On Whose Side?

Population Matters Magazine, in its current issue, includes an article by Ian Grace, described as a professional planning officer with more than 30 years’ planning experience.  It’s always good fun to watch when someone inside the system breaks ranks.  The article makes points that are well worth extracting:

“…If you want to house 100,000 people, you will need to build 56,000 housing units.  To do this you will need to allocate 3,700 acres of land for housing.  This population will also need land for schools, work places, shops etc., gobbling up more countryside.

The British public are becoming increasingly hostile to such provision.  The Saint Index measures public attitudes towards new development.  Their findings indicate that about 85% of the adult population are strongly opposed to further development in their area.  In addition, the Saint Index suggests that a growth based agenda, such as that favoured by the Prime Minister and most senior British politicians, is actively supported by only 6% of the population!

There is a tendency to think of population growth as a third world problem.  However, when I was born in 1959, Britain’s population stood at 51 million.  It is now 62 million and by the time I pass on it is likely to stand at 72 million.  This is a 40% increase in our national population in one lifetime.  Such a rate of population growth is very significant and, in my view, totally unsustainable, and yet our government, purportedly dedicated to sustainable development, has no opinion on the subject – other than that we must provide for it…  As a result, every town and large village in southern England is currently besieged by speculative housing proposals – many of which are likely to be approved.

Most of these proposals are met with ferocious local opposition from residents and their elected representatives.  MPs, in particular, line up with the opposition and refuse to acknowledge that many of the unpopular developments in their constituencies are merely the result of policies which they voted for in Parliament.”

That’s the problem.  MPs from the London parties don’t do as we tell them but instead submit to the party whip and hope we’ll never notice the betrayal.  And that’s why they need to be replaced, by those who love Wessex and the truth, not lies and lucre.

The same magazine also includes a letter from Barrie Skelcher pointing out that restrictions on housing development around nuclear power sites, in place since the 1960s, have now been abandoned.  They really are that determined to cram them in.