I read today that the Government is determined to press ahead with planning reforms and the draft National Planning Policy Framework was published in July, with a "presumption in favour of sustainable growth".
The government’s proposals are little more than a Charter to turn the whole of the UK into a vast concrete island of endless Urban sprawl and Inner City Slums which will ultimately fail for exactly the same reasons that building new roads always fail to relieve traffic congestion – such roads only create far more traffic and simply increase traffic congestion.
Similarly, creating more “affordable” (cheap and nasty) housing is more stupid, self-defeating short-termism from politicians who lack the genuine political will to deal with the over-population crisis at its very roots so cynically seek to merely manage the symptoms instead by giving a “presumption” in favour of development.
Politicians always prefer the easy options and by giving developers yet more power to side-line local democracy and ignoring the wishes of local people they hope that they will never have to address the far more difficult questions about how many more people can be realistically crammed into our already stuffed Sardine can, how public services are to avoid collapse in the face of unprecedented demand and how to achieve economic growth that doesn’t involve over-populating an already over-congested, resource-drained, environmentally degraded little island (now the most densely populated country in Europe).
The politicians will never ever address these difficult questions until they are forced to by their constituents and systematic public pressure so please sign the following petition by the National Trust and please encourage as many people as you possibly can to do exactly the same thing:
http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-chl/w-countryside_environment/w-planning-landing.htm
Also write to your Local MP demanding that they vote against these proposals and do everything they possibly can to rigorously oppose them:
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/
Spread the word as far and as wide as possibly can and encourage others to do the same. If the government really wants to build new homes then they should concentrate all their resources on developing the 160,000 acres of Brown Field sites and deal with the 740,000 homes (a quarter of them in London and the South East) that remain empty in this country:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/sep/03/bill-bryson-countryside-planning-reforms
As with the Newbury Bypass - environmentalists and conservation groups are going to have to engage in Direct Action if we are going to protect the little that remains of England's Green and Pleasant Land - does anyone here have any suggestions on how this can be done especially in co-ordination with local campaigners who now face the threat of the developers bulldozer?
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