The NIMBYs must be celebrating.

From the BBC:

The government has been sent a "warning shot" by voters over planning reforms for England and the HS2 rail link, the co-chairman of the Tories has said. Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Amanda Milling said voters' concerns were "loud and clear" after the Lib Dems won the Chesham and Amersham by-election...

Local opposition to the HS2 high-speed rail line being built through the constituency and the government's proposed changes to the planning system, which could see more homes being built in rural areas, were major factors in the poll.

Seems that Home-Owner-Ism is reasserting itself at the dominant ideology in the UK. Who cares about jobs, pollution, equality, balance of trade and all that peripheral stuff?

This also goes to show, that if you want something to happen, the best tactic is to vote for a single-issue party and nudge the government in your direction. The Lib Dems perform well at by-elections because they will jump on any old local bandwagon or champion whatever single issue bothers local voters. They aren't bogged down with anything like coherent, national issues or having to worry about what they'd do if they were actually in charge.
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As a contrast to this, it looks like the Tories are going to win the by-election in the former Labour constituency, Batley and Spen:

Johnson went to Batley to campaign with Ryan Stephenson, Tory candidate in the Batley and Spen by-election... Mr Johnson said: "That means looking at all the issues that matter, whether that's people's education, improving skills in this area, working with Kirklees to improve skills, putting more money into apprenticeships.

"Opportunity isn't equally distributed and the objective of levelling up is to work with great people in West Yorkshire, in Batley, to give young people growing up in the area the chances they deserve."

Of course, the Tories have no intention of doing anything of the sort - can anybody point to any single 'levelling up' measure they have implemented since December 2019? - but the propaganda seems to be working for now. And if they win, they won't need to worry about voters trying to nudge the government in any particular direction, they can just cheerfully ignore them and continue plundering the taxpayer.

Yeah, Sure

From the BBC

The way of life of a secluded community of nuns would be "devastated" if new homes planned nearby get the go-ahead, a council leader says.

Malling Abbey in West Malling, Kent, which was founded in 1060, is home to an order of up to 15 Benedictine nuns.

We can add penguins to newts and bats in the protected species lists that NIMBYs will use to prevent any new building.

Rev David Green, vicar of nearby St Mary's Church, said: "Their whole way of life is built around isolated prayer and peace and quiet."

...

Trudy Dean, chairman of West Malling Parish Council, said: "The whole community has come together to support the nuns against this highly intrusive plan."

Mrs Dean, who also sits on Kent County Council and Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council, said: "If the sisters cannot carry on their work, we risk them quitting the site.

So? If their way of life is built around isolated prayer, why is anyone going to miss them?

Seems to me that people who want to live in isolation would be just as happy in mid-Wales or rural Wiltshire. Sell up, sisters, pocket the cash and move somewhere really quiet.

Killer Arguments Against LVT, Not (431)

Arch-Tory/NIMBY Nicholas Clarke on Twitter @drmagwai

And what you fail to mention is that lvt only works properly when all land is already developed. Do we want the UK to become a mega city?

This is the sort of baseless crap that we have to deal with.

I remember that Sobers (I think it was him) once advanced the argument that LVT would only work for an agricultural economy, also without justification or explanation.

As per usual, we are presented with two baseless arguments which cancel each other out.

Let's take a breath and do facts and logic:

1. Most of the UK by surface area is 'developed'. Up to one-tenth is actually built on (incl. roads, reservoirs, back gardens etc) and most of the rest has been 'developed' or adapted for farming and some bits have been kept close to pristine for tourism, leisure, wildlife etc.

2. Even if both arguments, taken in isolation had some validity (which they don't), then it would be quite easy to split up the UK (or any similar country) into two regions - the urban bits (where LVT would work properly, even by Nimby Clarke's own admission) and the remaining rural area (where LVT would work fine by Sobers' admission).

3. The UK is not going to become a mega city any time soon - with or without LVT - it would require a twenty-fold increase in population to about one billion to make it worthwhile. So that is the stupidest rhetorical question of the day.

"Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn'd"

From The Daily Mail:

A farmer who wants to give travellers her land for free because she hates her neighbours was confronted by irate locals today and told: 'We are not up our own a****'...

Mrs Watson made her controversial offer after a local council turned down her application to building temporary accommodation for stable workers on her two and a half acre plot.

She insists that travellers would have better luck making a similar planning application.

Today she said she had been 'flooded' with requests from travellers who wanted to take her up on her offer of buying the plot which she says is worth around £350,000.

One suspects that the new building really would only have been 'temporary accommodation for stable workers' for a year or two, after which it would be sold as a normal house, but so what?

Sadly, the article does not tell us what a typical house would cost in the village. Her plot would be worth £350,000 if she had planning for a couple of houses, but she doesn't.

NIMBYs Of The Week

From yesterday's Evening Standard

Residents in the exclusive and elegant neighbourhood of Holland Park say they would be reduced to living in “Third World conditions” if a proposed housing development goes ahead.

Oh! Is the proposed development going to be housing for refugees and asylum seekers..? Nope.

Opponents of developer Christian Candy’s plans to build luxury apartments in an area famed for its grand double-fronted mansions say local traffic congestion already makes the area seem like a “war zone” — and construction work would make it worse.

Ah, they're complaining about a period of heavier than normal traffic, something which is part and parcel of living in London.

... residents including Queen guitarist Brian May have objected to the developer’s traffic management plan.

This reveals that there could be up to 80 lorry visits a day to and from the construction site during the busiest period of work and 32,500 over two-and-a-half years.

An additional vehicle going past every ten or fifteen minutes, would you even notice it?

And didn't Mr B May used to play at concerts attended by tens of thousands, each generating thousands of extra vehicle movements in small areas?

One neighbour said: “The pollution is so bad that I cover my mouth every morning when walking to the Tube. It’s unacceptable that residents need to worry about their health in the heart of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. We will soon be living in Third World conditions.”

Sell up, cash in a few million quid unearned land price gains and move somewhere else then.

Jon Bradley said the nearby junction was already a “war zone”, and Ross Yealland added: “This plan will bring us local residents three years of hell — from life-reducing air quality to nightmare traffic from thousands of individual lorry movements.”

Third world conditions, war zone, hell, nightmare. Do these people have no sense of perspective?

NIMBY's of the week...

Other than to say this was a screenshot taken from this video, I've really nothing to add to this one...

Local politics: the huge differences between the Greens and the Conservatives

From their local election leaflets:

GREENS DEFEND GREEN BELT

Councillor Steven Neville has won a concession as a result of the Green Belt Review, which is part of Epping Forest District Council's new Local Plan for Epping Forest.

Buckhurst Hill will now be classed as a large village rather than a town, which gives extra protection for our Green Belt.

And from the Conservatives' leaflet:

Until recently I was chairman of the panel which scrutinised developing our Local Plan and I will continue to ensure that Buckhurst Hill and our Chigwell neighbours receive the best deal possible in any local plan development.

Along with local residents, I spoke directly with the District Councillor in charge of Planning in Epping Forest District, arguing that Buckhurst Hill must not become a town but should remain classified as a village.

I chucked away the Lib Dem leaflet, but I wouldn't be surprised if it had said something similar. And as a matter of fact, Buckhurst Hill is neither a village nor a town, it is a commuter suburb.

Interesting articles which people have emailed me.

Random sent this from The Independent:

A ban on super-strength kettles has been put on hold amid fears that it could drive Britain to leave the EU, it has been reported.

The European Commission had been planning a number of measures to ban high energy appliances for environmental reasons. However it has now quietly shelved the ban due to concerns that backlash in Britain could drive the country towards a Brexit.

Sounds plausible, actually. So they'll wait until after the referendum and then do it.
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SG sent this from The Guardian:

A Silicon Valley venture capitalist whose net worth is greater than $1bn is asking the state of California to pay him $30m to restore public access to a beloved beach – sparking fresh outrage in a lengthy legal battle over coastal lands.

That's outrageous, how can the government sell off the public access in the first place? In English land law, if there is a public right of way, then the owner and all subsequent owners are stuck with it (it comes off the price when you buy).

MBK sent in this from The Telegraph:

A couple were shocked to discover their farm cottage is set to be surrounded by a 700-home estate - despite not being consulted when developers first applied for planning permission.

Cheryle Walton and her partner Paul Jones were unaware of plans to build the "mini town" until a passer-by mentioned the development. But the 507,500-square metre development in Chippenham, Wiltshire, is set to encompass their detached cottage, which currently sits in miles of fields.

Miles of fields, my arse. A quick search on Google Maps tells us that their house is in the wedge of fields (top left hand corner, opposite Wavin Plastics), which is pretty much the most obvious place to build new housing (unless the village/town is so big that it ought to be earmarked as a public park/woodland). (It is easy to find - the River Avon makes a distinctive bend on the plan in the Telegraph article which is easily identified on Google Maps).

So they must have known it would happen sooner or later (or be subject to a CPO to open up the park). Top tip, if you don't like change, buy a house in a built up area where not much more is going to happen or one which really is miles from anywhere.

Fun with numbers: Building on greenbelt land has soared over five years

From the BBC:

The number of new homes being approved on greenbelt land in England has increased five-fold in the last five years, according to figures obtained by the BBC...

Shock! Horror!

In 2009-10 planning permission was granted for 2,258 homes, while in 2014-15 the figure rose to 11,977... England has 14 green belts, covering 13% of total land.

(Remember that the UK is 10% developed and 90% farmland, forests, waterways etc, some of which counts as "greenbelt".)

In other words, we could build a whole additional country on the greenbelt, another 27 million homes with roads, factories, shops, schools etc to match and still have some left over.

At this rate, it would take over 2,000 years (27 million homes divided by 11,977 homes) to do this and we still wouldn't have filled up that small part of undeveloped land designated quite arbitrarily as greenbelt.

So I'm not losing any sleep over this just yet.

NIMBYs Of The Week

Nominated by Steven L.

From Chronicle Live:

Up to 120 residents at Morpeth came out to show their opposition to plans for 280 new homes, a hotel, restaurant and road side services on the edge of the town.

The demonstration took place ahead of a meeting at which town councillors agreed to object to the application, on the basis that the site is outside Morpeth’s settlement boundary and has not been identified for development in a number of plans.

Irene Jones, a member of the Morpeth Northern Residents Action Group which organised the protest, said turnout had been “tremendous… I think it was a show of support for the neighbourhood plan because this development is obviously outside the neighbourhood plan, they do not want to see a commercial area outside the established town.

“They do not want to see a severe impact visually because it is outside the settlement boundary. There is the potential for severe environmental impact both for people and wildlife. She added there is concern over how services including schools would cope."

The development, on a 36-hectare site west of Lancaster Park close to the A1 and north west of Morpeth, would also include a new countryside park.

That's a pleasant surprise.

From the BBC:

A British Social Attitudes survey published by the government last week suggests that most people in England (56%) are now supportive of house building in their local area, up from 28% in 2010.

The proportion of people who say they are opposed to new homes in their neighbourhood has fallen from 46% in 2010 to 21% in 2014.

Gimme Shelter

From The Daily Mail and/or Metrolyrics:

Yeah, a local business is threatening
My very life today
If the planners don't turn them down
Ooh yeah, I'm gonna fade away

The planned new café, children, is just two miles away
Is just two miles away
The planned café, children, is just two miles away
Is just two miles away, miles away, miles away, yeah

NIMBY's warped view of the role of government

From yesterday's FT letters:

Sir, Your leading article of December 29 (“Britain has nothing to fear but its politicians”) describes one of the greatest threats to Britain’s prosperity as “a dysfunctional planning system, held hostage by local politics”.

This statement gives depressingly little weight to the importance of local democracy. Individual communities should surely not have infrastructure projects forced upon them without sufficient debate and discussion to ensure that any sacrifice in the quality of life they may be asked to make can be properly weighed against any gains to the nation as a whole...

The Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, London SW1.

Dude, WTF?

Whether you are a large state authoritarian socialist or a small state libertarian with some modicum of intellectual honesty, the ONLY consideration is whether what the government does or desists from doing benefits the nation as a whole.

Of course, the "individual community" is part of the nation and their net gain or loss from any infrastructure goes into the overall cost-benefit analysis, but does not merit a higher weighting than that.

e.g. cash cost of Project X is £10, paid equally by all taxpayers and notional cost to (loss of amenity) "individual community" is £1. Total cost £11. If the benefit of Project X to the "nation as a whole" is > £11 + margin of error, it goes ahead, if < £11 + margin of error, it doesn't. Let's say the gross benefit is £15, so the net benefit is £4. It would be insanity to argue that the amenity cost of £1 trumps the £4 overall benefit.
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Of course, working out costs and benefits is a matter of judgment. Let's assume that rabid anti-smoking killjoyrs control the local council. They decide to employ a Tobacco Control Officer for £22,000 a year to patrol the high street and ask people to stub it out.

The money nets off, one man wins £22,000 and the community as a whole has to pay £22,000 (plus deadweight losses). That is a benefit to the new TCO and a cost to everybody else. Then there is the more difficult question of the value of smokers' rights to smoke and the value of non-smoker's rights to not ever see people smoking; whether there is a positive or negative impact on shopper numbers etc.

But then a more enlightened council takes over and it is established that the overall costs outweigh the benefits and so the council intends to sack the TCO.

If we allow the TCO to apply NIMBY non-logic, we end up with this:

Individual council employees should surely not have council decisions forced upon them without sufficient debate and discussion to ensure that any sacrifice in earnings they may be asked to make can be properly weighed against any cost savings to the local rate payers...

NIMBY Bullshit Of The Week

From The Evening Standard:

Our green belt is the envy of the world (1); it is a green lung,(2) provides space for recreation(3) and is a check against unsustainable urban sprawl(4). Once it is paved over, it is gone for ever...(5)

Nicky Gavron (Lab), chair, London Assembly Planning Committee (6)

FFS.

1) In my line of work and daily life, I meet a disportionate number of people from abroad, and I sometimes ask them what drew them to England.

There's a fairly short list of answers, and never, ever, ever, has any of them ever mentioned The Hallowed Green Belt. Ever. And as we know, most tourists from abroad visit London, and if not, then Oxford or Cambridge or something.

2) That's a terrible Americanism, and "green lung" refers to an area of natural parkland within an urban region. Woodhouse Moor in Leeds, Platt Fields Park/Birchfields Park in Manchester etc. It does not refer to "farmland". Urban parks are worth their weight in gold*, but I'm not aware that parks like this are unusual to the UK.

3) 99% of "green belt" is private farmland around towns and cities, which does not provide a single square inch of space for recreation. Ag land owners wage their own private war on the ramblers.

4) People gotta live somewhere. If they live in smaller towns out in the countryside, then they just commute longer distances and are less likely to use public transport.

5) Once you've eaten some carrots, they are gone for ever. Use a litre of petrol and it's gone forever. But well built new housing will effectively last forever (centuries) and the land under them really will last forever. And the land is not "gone", it's just being used for a higher value purpose. For ever.

6) Were she a Tory MP or councillor from the stockbroker belt wanting the maintain the scarcity value of her constituents' homes, fair enough, but this woman is supposed to be on the people's side.

* Not literally, obviously.

Public and private sector residential construction

We have now established beyond reasonable doubt that the so-called home builders, Barratts, Taylor Wimpey and the like are nothing of the sort, see e.g. here and here.

The construction is carried out by subcontractors and Barratts et al are a cartel of land bankers who dribble a few new homes onto the market each year in order to realise part of the value of their "investment portfolio" (as Taylor Wimpey describe their land bank) without depressing its overall value.

The official stat's for completions in public and private sectors show that private sector completions have averaged 167,000 a year since 1960 (once austerity had ended and the economy was going again); and until Thatcher more or less shut down construction in the public sector in 1980, an average of 167,000 new units of social housing were built.

It's actually difficult to pin down the role of NIMBYs in all this (as despicable as their motives usually are); they are clearly behind the fall in construction of social housing, and the biggest cheerleaders for selling it off at huge discounts, but it's doubtful whether they have any influence on how many homes the land bankers dribble onto the market.

Interesting Article About San Francisco, Tech Startups and Rampant NIMBYism

The interesting thing that affects all cities in this piece is about how people are getting married later, which means they stay in cities longer, which hadn't occurred to me before.

But reading this, I can't help but think that tech companies will start finding somewhere else to base themselves soon.

How Burrowing Owls Lead To Vomiting Anarchists (Or SF’s Housing Crisis Explained)

Why there are so few tourists in central London, Rome & Bruges

Via Khards at HPC, from The Oxford Mail:

The medieval centre of Oxford itself is incapable of satisfactorily supporting a larger city and the tourist income which is so important relies on the city’s setting which the green belt protects.

The penny has dropped... that's why you don't see any tourists in London, Rome, Bruges or places like that because they don't have a Hallowed Green Belt. Munich is also pretty much a tourist-free zone, as is New York City etc.

The ultimate kick in the teeth is in the title:

"It is vital we protect green belts for future generations"

It's not much fucking good to them if they can't afford to live anywhere near it. Where is the logic here, "I'm sorry you can't afford a house, but if you could afford one, then at least it would have a nice view"?

Between some rocks and a hard place.

From The Western Daily Press:

A plan to build thousands of new homes for soldiers returning from Germany could have to be changed – because they will be built on the horizon where the sun rises on summer solstice at Stonehenge.

The Ministry of Defence said they were ‘aware of the issues’ and were organising a meeting with experts on the stones.

Last night there were growing calls for the particular site, on a 100-year-old airfield at Larkhill in Wiltshire, to be discounted from the plans to house 4,000 soldiers and their families returning from bases in Germany.

Yes of course, it would be cultural vandalism to actually block the sunrise, but we can safely assume that Homeys in that area would violently oppose any new homes being built within miles of anywhere. But in principle, why not build a lot more homes a respectful distance away from Stonehenge?

A good counter-example springs to mind here:

What is so pleasantly surprising about Rome is that ancient Roman structures are dotted among what is otherwise a perfectly normal large European/Mediterranean city. And it must be nice to live in a flat or work in an office from which you can see the Pantheon, the Colosseum or whatever charming little jumble of excavated ruins happens to be just off a busy roundabout.

These things were built in the centre of their civilisation, just as Stonehenge was. The Roman ruins are still in the centre and you'll happily interrupt your journey to spend ten minutes having a nose round, but Stonehenge is just a sorry little bunch of rocks a few hundred yards off the A303. Some motorists might make an impromptu break and go and have a look but most drive straight past.

My delight at seeing these random bits of old Roman stonework (which might all be faked, I'm no archaeologist) were in no way diminished by the fact that thousands of people pass them every hour of the day; even if Stonehenge (which in turn was re-assembled during the 19th and 20th centuries on the basis of good guesswork) ended up in the middle of a large park in the middle of a medium sized town, people would still visit it, wouldn't they? In fact, probably more people would visit it.

Nice Bit of Nimbyism in the Caring Sharing Guardian

From the Guardian:

Of course, we need more housing in this country. But our ward is already the most densely populated in Barnet, and there has to be a limit. Few would accept a skyscraper in the middle of a country lane.

This isn't as bad as that, of course, but at three-and-a-half times the size of the previous building, it's just too big. Some people will call us nimbys – but who else would ever notice? To discredit somebody just because they live nearby and would be adversely affected is to say: anything goes.

It's already the most densely populated in Barnet because it's the bit of Barnet that's the nearest to London (I've worked out where it is on a map). It's the bit of Barnet that is within 35 minutes of Kings Cross, whereas the bit where my Great Aunt lived is 55 minutes away. And most people would much rather commute 35 than 55 minutes. And if you've got a bit of it that's now redundant in the 35 minute zone (like a Vicarage), you build on it rather than the bit that's 55 minutes away.

This is the problem for all NIMBYs. They want the benefits that come with a place - short journey to work, lovely views of the countryside, but get rather upset when other people try to gain those same benefits, especially if it means losing something that they think they're entitled to (but have no rights over).

Read the rest if you like. It's full of authentic NIMBY gibberish about the habitat of owls and newts.

"How the railways will tear up rural England"

From The Telegraph, 20 July 1813:

More than 1,000 of Britain’s most important wildlife habitats and dozens of ancient woodlands will be directly affected by the proposals to lay down 8,000 miles of track between England's towns and cities.

Official documents also disclose that tens of thousands of acres of valuable farm land - already scarred beyond recognition with canals and cart tracks - will be lost and more than 1,000 buildings are to be demolished.

Conservationists and other campaigners reacted angrily to the figures, which were buried in a mass of Railway Acts passed without fanfare by Parliament.

They are the fullest assessment of the environmental impact of the newfangled 'steam locomotives'. Until now only the impact of the first railway using these contraptions, from Pen-y-darren ironworks to Abercynon, had been fully detailed.

The railways are backed by both Houses of Parliament, with Lord Liverpool, the Prime Minister, and other senior Cabinet ministers arguing that railways suitable for steam locomotives will transform Britain’s “economic geography”.