Although the Groan’s comment is free is usually nothing more than a leftwing bollockfest, from time to time there is a gem. This time it is Henry Porter explaining just what a malignant cancer is the Blair legacy in our society:
On page 46, the review says: ‘Citizens are asked to accept the gathering of greater levels of information and intelligence in the knowledge that this will facilitate improvements in public safety and law.’ Which is to say we must all expect to be under total surveillance from the cradle to the grave.
Any reasonable person who recalls the horror of the Soviet communist experiment will shudder upon reading those words. I for one have no intention of accepting any such thing. The state has no business prying into my private life and I will guard that privacy to the bitter end.
Ten years ago it was not obvious to me just what we had opened the door to. Perhaps I should have been more aware, but I was not alone in believing, naively perhaps, that we were heralding a new, brighter future. I certainly wasn’t expecting one that harked back to the Warsaw pact. Be careful of what you dream of, I suppose.
On another tack, yesterday evening when we were discussing the evil of Blair’s regime, my mother in law expressed concern about compulsory purchase of people’s gardens for development of housing stock. I was mildly sceptical and assumed that maybe she had misinterpreted a story as I had heard nothing and it did seem just a little far fetched.
Oh yes? What I had missed was something the Tories were bigging up late last summer:
Conservatives are launching a new national campaign to protect England’s gardens and suburban neighbourhoods from being concreted over and over-developed, and build more family homes rather than poky one-bedroom flats.
Then the bit that must have caught my mother in law’s eye:
Mrs Spelman continued, “worse could be to come, with even harsher planning regulations on the way and the prospect of compulsory purchase of gardens for ‘social’ purposes. And if they’re not going to build over your garden, Gordon Brown will tax it instead under his plans for a delayed, but still forthcoming, council tax revaluation.”
Joe Stalin would be proud of this lot.
Googling a little further, it seems that my mother in law was right; a sequence of government initiatives and re-designations over the years have led to what I can only presume are unexpected consequences. I am being generous in presuming that the unfolding nightmare scenario is a consequence of well intentioned incompetence rather than malign intent, but I could be wrong:
This government planning guidance encourages developers to buy up homes with large gardens, demolish them and either build blocks of flats or use the gardens for infilling. It is very difficult for councils or local groups to oppose such development, because it falls within government guidelines.
This is bad enough because as pointed out in the piece, it damages the micro environment, there is insufficient parking and it destroys the local ambiance. So understandably residents will not take kindly to it. However…
In a more sinister and draconian move, the Government has created a situation where it is even possible that householders could be forced to give up their gardens against their will. Under the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, local authorities and planning boards will be able to acquire land for development ‘if they think that it will facilitate the carrying out of development, redevelopment or improvement on or in relation to the land, on condition that such acquisition will be of economic, social or environmental benefit to the area.’ In plain English, if a local authority gives its support, a planner could compulsorily purchase any garden, although this has yet to happen.
No, it hasn’t happened… yet. But how long before an enterprising developer decides to utilise this loophole and householders find that instead of their carefully tended garden, they will be looking out onto “social housing”? Sounds like something from a soviet diktat.
Academics at the Cambridge University Centre for Urban Studies, who are working on Government-sponsored research, believe that gardens could be the key to solving Britain’s housing problems. They propose that back gardens over 30 metres – which is the average size for many Georgian terraces and modern semis – could be sold for new housing, and that this might have to be done ‘in the teeth of intense local opposition’.
“Intense local opposition”. An understatement, methinks. Maybe this is what is needed to mobilise Britain and throw these bastards out for good.