by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
One of the UK's newspapers of January, 11, 2012 has been reporting that the Planning Minister has apparently accused councils of ‘dragging their feet’ over giving up green land for development, an issue which he described as a ‘generational crisis’.
The minister suggested that those opposing development were being hypocritical, saying: ‘Everybody who’s writing in to object to new houses being built on green field land themselves is occupying a building that was once a piece of green field land.’
He then made it clear that ministers will bring in further sweeping changes to the planning system if the level of house-building does not increase sharply.
Previously the minister has suggested that up to 2million acres of green fields may have to be sacrificed to meet the supposed housing shortage. He seems to have failed to comment upon the estimated 850,000 houses currently standing empty, and those are just the homes that are, actually, on the “empty homes” list.
Let's not even count those, such as the thousands of empty homes on the Ocean Estate in Stepney (London), an estate that has been standing empty, bar some squatters, for many years now as it was, supposedly, redeveloped. And we alsoo don't even want to consider the homes that are being destroyed by the fact that the Robin Hood Estate in Poplar (London) is to be demolished to make way for expensive offices and houses for the rich in the Docklands.
The government and the Planning Minister are rater very disingenuous when it comes to the claims that we need more new homes. What we need is to refurbish those existing empty ones and then there will be homes enough with many to spare even.
The minister also went on to suggest that the Government would encourage proposals for a string of new towns in southern England along the 120-mile route of the planned High Speed 2 rail line from London to Birmingham, which is already destined to destroy hundreds of acres of countryside, including ancient woodland.
Do we really need any more new towns down here in the south of England? The answer is an absolute no. In fact there are so many empty tracts of housing in many counties of England that, if encouragement would just be given and infrastructure created, could be occupied once more and people could work there and from there (at home).
Personally, I think that it is an abomination that his party have the cheek to use a tree as their emblem – a thick wad of cash would be a better one!
The Cameron-Clegg regime claimed to be the greenest government even in the UK but the only green color that they are concerned with is that of money.
Even Thatcher in her heydays would never have considered destroying the British countryside and the Green Belt in the way it is being proposed by this regime. I guess many brown envelopes have been passed their way by the developers and house building companies such as Wimpy, Barrats and others.
We do not need a new government, we need a new system...
© 2013
