I’ve been messing around with stuff on the net since this thing began in the early nineties and I was a tech journalist. Still, it never ceases to amaze me, not least because of its sheer persistence. Fifteen months ago I was in the middle of the campaign to defeat a thoroughly nasty development plan in Wye, Kent, where I live. At a very crucial moment in the campaign we knew that there was a key meeting of council officials who might, with a bit of luck, just kill the whole damned thing.

So what do you do? We had no ammunition left. No more leaked papers. No more evidence of what a scandal this was. Out of desperation pretty much I put together a quick web video, using still pictures in iPhoto documenting our beautiful part of the land, grabbed a music track off the web, and put the whole thing up as a little movie on the website and YouTube under the nae ‘What Wye might lose’.

An awful lot of people watched it. Did any of the council people who that week decided to kill the plan? I don’t know, but I hope it weighed on them a little. And then the battle was won, and the video was, for me, forgotten.

Except, it’s still on YouTube. People still find it and watch it. And comment on it too. Some idiot a while back said this…

what an ugly place, imperial should have carried out their plans then the little village would actually grow and prosper.

And other people read his comments, and made their own. Today that video’s had nearly a thousand views, not bad for something about a tiny little community in a largely forgotten part of England. Other have had their chance to say their bit too, about the chap who thinks Wye is an ugly place. Here’s my favourite comment…

i was raised and then married in wye by the then vicar and sadly departed david marriot, what the college was trying to do was awful, they have no sense of tradition ,history or any respect for the village it self and the comment that wye is ugly, man open your eyes and your soul….

If you want to see the video page go here. Or for the video itself, look below…