Vote NIMBY, go NIMBY

From a long article in yesterday's FT about future spending cuts:

"People agree that we need to cut debt as a principle so we don't burden future generations," says one Tory strategist. "They're not so keen on specific spending cuts."

Fair enough so far. But, from another article on Tory plans for what they'll do when they're back in government:

One of the Tories’ main housing policies has come under fire from housebuilders, which have warned it could create a “hiatus” in the planning system. Caroline Spelman, shadow communities secretary, has written to councils warning them not to make decisions on controversial planning issues until after the general election. She promised them they would be able to “put the brakes” on any elements of regional spatial strategies that they found “undesirable”. Ms Spelman also told local authorities that a Tory government would not pay “a penny of compensation” to speculative developers that saw their plans fall by the wayside...

F***ing horsey-faced bitch, as per usual. The still small voice of commonsense is Steve Norris:

The plans have also been criticised by Steven Norris, the former Tory minister, who wrote in a trade magazine that while Labour’s insistence on targets was imperfect the Tory policy was wrong. “To assume that progress will be made by reducing all decisions to local level is a grave mistake,” he wrote. “That path guarantees even fewer completions.”

But he is soon shouted down:

... Bob Neill, shadow local government minister, said there was evidence the government was pressing councils to sign up to “unsustainable housing targets” and removing green belt land.

FFS, we shouldn't have any target other than allowing more homes to be built. The market will see to it that construction will stop again once their market value comes down to a level where its uneconomic to build any more (i.e. once marginal land values reach nil, unlike the present situation where urban land is worth one hundred times as much as greenbelt land on the other side of a fence). If we leave it to the markets, then no target is "unsustainable".

These worshippers of The Hallowed Green Belt conveniently overlook that eighty per cent of the UK is agricultural land, it's only a very wide strip around towns and cities that is designated green-belt (over ten per cent of UK land). Sure, town planners ought to ensure that ten or twenty per cent of urban land is public spaces - be that parks, playgrounds, tennis courts or duck ponds - because that is a far more efficient use of land than everybody having a huge back garden - but that's got nothing to do with the greenbelt, as such.

"Ah yes, but what about the pressure on 'local services'" wail the NIMBYs. Wot? Houses don't put pressure on local services, people do! If people stay in the same town but move from a small flat to a new house a couple of miles out, there's no additional demand for local services.

If liberalised planning laws lead to more people moving Down South, then don't forget that local services are provided by local people; if there are more people then there's more demand for schools'n'hospitals, but more people living in the area who can work in those schools'n'hospitals, so it all cancels out.

In any event, if The Blue Wing of the Home-Owners' Party succeeds in choking off new development (with the corresponding cost to the economy in general) with the aim of keeping house prices as high as possible, how is that in any way not deliberately "burdening future generations with debt", thus exposing the first vague policy principle as complete hypocrisy?

I tell you, I'm starting to think that the next lot will be just as bad as the last lot.