I WAS amused and appalled in equal measure by the irony of South Lakeland District Council and Kendal BID's paying out £3,000 to park a Spitfire for two days on the new lawns of New Road Common's erstwhile car park (Gazette, April 19, 'Replica Spitfire is on its way to New Road').

This £3,000 of money taxed from the town's traders is the icing on the cake of the total cost of the New Road farce to the area's tax payers; I guess this will be approaching £500,000 when the total cost, including the security 'heavies' hired in, the barristers consulted, the fences and boulders etc. are added to the construction and landscaping costs. But we won't be given that figure until after the elections!

That SLDC choose to park (and presumably insure) not a car but an aircraft on this highly contentious piece of common land belonging to the people of Kendal looks to me like a 'Victory Roll' of presumed triumph over the thousands of Kendalians who have protested vigorously and legally over SLDC's land-grab of this economically valuable parking asset from the town's workers.

SLDC could only have been less sensitive if they had chosen to park a tank on our new and unwanted 'lawns'.

It is great that the town should commemorate 100 years of the RAF but I would have thought that the initiative and impetus for such celebrations should come from the various RAF associations and not from Kendal BID trying to drum-up interest by this particular promotion paid for from public funds and which will be seen as a gesture of scorn by the many New Road protestors.

The Spitfire is a poignant icon of the victory of 'The Few' over an overweening elected dictatorship. I object to its being used symbolically by the totally dominant ruling party of SLDC against not the few but the many who continue to fight their wrong-headed decision to sequester New Road from its time-honoured users.

Ian Kell

Mealbank