NOT long ago Councillor Di Brooks wrote in the Echo: “The fact is the largest container ships do not, cannot, and will not navigate their way up Southampton Water, unlike the situation in Felixstowe, Rotterdam and Antwerp.

This is due to the lack of depth on this approach which cannot be overcome even by the largest dredge because of the distance along Southampton Water, the Thorn Channel and out to the Nab.”

On May 13 the Daily Echo reported: “The biggest ship in the world to carry the UK flag has arrived at Southampton. CMA CGM Kerguelen, which can carry up to 17,722 containers, will make her first, and only, UK call at Southampton... Kerguelen rivals some of the world’s biggest ships at 398m long and 54m wide.”

So Cllr Brooks is not the expert in shipping, logistics and port operation she professes to be, yet despite her position as a councillor she is quite happy to sacrifice detail, objectivity and fact-checking in support of an intractible prejudice and blinkered opposition to any industrial development on Waterside.

I wonder whether Cllr Brooks noticed that Kerguelen did not make any ports of call apart from Southampton.

Southampton has advantages of which Cllr Brooks seems to be ignorant – all long voyage containers bound for Felixstowe or Thames Gateway have to pass up the English Channel and past Southampon first.

Time is money in shipping and a 24 or even 12-hour voyage shortening is a big advantage Freight train paths from Felixstowe are limited by the single track shared with passenger trains, and the Thames ports are similarly limited by pathing across already congested London railways.

Southampton to the West Midlands and north has already been upgraded to take larger W10 containers and more freight paths are available thanks to infrastructure upgrades now completed.

Cllr Brooks may not want port expansion because of what seems to be little more than an irrational anti-industrial snobbery.

Totton’s constituents deserve better from a Conservative councillor whose party vowed to be the party of entrpreneurs business and enterprise yet she offers nothing more than visionless parochial Nimbyism.

Andrew King, Locks Heath.