Let then eat cake says Dame Helen Ghosh

michaels

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-27007451

National Trust says:
No to building new houses...and if you really have to then put them on old brownfield sites only
Councils can not be expected to make a plan for new houses in only 10 years
Everyone should be protected from flooding whatever the cost

...and while we are at it there is a presumption that producing gas so people can heat their homes more cheaply should be banned.

Graham_Devon

You can bet your bottom dollar she lives in a plush home, in the middle of what would be designated greenbelt land and an area of natural beauty.

Very much doubt her pad is on a brownfield site.

ruggedtoast

The astonishing hypocrisy of the NIMBY strikes again. Houses placed on countryside is evil, but not when it comes to the house they actually live in.

Graham_Devon

ruggedtoast wrote: »

The astonishing hypocrisy of the NIMBY strikes again. Houses placed on countryside is evil, but not when it comes to the house they actually live in.

I find it most amusing that the same groups who appose housing (and usually get the plans shut down) then go on to campaign to keep their local post office open.

The only reason it's being sut down is through lack of use.

Up they pop on the local news, trying their best to avoid the plum in their mouth and talk as best they can, describing the audacity of shutting local services down. Yet you'll see them a couple of months later popping open the champagne after they have succesfully thwarted 200 new houses....200 potential customers for the post office....

Though to be fair, they'd probably prefer the post office shut down than having to share the service with "those types".

mystic_trev

The stupid bints never had a proper job, and no one cares what she thinks. She's acting like a spoilt child who just wants to be controversial and get noticed. The Government should tell her to Frack off!

Fella

I don't know Helen Ghosh so I just went to google her. However after I'd typed Helen, Google auto-suggested Flanagan, & then I got distracted.

ruggedtoast

mystic_trev wrote: »

The stupid bints never had a proper job, and no one cares what she thinks. She's acting like a spoilt child who just wants to be controversial and get noticed. The Government should tell her to Frack off!

They'll be fracking in her neck of the woods soon and then she'll be chaining herself to a bulldozer.

purch

Graham_Devon wrote: »

You can bet your bottom dollar she lives in a plush home, in the middle of what would be designated greenbelt land and an area of natural beauty.

Very much doubt her pad is on a brownfield site.

It's a good job you don't have too many Dollars Gra

She actually lives in Oxford, quite close to the centre, which whilst being extremely beautiful is actually a City, and certainly not greenbelt.

ruggedtoast wrote: »

The astonishing hypocrisy of the NIMBY strikes again. Houses placed on countryside is evil, but not when it comes to the house they actually live in.

Well done.:T:

mayonnaise

Graham_Devon wrote: »

You can bet your bottom dollar she lives in a plush home

ruggedtoast wrote: »

The astonishing hypocrisy of the NIMBY strikes again

mystic_trev wrote: »

The stupid bints never had a proper job, and no one cares what she thinks

Wow. So much froth.
All she said was that pressure was being put on councils to build on greenfield sites, while an alternative brownfield site might be available.

"We are very concerned that the haste with which local authorities - some of them ill-prepared to do so - have been hustled into producing their local plans, and the pressure they're under to produce the number of houses has forced them, in some cases, to designate greenfield sites"

Sounds reasonable.

On flood defences, she said that the comments by Lord Smith, who presented flood defence priorities as:

But this involves tricky issues of policy and priority: town or country, front rooms or farmland?

as too much black & white.

And on fracking she says no to fracking on NT land. Good.

The NT's motto is : "For ever, for everyone"
For everyone. Not just for the frothers who want a cheap house on the back of large scale destruction of our countryside. Well done, Dame Ghosh. I'll be renewing my membership, that's for sure.

michaels

So flood defences we need to 'consider the evidence' but for fracking the answer is 'never' - sounds pretty open minded to me.

princeofpounds

She doesn't have to agree to fracking on NT land, that's fine. Many NT sites are historical and whilst fracking would cause minimal long-term impact (similar perhaps to building a large car park or cafe on an NT site hmmmm....), there are preservation arguments.

But to seek to preserve the entire British countryside in aspic, as if it were all one great NT museum, is just staggeringly selfish. And probably well beyond the proper charitable purpose of the National Trust (in a similar way Amnesty moved from being a prisoner of conscience charity to a semi-political organisation).

Local councils have had years and year to do local plans. The only reason so many are now rushing to complete them is that they can finally stop using it as an excuse to block development.

I was reading a very funny planning application response the other day from a parish council, who were objecting to a development on the basis that 'the developer could not possibly comply with our local plan'. The reason? It doesn't exist yet, beyond some half-baked draft they rushed to complete in the last few months.

What Dame Helen and the other NIMBYs are failing to realise is that by swaddling the system in obstructive bureaucracy and denying the housing needs of the younger generation, they are building up resentment that is ultimately going to prove counter-productive.

I wish brownfield sites were the solution, but the fact is that if you ever manage to get hold of one, it's nearly as impossible to increase the density there either due to planning rules. Most sites must be 'in keeping' with their local area, which in practical terms means nothing much ever changes.