Cullingworth nestles in Yorkshire's wonderful South Pennines where I once was the local councillor. These are my views - on politics, food, beer and the stupidity of those who want to tell me what to think or do. And a little on mushrooms.
Parliament held a 30-minute debate about housing targets and the planning system moved by Gordon Henderson, MP for Sittingbourne & Sheppey. It will come as no surprise to find that Henderson’s argument was in support of more housing and better planning but rather the opposite: This is not the first time I have raised the subject of overdevelopment in my constituency. In the last 12 years, I have…
God gave all men all earth to love, But since our hearts are small, Ordained for each one spot should prove Belovèd over all; That, as He watched Creation’s birth, So we, in godlike mood, May of our love create our earth And see that it is good. Kipling knew when he wrote these words, that the world is a big place. Too big for us to truly love, too much of it is too far away, too foreign, just not…
Conservatism, if it means anything, is a resistance to ideology and the world of ideas ideology represents, whether that ideology is a function of the left or the right So wrote American conservative writer, Andrew Sullivan. I quoted this in one of the first articles I wrote about conservatism and have returned frequently to the theme that being a conservative isn't really an ideological position…
This is the fourth in a series of posts responding to questions and issues raised at my recent Battle of Ideas debate about the housing crisis. These posts will touch on how planning committees work (and whether they are political), why we need council housing, but it won’t solve the housing crisis and the old chestnuts of empty homes, brownfield sites and food supply. I’ll also try to set out why…
This is the third in a series of posts responding to questions and issues raised at my recent Battle of Ideas debate about the housing crisis. These posts will touch on how planning committees work (and whether they are political), why we need council housing, but it won’t solve the housing crisis and the old chestnuts of empty homes, brownfield sites and food supply. I’ll also try to set out why…
This is the second in a series of posts responding to questions and issues raised at my recent Battle of Ideas debate about the housing crisis. These posts will touch on how planning committees work (and whether they are political), why we need council housing, but it won’t solve the housing crisis and the old chestnuts of empty homes, brownfield sites and food supply. I’ll also try to set out why…
Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE This is the first in a series of posts responding to questions and issues raised at my recent Battle of Ideas debate about the housing crisis. These posts will touch on how planning committees work (and whether they are political), why we need council housing, but it won’t solve the housing crisis and the old chestnuts of empty homes, brownfield sites…
Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE With the announcement of initial figures from the 2021 census there has been a little flurry of stories about housing policy plus, for perhaps the first time in decades, the national media has noticed that we stopped having quite so many babies . The population of England and Wales aged 65 and over has finally surpassed the number of children aged…
Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE There are, it seems, two sides to the housing debate – NIMBYs and YIMBYs. Yet these groups agree on one thing – that the answer to the housing crisis is to cram more and more people into our existing urban footprint. NIMBYs do this because otherwise, in the words of Levelling Up Minister and Tory MP, Neil O’Brien "...it means building right next to…
Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE It is a truth universally acknowledged that The Lord of the Rings is the finest novel in the English language. It is also the best evocation of conservative ideas in literature. By this I don’t mean the kings and things that dominate a shallow reading of the book but the central theme: that ordinary people can and do perform incredible acts of heroism…
“ Faerie contains many things besides elves and fays, and besides dwarfs, witches, trolls, giants, or dragons; it holds the seas, the sun, the moon, the sky; and the earth, and all things that are in it: tree and bird, water and stone, wine and bread, and ourselves , mortal men, when we are enchanted.” (JRR Tolkien "On Fairy Stories") Faerie is a place where that direction is North if you want it…
I was, at the start of my working life, a Conservative Party agent. This began with a training posting in Old Bexley & Sidcup then election agent in North Luton for John Carlisle and finishing in York where the profession and I parted company. During this period I worked in the constituencies of three different MPs - the first a former prime minister with all the pomp we assume goes with that…
"Over there, that's where they are..." Simon Evans, comedian and thought leader, writes in Spiked about the need for more public debate. A good public meeting is electric. You listen, throughout, not only to get informed, affirmed or provoked, but also to be able to coherently respond when the ball comes your way. To not make a fool of yourself, and hoof it over the bar, or repeat points already…
We have a housing crisis, an energy crisis, a social care crisis, a spluttering economy and an inefficient health service. Our transport system creaks, cities clog up with cars and attempts to make them more pleasant quickly fade away. We can't sort out our prison system, provide better care for looked after children and make the UK a genuinely fair and supportive place for refugees. Our rubbish…
In the real world, the one where I play Dungeons & Dragons, there is a debate going on about returning to playing in person. Prior to the Great Plague, we would meet up at Geek Retreat or in the back room of a pub to roll dice and explore the stranger recesses of our minds through the medium of a role playing game. All that stopped when the plague struck - the pubs were shut and Geek Retreat…
Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE Arguments against new development, especially housing development, are usually entirely selfish. This isn’t to say that concern for our self-interest isn’t entirely normal but rather that NIMBY arguments are seldom presented in terms of selfish interest but rather use conservative emotion around heritage, environment and ecology mixed with assumptions…
The Face of Evil Well I suppose it is popular. But there was a time when Conservative Chairmen of Select Committees didn't indulge in such populism: It is a lesson today’s great monopolists – Bezos, Zuckerberg, Brin and Page – should heed. For their businesses exert ever more control over our everyday lives. They believe their power is unlimited. And, what’s more, the authorities, in the main, are…
But CPRE won't let you have one We're off again. A campaign backed by 18 British countryside and environmental groups has called on Robert Jenrick, the Housing Secretary, to abandon the Government's controversial proposals to build the new homes under a reformed planning system . The RSPB, Woodland Trust and the Ramblers walking charity are among those saying the plans would be disastrous for…
"Greedy developers!" How many times have we heard this from people opposing new housing? When the planning application for new homes lands, it is a matter of seconds before somebody is muttering about how it's all about profit and the developers don't care about the community. At times this seems to be the Labour Party's national policy - their opposition to planning reform gets framed as "the…
Gentle density There is an element of the town planning world that, for all sorts of reasons, believes it knows better what sort of places people want than do actual people. This is the tradition of Le Corbusier whose ideas encompassed super-dense high-rise cities filled with well-behaved peons. A tradition that, when put into practice by the great man's adherents, gave us America's urban housing…
Gardening bloke James Wong was again trolling the Twiterati by saying that gardening (more specifically British gardening) has "racism in its DNA". All this came in response to another Tweet from Ed Wall who is the head of Landscape Architecture Urbanism at the University of Greenwich: Gardens are denied their political agency because they too often reveal uncomfortable politics of individual…
Sadly, "...it's means hanging baskets..." comes across as the standout, throwaway line in a largely sensible article by Rachel Wolf about the matter of levelling up. What she reports on is a sense of troubled civic pride that anyone with ears in the North will have heard - not just in recent times but for decades. Certainly it was a feature of my 24 years as a local councillor in Bradford: People…
The latest urban planning gimmick is the '15-minute City' with its poster child being Paris and its godfather Carlos Moreno: His 15-minute concept was developed primarily to reduce urban carbon emissions, reimagining our towns not as divided into discrete zones for living, working, and entertainment, but as mosaics of neighborhoods in which almost all residents’ needs can be met within 15 minutes…
"The Conservatives no longer represent the kind of metropolitan values characterised by the Notting Hill set, but their new coalition is highly homogeneous in terms of values – leaning marginally to the left on the economy and right on socio-cultural issues." This observation is how Onward open their analysis of voting behaviour and demographics for the 2019 general election. It mirrors a…
No soil, no fungi, no understory - sad trees on an urban street I thought I'd write about trees. This is prompted by the seemingly egregious (but probably entirely justified) decision by Doncaster Council to fell a row of mature limes along a street in their patch . This, of course, brought back the story from neighbouring Sheffield which came over all lumberjack a year or two ago resulting in…