The quoted remarks of Councillor Greenland in your

August 7 edition suggest that the Councillor supports the

old adage 'if you tell a falsehood often enough people will

begin to believe it'.

Firstly, he claims that the public response to the

"exhibition" (two display panels, no 3D models, no

explanation) at 263 responses was "fantastic".

We do not know how many of those were in fact rejections

of the offered schemes, or what proportion were in favour

of Option 2. We do know that more than 70 attendees at

the community forum (set up by MCC to facilitate

consultation) voted unanimously to reject both options

once details of the schemes had been explained to them.

Councillor Greenland has chosen to ignore this

inconvenient truth. Fantastic, no; Fantasy, yes. And let us

not forget the Save our Market Town campaign in Spring

2006, where more than half of the 2,800 signatures

collected against that Henry Boot proposal were from

people living in the Abergavenny area.

Secondly, he sets up a phantom "myth created by a few

that a supermarket is not wanted by the people of

Abergavenny" and then proceeds to demolish it. How

many times, Councillor Greenland, do you have to be told

that SAUCE is in favour of a supermarket on the cattle

market site? It is the size of the store and type of goods

on offer which are our legitimate concerns.

Thirdly, he explains away the absence of a cinema from

the new design scheme thus; because, poor

impressionable man, "we were told by Sauce that we tried

to put too much on the site"

What a transparent and ludicrous excuse. What SAUCE

has consistently said is that the proposals for the size and

nature of the supermarket amounted to over development

and would generate excessive traffic. This was confirmed

by the Welsh Assembly who advised that their conditions

"could include requirements to change the scale or type of

development in order to reduce the potential traffic

impact." The inclusion of a cinema would have had

negligible effect on traffic and, incidentally, on the space

requirement as it was integral with the library, and

Councillor Greenland knew it because of " time delays and

increased costs incurred by addressing a minority

campaign".

The councillor is reminded that it was not SAUCE but his

own planning committee that turned down the application

in spite of attempts to influence the outcome.

As for delays, MCC and the developer managed to waste a

total of nine months before they decided they were likely

to be unsuccessful in their appeal. It has taken them a

further nine months to publish the results of their half-

baked architectural competition in which three of the

original four chosen national firms declined to participate.

The major increase in the cost of the redevelopment

scheme of over £2 million has occurred because

Abergavenny is funding the replacement regional cattle

market at Raglan. This amount has been found by cutting

out the cinema from the scheme.

May I remind readers of the meaning of the acronym

SAUCE – it stands for Save Abergavenny's Unique

Character and Environment. Let's all take a stand while it

still has something worth saving.