Vomit-Inducing Arguments for Homeownerism (1)

From Save Coate:-

The main badger route from Day House Copse to Coate Water will be blocked by a school. The otter stream runs through the employment zone. The impact on wild-life in general is not acceptable.

Never mind children being educated, or people trying to earn a living. Let's look after the black and white creatures that only come out at night. It's not even like they're endangered, unless you count 288,000 in the UK as endangered.

Any ideas on what we should do with such species-traitors can be given in the comments.

The Village "Destroyed" by "WAGs"

From the Daily Hate

Looking at Prestbury High Street, you'd think this picture postcard village had been badly hit by the recession. 

Dusty shop windows hide empty, unused rooms, the long-serving butchers and Post Office have shut down, and corrugated To Let signs clutter the black and white Tudor buildings - as they have done for months.

'The village is dying,' local residents commonly remark.

I know Prestbury very well. I used to work on the south side of Manchester for a while and stayed there for months. It was quite a posh and prosperous village. Sounds like the footballers have arrived and their wives go and do the shopping online or somewhere abroad.

Bill explains: 'It's stereotypical footballers' accommodation which doesn't look lived-in and half the time it isn't. That's part of the problem - they are always away.

'And meanwhile, young local people have been priced out of the area - children who've grown up here have to move out of Prestbury to be able to afford to buy a property.'

Those are young people who would, of course, be spending money in the village if they lived here.

You know what you could do? You could just build a load more houses. There's plenty of land north of Prestbury, and they'd then keep the shops going. It would mean that it wouldn't look like so much of a museum that it does now, though.

House Building Targets Scrapped... Grrrrr

From the BBC:-

Communities Secretary Eric Pickles said councils would now be given the freedom to make their own decisions, not be "bossed around" by central government.

So, presumably all those councils that the Conservatives' High Speed Rail line will be going through will now have the power to refuse to allow it? Or will the government still be bossing them around when it comes to that matter?

It will no longer be possible to concrete over large swathes of the country without any regard to what local people want.

Jesus. The Barker Report was to build on something like 1% of the flipping greenbelt. The people using the greenbelt for its required purpose (city dwellers having green spaces which was the whole point of the greenbelt) would hardly notice.

From John Redwood's CGT Letter

26th May 2010:

The government has said it wishes to assist a substantial private sector led revival, and wants to see the enterprise sector create more jobs and homes for rent.

28th April 2010

The Conservatives have stated that if elected to government they will abolish regional planning quangos and the regional housing targets that require Wokingham to build on this scale. The Council would under these proposals be free to draw up a new local plan with less development in it. I would urge them to draw up such a plan keeping the sensitive greenfields adjacent to the existing settlement free of new building, and to take into account transport and flooding constraints on housing numbers.

So, John Redwood wants more homes for rent, just not in his back yard.

One of the reasons I supported centrally imposed regional housing targets is that no-one wants to have houses, nuclear power stations or sewage plants built in their back yard and left to local authorities, you'll get never get any of those built anywhere.