One has no need for slug pellets...

For a while now I've considered Price Charles the ultimate homeownerist.  Not content with vigorously opposing anyone building anything in London tall enough to peer into one of his many back gardens, or simply objecting to tall buildings in general, he actually heads a homeownerist front organisation with the raison d'être of reverting other people's farms back into worthless medieval swamps.  

So this morning over coffee I read the serialisation of Tom Bower's hatchet job in the Mail Online.  I don't know if they are true.  But if they are, I think these two quote sum up the wasteful, economic madness of homeownerism nicely:

"With a personal income of millions from the Duchy of Cornwall (£16.3 million in 2007 alone) he could afford to indulge his slightest whim — yet even that didn’t satisfy him."

"He was also unusually particular about his gardens at Highgrove. Because he refused to use pesticides, he employed four gardeners who would lie, nose-down, on a trailer pulled by a slow-moving Land Rover to pluck out weeds.  In addition, retired Indian servicemen were deployed to prowl through the undergrowth at night with torches and handpick slugs from the leaves of plants."

How can we rid ourselves of these people?

Oops! Redwood lets slip flagship tory economic policy...

...over at his blog, the Rt Hon. John Redwood MP has been busy deflecting criticism on his post about UK productivity.

A few of his pesky readers have been pointing out that the UK runs a big trade deficit and questioning the sustainability of borrowing (public and privately) circa 10% of GDP to keep the party going.

When a fed up sounding JR snaps back to 'Ken Moore'

"[Running a trade deficit year on year] has proved to be sustainable as many people wish to invest in the UK or buy assets here. Germany sells rich people expensive cars they do not need, and the UK sells them expensive flats so they can have additional homes."

And that's it in a nutshell, the UK exports its land (and rents) so people like John Redwood can swan about in expensive motors.  This isn't just coincidence, it is actually an economic policy.

Don't let the Door Hit You on The Way Out

From the Independent

Comedian and TV presenter Griff Rhys Jones will “probably” move abroad and buy a “massive palace” if Labour wins the next general election, he has said.

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Jones, 61, said Labour’s plans to introduce a “mansion tax” on the super-rich would hit him hard as he currently lives in a “gigantic” house in Fitzrovia, London.

He bought the property about 15 years ago when it was a “slum”, he said, and spent the next few years doing it up.

I'm sure Mark already has a classification for these people to go with the poor widows, something like the "restoration justifiers" (someone come up with another name), people who try to pretend that the reasons their homes rose in value is that they got the plasterers and decorators in.

Jones, famous for BBC comedy show Alas Smith and Jones in the 1980s and 1990s and for the Three Men in a Boat series with Dara Ó Briain and Rory McGrath more recently, said he might leave the UK if Ed Miliband led the Labour party to power.

“It would mean I’d be paying the most colossal tax, which is aimed at foreigners who have apparently come in and bought up all the property in London. That sounds about as fatuous an idea as that immigrants are stealing all the jobs,” he said.

Well, no, it's not aimed at that. It's aimed at people who have seen a rise in house prices as a result of a windfall.

“I’d probably live abroad because I could get some massive palace which I could restore.”

Good. Clear off, then. Would anyone miss Griff Rhys Jones at this point? What does he do nowadays? Stands in front of an autocue for that BBC restoration show. Plenty of people who can do the same job.

Saving the Fields of Old England

Andrew Motion in the Guardian

Today is the centenary of Laurie Lee's birth and a fitting moment to reflect on Cider with Rosie's evocation of an England "which saw, by chance, the end of a thousand years' life". Today, many feel the gigantic upheaval he witnessed is being followed by another, which is producing the biggest changes to the countryside within our living memories.

It is a defining moment, crystallised by a threat that faces Lee's countryside. Even as I write this, government planning inspectors are deciding whether to allow developers to build a housing estate in the green fields of the Slad Valley where the book was set. This is despite the local council's rejection of the plans. Similar things are happening all over the country.

That's precisely why the government have to intervene. Because "similar things" means no-one builds housing. It's a tragedy of the commons problem.

David Cameron recently visited the valley and said he understood the book's "wonderful links with this very special part of the world". But on the subject of the proposed development, the prime minister observed: "New houses have to be built so we have to make choices about where they will go."

He is right: there is a choice. We need to build more homes, but our politicians are failing to show the vision and ambition of their predecessors – the men and women who acted to protect our commons, national parks, green belts and footpaths.

Because their predecessors weren't faced with development hitting the problem of green belts. Oxford has pretty much expanded to the edge of its greenbelt. It's why Mini are recruiting in Swindon for staff to commute to Cowley (it would make more sense to move the Mini plant to Swindon, but that's another story).

I understand that MPs are inevitably pulled towards the immediate wishes of voters concerned about economic growth. But politicians have always been beset by day-to-day challenges, not least the postwar governments, which faced huge problems of reconstruction but still managed to introduce protection for landscapes, nature and heritage.

That's just hilarious. Post-war planning almost entirely ignored heritage and nature. There's all sorts of buildings from the 1960s and 1970s that got thrown up with almost no consideration of how they fitted into the existing aesthetic. Old buildings were knocked down to make way for a new golden era of Le Corbusier influenced eyesores (some of which are now protected, you monsters).

We need to recapture some of that inclusive, progressive and enlightened thinking. It's not an alternative to sound economic and social policy; rather, it can be the foundation of such things.

Our democratic, locally led planning system was part of the great postwar settlement for the countryside – together with national parks and green belts – but it has been steadily eroded by recent governments. To address the problems the country faces, we will need more land-use planning, not less.

Bollocks. It's been steadily eroded by homeownerism. When people were pro- building houses, you could leave it up to local democracy. If you travel to some of the large villages that I knew as a boy, you can look at the architectural styles and see that there was a massive amount of building from the 60s to the 80s, followed by the odd tiny development since. More land-use planning would make things even worse.

There are enough brownfield sites in England to accommodate 1.5m homes close to jobs, services and infrastructure. We must make these homes affordable, without compromising on quality.

Developing disused sites will both improve our towns and cities, and help us safeguard the countryside. This matters. Contact with the natural world is not just a pleasure, it's a necessity, and a part of what makes us who we are.

Governments are already in favour of this. This is current policy, started by Prescott. Stop pretending that this isn't current policy.

Englishness is tricky to define, not least because it tends to shun large gestures and rhetorical flourishes. But traditional attitudes, such as pride in our countryside, exist in a wonderful, big melting pot of Englishness, together with our pride in absorbing new cultures and our refusal to make Englishness an issue of race or birthplace.

Satish Kumar, Benjamin Zephaniah, Marina Lewycka and Anish Kapoor have all signed the Campaign to Protect Rural England's "save our countryside" charter. But too many politicians lack the courage to stand up for the countryside. That is a shame.

Brown people like the countryside, too. Who knew?

As we approach the general election next May, we should also give thought to the big, over-arching questions. How do we want to live? What sort of country do we want to live in? We should be thinking of houses as homes not investments, of other marks of national progress than mere economic growth, and of the importance to everyone's life of beauty and wellbeing.

Indeed. So, why is the CPRE against building, when this would help to destroy investments and give more people homes? Why is it in favour of sticking VAT on building which will kill off new builds and only having LVT on unused sites? If you want to reduce building, you'd introduce LVT which would encourage people to move away from the south of England and to cheaper bits of the country where there's plenty of land.

Conservationist Homeys

From Paul Cheshire at the LSE

One might argue that among the culprits, the conservation groups themselves have inadvertently played a leading role in getting us in to this mess. We desperately need land for housing. Thanks in large part to the misguided campaigns of conservation groups our planning system has been systematically not providing such land for two generations, pushing house prices and rents beyond the reach of young people.

Why does this mean that conservation groups share in the blame? Because not only have they been the most vocal and influential lobbyists against relaxing the planning restrictions on land release by one iota, but they have enthusiastically supported ‘building on brownfields’. Apart from being no solution to the housing land crisis, brownfield land is very frequently amenity-rich. The tragic irony is that the nightingales chose to breed on ex-MoD land (the Lodge Hill site on Medway’s HooPeninsula). So it is exactly the type of land the National Trusts and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) favour for development.
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The homies don't want any building anywhere, which is why they keep screaming "brownfield sites". They know the remaining brownfield won't be built on because it's not viable, but by pretending there's lots of it available can also preserve the greenbelt land.

Dartmoor Homies

From Sarah Woolaston in the Guardian

A seismic change may be about to rock our national parks and other areas of outstanding natural beauty; and it is concealed within the technicalities of a proposal to grant landowners permitted development rights, without the need for planning permission. This would allow for up to three dwellings to replace or convert existing farm buildings.

If this addressed the desperate shortage of affordable housing in our national parks it would be worth considering. Sadly it is set to make a dire situation worse while destroying the landscape and a fragile rural economy.(1)

The average house price within the Dartmoor national park is in excess of £270,000; nine times the median local income and over sixteen times incomes in the lowest quartile. The chance of finding affordable rented accommodation is also grim, and the situation is forcing out young people and families with serious consequences for rural communities.(2)

An increase in housing supply will do nothing to reduce prices if it caters for an entirely different demand. The proposals would allow for new developments to be almost twice the guideline size for affordable housing.(3)(4) Rather than meeting a genuine need they would unleash a second and luxury homes bonanza, creating yet more ghost villages and hamlets inhabited only at weekends or in season.(5)

The impact of a free-for-all will be huge – not only because developers are likely to prefer to convert remaining heritage outbuildings, but because of the chilling effect this prospect is already having on schemes to build homes for local people.

Since the reduction in capital grants, the best mechanism for creating affordable housing has been through granting planning permission on so-called exception sites. Where the landowner knows there is no possibility of selling to developers at open market housing rates, affordable housing is cross-subsidised by a small percentage of open market value properties.(6)

But with the prospect of a free run at open market development with few strings attached, values are set to rise sharply and we will kiss goodbye to the only realistic opportunity for development land at prices that can deliver housing for local people.

Suburbanisation(7) of our national parks might also deliver the final coup de grace to their fragile ecosystems, already under pressure from changing grazing patterns over recent decades. While cattle and sheep make way for pony paddocks in lower lying areas, loss of grazing livestock from the open moor will lead to a further degradation from heather to gorse.(8) Who can blame them if hill farmers, asset rich and cash flow near zero, opt to fragment or sell their holdings and livestock. They have long struggled to maintain their way of life with scant recognition of their service to conserve this precious landscape on our behalf.(9)

The planning minister, Nick Boles, has been bold in his effort to build more housing. He has walked towards the nimby gunfire on behalf of the people he believes should have the opportunity to own their own home. I hope he will look again at the unintended consequences of the proposed changes and place the need for affordable housing above pressure from developers.(10)

When Lewis Silkin introduced the national parks and access to the countryside bill to parliament in 1949 he described it as a "people's charter for the open air". The open countryside of our national parks deserves our protection but also the living, breathing communities who conserve them for the future. We can build more homes for local people by supporting community land trusts and incentivising investment in genuinely affordable housing projects. The proposed measures, by further inflating land values(11), will kill off any hope for village housing initiatives and puts at risk some of the most beautiful landscapes in the country.

1. From what I can tell, the proposal is to build houses in farm buildings. It is going to add housing. Even if all that housing goes to 2nd home owners, how does it make the situation worse than it is now?
2. If people in Dartmoor need people doing jobs in Dartmoor, they should be paying them a lot more, then. If they don't then people will leave. Seems the market will resolve itself.
3. All housing is affordable. Yes, I know what she means, but it's a daft expression.
4. Bigger housing? That sounds like a good thing to me.
5. How? This is converting former farm buildings. Even if every one of them simply uses it as a 2nd home, it will not remove any people.
6. Eh? What's she saying here, that some land is too cheap for landowners to sell? But I thought that houses were selling for £270K?
7. I thought these were all going to be 2nd homes? Now they're suburban?
8. Fine. That's what nature wants it to be, let it happen.
9. Conserving the landscape? How is deliberately changing it, conserving it?
10. Who the hell does Sarah Woolaston thinks builds "affordable homes"?
11. Firstly, it might inflate some land values on those farms - they can now build houses on farm buildings, but how is that going inflate overall land values?
12. How? Someone is going to take a derelict old farm building and put a nice new building in its place. Isn't that going to make it better?

Of course, everyone likes to play the poor people bogie in this situation, but almost no-one works in the main bit of Dartmoor. There's the prison and the army stuff, and a few village shops and pubs, but it's not like there's a major industry up there. If you're born somewhere in or near the park, chances are you'll be looking for work in Exeter or Plymouth. For those people who do need to live in the park, you can buy homes in Okehampton for about £135K, which is hardly a long drive into the park.

The reality is that homes in national parks are very expensive because of the historic protection afforded to them, that no-one can build more homes near them. And this is well-off homies kicking off about the fact that expensive houses that they own are going to become cheaper in price as more housing stock is added.

Pinewood Studios

From the BBC

The famous film company Pinewood is to set up a new studio in Cardiff.

Pinewood Studios Wales will be based at the former Energy Centre building in Wentloog and will form part of the company's global network.

The deal was announced on Monday by First Minister Carwyn Jones and Pinewood Shepperton chief executive Ivan Dunleavy.

From the BBC (May 2013)

The rejection of a £200m expansion of Buckinghamshire's Pinewood Studios is "hard to believe" in the current economic climate, company bosses say.

The 15-year project for new studios, stages and streetscapes at the site in Iver Heath, was turned down by South Bucks District Council on Wednesday.

It ruled it was an "inappropriate" expansion into green belt land.

If you read both articles, they wanted to build 100,000 sq/m of studio in Buckinghamshire and now have 180,000 sq/m in Newport.

So Pinewood tried to expand where they were, the Homeys opposed it, so Pinewood decided to move a bit of the studio to Newport (not Cardiff) which is not so Homey.

They'll soon find they can operate cheaper out there at which point most of the rest of the studio will probably move.