You can’t wash your hands of the consequence of your actions - Mathew Hancock, MP
“You can’t wash your hands of the consequence of your actions” said Mathew Hancock MP this afternoon on Radio 4′s PM program. The topic was the financial crisis but Mr. Hancock was not talking about the bankers, he was talking about the protesters!
Mathew Hancock, Conservative MP for West Suffolk, was interviewed by Eddie Mair along with Richard Murphy of Tax Research UK. Mr. Murphy was sympathetic to the protesters, talked about changing the financial system and got in a plug for his book The Courageous State.
Mr. Hancock was not sympathetic and went on to say some very stupid things. He said that it was fair to ask the protesters what they’re campaigning for and how it should be achieved. He said that it was reasonable that they’ve made their point but that now it is time to look forward to the detail of achieving the world that they want to create.
Mathew Hancock was TALKING BOLLOCKS.
Firstly, the idea that the protesters have made their point and should leave him and his buddies to address the situation is self satisfied tosh! If the protesters just pack up and go home then the bankers and the politicians will merely carry on as usual. The current Conservative pre-occupation with getting out of the EU is evidence that the unfairness of the bailout has slipped right off the governments agenda.
Secondly, the idea that it is not possible to protest unless you have a solution is utter rubbish! It is like the triage nurse at a hospital telling a sick man to go away until he had developed a cure for his ailment.
It is an indication of how out of touch our politicians are that Mr. Hanock expects ordinary men and women to do a better job of running banks than those paid millions for their supposed expertise. It was not the job of ordinary tax payers to keep an eye on the banking industry and we should not expect them to set policy but it is their right to protest and make themselves heard so that those who do have the knowledge and the power can recognise their concerns and adjust policy.
However, it was another of Mr. Hancok’s statements that really angered me but first let me tell you about another Radio 4 program over the weekend. In BBC Radio 4′s, The Bottom Line on Saturday Evan Davis interviewed the chairman of a boutique merchant bank, the chief executive of a financial advisory firm and the chief executive of a savings and investment group. When these men tried to dismiss the accusations that the bankers were to blame for the financial crisis Mr. Davis got fairly miffed and stated that just prior to the credit crunch, after a boom which had run on for ten years (and was therefore due to bust), a major bank had lent £40 for every £1 it had in deposits. This meant that if the value of its investments were to fall by just 2% the bank would be insolvent. This is incompetence and complacency on a massive scale. Further, at the same time, while the economy was booming, the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, was running a deficit. (If you can’t repay debt in the good times then when can you?)
This evening on PM, Mr. Hancock said that the protesters outside St. Paul’s had caused the cathedral to close, losing the church around £20,000 a day, that actions have consequences and “You can’t wash your hands of the consequence of your actions”!
According to Wikipedia, before becoming an MP, Mr. Hanock was an economist at the Bank of England, specialising in the housing market. It is further testament to his utter hypocrisy that he can utter such statements without a hint of irony. This out of touch pillock is quite content to let the politicians and bankers destroy a whole industry then walk away with fat bonuses yet has the gall to accuse others of not taking responsibility for their actions.
Even now, the bankers do not understand that they only have jobs because they were bailed out by ordinary citizens, such as those spending their nights outside St. Paul’s.
Something’s gotta change.
Photography
Ich bin ein Osbaldwicker (NIMBIs are good)
Tags: BBC, Big Yellow Taxi, democracy, developers, Hands Off Our Land, Heathrow Airport, houses, housing, Joni Mitchell, Joseph Rountree Foundation, National Planning Policy Framework, natural beauty, Nigel Ingram, NIMBI, Not In My Back Yard, Osbaldwick, Osbaldwick Parish Council, overcrowding, planning permission, Radio 4, Sanchia Berg, Today program, Wendy. Madocks
Just one more tree
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.
Star House