This morning on the BBC Radio 4 Today program Sanchia Berg reported on a building project that took nine years to “work it’s way through the process” and I thought of Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi:
“You don’t know what you’ve got ’till it’s gone,
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot”
It seems that the government are about to publish a revised National Planning Policy Framework which will replace 44 existing planning statements numbering over 1,200 pages with a 49-page document.
The Today program reported that in 1999 plans were published to build 540 modern houses near the village of Osbaldwick east of York. Local people objected and, with the help of a local MP and the parish council, were able to delay the project until work finally started in 2011.
An interesting story but what struck me was that the whole stance of the BBC piece was that the objections of the local people were merely an inconvenient obstacle which had delayed a legitimate project. This was epitomised by Nigel Ingram, of the Joseph Rountree Foundation, who was reported as saying that “the planning system was primarily to blame” and the foundation thought that the battle cost it £5 million. Even Osbaldwick Parish Councilor, Wendy. Madocks, confessed that she found it “incredible” that the local people had managed to hold off the developers for ten years.
From this BBC report it seemed that the battle had beeb merely a waste of time and money and an encumbrance to the developers who were considered in the right by default.
It may have been fairer to portray this as a failure of democracy under pressure from a large well funded organisation.
One reason that we we assume that local people’s objections are an obstacle is that we brand them as NIMBIs (Not In My Back Yard). We consider that these people want all the conveniences of modern living such as housing, electricity and sewage without taking their share of the irritations which, in this instance, was to have an area of natural beauty demolished to make way for new houses.
I believe that condemning NIMBIs is short sighted and that, on the contrary, we should cheer NIMBIs in their battles to protect their corner of the natural environment.
Yes, it’s true that we need more housing, power stations and whatnot. However it will always be possible to make the argument that a handful of local people must sacrifice their little bit corner of planet Earth to pay for the necessities of modern life. And if we continually override the objections of NIMBIs then we shall eventually have all areas of natural beauty demolished.
It works like this:
Suppose that the stubborn people of Osbaldwick had won their battle. Suppose that whatever bureaucracy which rules on these things had come down 100% in their favour and the Rountree Foundation had been told, in no uncertain terms, that they could forget the idea of getting approval for the planning application near Osbaldwick. What then?
The pressure for housing would still exist and so the Foundation would have found another site and let us say, for the sake of argument, that the other site they had found was near Middlethorpe. Let us say that the foundation won approval there and the houses were built.
That would not have been the end of it.
The next time that it was necessary to build more houses or a power station or a sewage works then the planners would search around and the excellent site near Middlethorpe would have gone but they would be thinking, “…well, there is always that site up near Osbaldwick”. And this time when the planners came back they would claim the moral high ground. “Consider the honest people of Middlethorpe”, they would argue, “You cannot seriously expect them to put up with more houses when they allowed the development last time. The people of Osbaldwick must take there share of development”.
And even if Osbaldwick fought off this second assault there would be a third and a fourth until the area of natural beauty was eventually demolished.
That is how things work.
England used to be covered in forest but the great and the good always insisted that just a few more trees should be chopped down. Just a few more because the great and good always have enough money to live in the few remaining areas where there are trees.
Yesterday I was looking at my old secondary school from the air on Google Earth and it struck me how, when the school was built in the 1950s or 60s, there had been a great deal of space around the building. Some space for sports but also some just for kids to run around in. The school has changed over the years as the town has expanded and more buildings have sprung up on the green spaces where I used to run around. We all have grown used to living more densely packed.
Last year I went walking in The Peak District. I thought it would be good to get away from the city and walk around in the wilderness. Hah! Walking around in the hills I occasionally stopped to peer around and I observed scores of other bastards also standing on their fucking hind legs like bloody meerkats also looking around and trying to enjoy the wilderness. The English “wilderness” is crawling with tourists and it will nto be long before they install sandwich dispensing machines.
England is too crowded and there is pressure for more housing and I guess it must be built but if we continue like this we will all be living in shoe boxes. Already I can see that my parents lived in a smaller home than my grand parents and I live in a smaller home than my parents.
Just a few more houses, just a few more. Just one more terminal at Heathrow Airport. Then, once it is built, just on more runway at Heathrow Airport. The argument for the Heathrow Airport is that England must maintain it’s position as a global hub but for who’s benefit? If our environment is gradually eroded by development then in who’s benefit is this development? Just when are we going to stop hankering after more and more stuff and start valuing the stuff we have?
Thus far an no further! Ich bin ein Osbaldwicker and all that.







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Will Self, Cyborg Cockroaches and Democracy
Tags: Capitalism, CIty Books, cockroach, corporate power, cyborg, democracy, innovation, limited liability, umbrella, Will Self
Will Self
On Friday night I went to a talk by Will Self at Brighton, Hove and Sussex Sixth Form College arranged by the excellent City Books on Western Road. I had taken the day off work as I had man flu. I still felt feverish while listening to Mr. Self discuss his new novel Umbrella. He read a passage and it seemed quite a dense stream of consciousness type of work written, as he said, in the continuous present. He talked before and after and took questions. He was good value. Alternately, irreverent, serious and amusing.
My mind has been slightly addled the last few days and I’m not sure where some ideas came from but I think it was he who described technology as a parasite on humanity. This tied in with the ideas of a friend who suggested that we are now so reliant on technology that we are becoming cyborgs without a physical interface.
Today, I read in The Economist that Alper Bozkurt and Tahmid Latif of North Carolina University are experimenting with cyborg parasites which can be used to help in search and rescue operations. A cockroach is fitted out with a little circuit board allowing remote control guidance. The circuit board also carries a microphone and camera.
Obviously this could be very useful in search and rescue…….or spying. I’m sure that police, intelligence services, military and the corporates will all be keeping a keen eye on this type of work. If it turns out to be practical, we will, no doubt, see these things crawling all over the walls of Embassies, foreign military installations and our own homes.
The increasing speed of technological advance is amazing but I sometimes wonder about the consequences. I think it’s generally accepted that Capitalism is better than Socialism at promoting invention and innovation. The key to this is probably the concept of limited liability which has enabled much of the western world’s success.
But the downside of this success has been the growth of massive unaccountable multinational corporations. It’s interesting that Western Multinationals are unaccountable but Chinese corporates are often owned by Sovereign Wealth Funds making them accountable to the Chinese government but I don’t want to get into a discussion on the merits of State Capitalism.
So far, we seem to have decided that the innovation and the standard of living which it has achieved is worth the rise of mega corporations but I wonder if this will always be true. More and more it seems that we get more stuff at the expense of our liberty.
We now have fantastic cars, amazing hand held computers, flat screen TVs and all the other stuff but very little time to enjoy it. I remembering reading a comment somewhere that most basements of middle class Americans have unused aqualungs or sky diving gear and Britain is heading that way.
Sure there are some great technologies on the horizon but are these future wonders worth the loss of control of our governments to corporate lobby groups? Is yet more innovation worth the steady privatisation of commercialisation or public space?
What do we value more: Bigger TV screens, the platooning of our cars, cyborg cockroaches or democracy?
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