing as Green