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A case study in why resisting reasonable development entirely can come back to bite you (if the developer ploy here works)? Work in the system to resist where you can, don't just pretend the system doesn't exist because you don't like it.

Council rejects 100 homes.

Developer wins appeal for 75 homes.

Developer then submits another 65 homes on the remaining land.

End result? Residents could get 140 homes instead of the original 100. Now they claim they’re being “picked on”.

https://nitter.poast.org/jakewg_/status/2063551764796752183#m

No sympathy for NIMBYs

What about local democracy?

Sadly I seem to repeat the same issue

we have the same population as France but 7 million fewer homes..

We've arrived at this point almost entirely by virtually unrestricted immigration and given the birth rate we could very easily shrink our population back again by making further immigration almost impossible.

That is a much better deal for almost everyone than continually concreting over the country to build horrible Barratt new builds without any accompanying infrastructure.

No more immigration, almost no more new housing, and in 15 years time housing will be affordable again. As a bonus, we can fill in the various holes in our labour force by redeployment of the people who are building houses to cope with immigration.

Here’s 170 you can redeploy already.

https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/170-jobs-lost-historic-gateshead-34087173

Where to start;

No one is building homes to cope with immigration, we aren’t building enough homes because not enough people can afford new ones. Largely flatlining wages after inflation , higher prices and supply and demand mean there are too few buyers who can afford them.

If we stop immigration the average age will be 45 in 2040 with far too few young people and a rapidly ageing population. Are the pensioners going to build their own houses.


In this scenario under sixteens would drop from 18% to 14%, the working population from 62% to 55% and the over 67’s would grow from about 19% to 29%…

So dependency would go from roughly 2:1 to close to 1:1.

Hey Presto not only no need for new houses with a collapsed economy no money to build them either!

Peter.

We've spent 25 years trying the approach of allowing mass immigration to increase the working age population in the face of what would otherwise be a natural decline and it has led to poor productivity growth, stagnant wages, inflated asset values and political instability. It's about time the people who advocated it learned to have some humility.

We have had 25 years of large scale immigration.
We have increased the working age population.
We have so far managed to avoid the economic cliff edge of a naturally declining population.
We have had low productivity and low wage growth.

And you have abjectly failed to establish a causal link between them.

Other Countries with high immigration have had productivity growth; the US for one.

Developed Countries like Japan have had slow wage growth and little immigration.

Peter.

A case study in why resisting reasonable development entirely can come back to bite you (if the developer ploy here works)? Work in the system to resist where you can, don't just pretend the system doesn't exist because you don't like it.

Council rejects 100 homes.

Developer wins appeal for 75 homes.

Developer then submits another 65 homes on the remaining land.

End result? Residents could get 140 homes instead of the original 100. Now they claim they’re being “picked on”.

https://nitter.poast.org/jakewg_/status/2063551764796752183#m

No sympathy for NIMBYs

Actually, I have sympathy for some of them. No facilities or infrastructure gets built to match the housing. Yes, there’s some. But not enough to improve on the existing shortages.

Ironically, a man who has an employee to put toothpaste on his toothbrush gets this. And when he builds towns, includes infrastructure.

Build the hospitals, GPs surgeries and rest. First. Before any houses. So the locals see an improvement in their lives early on.

Yes. I've just been invited to sign a petition, not to stop housing development, but to ensure that the infrastructure is built first before the extra housing. Does that count as NIMBYism? Not in my book. Why isn't it standard practice?

Suspect that part of the problem is that we have too many small developments that build out too slowly.

A hundred or so houses, maybe 400 people... that's about a quarter of a GP. Maybe six children per year group, so about one tenth of a typical primary school, five Anglican churchgoers. You don't get a viable shop, pub or bus service on that basis.

Take Northstowe, which is one of the new towns in the vicinity of Cambridge. First homes built in 2016, 550 occupied in 2020, about 2000 now, with an eventual target of 10000 homes and 24000 people. It's just starting to get amenities now, such as a supermarket and community centre.

Trouble is, having facilities in place before people move in costs- much cheaper to just sweat the exisiting nearby assets a bit harder. And it's not as if existing places have the amount of infrastructure that people want. The amount they are content to pay for, yes- but the amount they want, no.

And then we're back to the public discontent with governments in all sorts of places mentioned in the header.

“ Important to give Stokes and Atkinson the benefit of the doubt. Given everything this week they probably just met an inconsistent bouncer”

https://x.com/benjonescricket/status/2064043763522023777?s=61

Stokes frankly doesn't deserve his place in the side on current form. He remains an excellent captain though. And Atkinson is well worth his place.

Stokes is basically only there as a bowler at the moment. His batting has been pretty average for at least a couple of years now.

And he got one wicket in a seamers paradise in the last test. Not even fourth bowler level.

He had several years as the best all rounder in the world and created some of the most memorable moments in English cricketing history but time waits for no man and moves faster for those who drink and act stupidly thereafter.

I’m not sure I really agree with you that he’s that good of a captain either. Several times he’s been shown to be pretty inept.

I don’t think there is anyone yet that would do better so I’m not saying he should quit but what worries me with this side is that they basically rely on Root and Stokes. And one is out of form so it’s a big gamble.

The side playing last week would have been steamrolled by Australia.

Brook is one of the highest ranked batsman in the world at the moment in all formats. He is the future of English cricket and will be the main man for a decade.

Please, no.

He’s got a test average after 35 tests of over 53. What’s your beef with him? That’s better than Root, by the way.

A case study in why resisting reasonable development entirely can come back to bite you (if the developer ploy here works)? Work in the system to resist where you can, don't just pretend the system doesn't exist because you don't like it.

Council rejects 100 homes.

Developer wins appeal for 75 homes.

Developer then submits another 65 homes on the remaining land.

End result? Residents could get 140 homes instead of the original 100. Now they claim they’re being “picked on”.

https://nitter.poast.org/jakewg_/status/2063551764796752183#m

No sympathy for NIMBYs

What about local democracy?

Sadly I seem to repeat the same issue

we have the same population as France but 7 million fewer homes..

We don’t have the same population as France. Ours drinks less wine and takes shorter lunch breaks.

A case study in why resisting reasonable development entirely can come back to bite you (if the developer ploy here works)? Work in the system to resist where you can, don't just pretend the system doesn't exist because you don't like it.

Council rejects 100 homes.

Developer wins appeal for 75 homes.

Developer then submits another 65 homes on the remaining land.

End result? Residents could get 140 homes instead of the original 100. Now they claim they’re being “picked on”.

https://nitter.poast.org/jakewg_/status/2063551764796752183#m

No sympathy for NIMBYs

What about local democracy?

No sympathy for NIMBYs.

Well, not every objection is unreasonable, and developers will squeeze in a lot onto sites, aided by new national targets which were not planned for and so will result in a lot of less than great applications getting through. What I find amusing in this case is the developer possibly may not have even attempted to get so many, had they gotten the original permission - possibly the layout would have prevented it.

A case study in why resisting reasonable development entirely can come back to bite you (if the developer ploy here works)? Work in the system to resist where you can, don't just pretend the system doesn't exist because you don't like it.

Council rejects 100 homes.

Developer wins appeal for 75 homes.

Developer then submits another 65 homes on the remaining land.

End result? Residents could get 140 homes instead of the original 100. Now they claim they’re being “picked on”.

https://nitter.poast.org/jakewg_/status/2063551764796752183#m

No sympathy for NIMBYs

What about local democracy?

I'm afraid that planning is not an exercise in unfettered local democratic discretion. Any politician who has ever told you or intimated to you that it is, by emphasizing local democracy, has been lying to you to get your vote. No democratic right has been lost, it was never as expansive as they believed (albeit it is a part of it), it was always highly restricted and dependent on central government whim.

You and many others may heartily dislike that being the case, but politicians should be more honest and not lie to people about what they can achieve - this example may not even have been politicians rejecting (I could not access the article for some reason), but many times they reject knowing full well that it will probably get overturned, meaning it happens but at greater cost to local residents due to legal costs, which is highly cynical of them.

In planning policy the nature of objection matters a lot more than the number of objections, and any number of objections can be overwritten if national policy determines that it should.

A major problem of our planning system is that it's main purpose is to say yes to things (and guide the nature of those things), but politicians present it to the public as a means of saying no to things.

Windsor Davies latest:



WarMonitor🇺🇦🇬🇧
@WarMonitor3
·
3h
Russian forces according to reports are being forced to withdraw on mass from positions around the Kinburn Spit south of the Dnipro river due to severe supply difficulties caused by continued Ukrainian drone strike campaigns on Southern logistical routes.

https://x.com/WarMonitor3/status/2064011164040806673

This is just the start. It is highly likely by later this year that the Russians will have to withdraw from Crimea due to lack of supplies, fuel and even water. They have lost this war and it is getting worse for them by the week. Zelenskyy must have been very confident that Putin would reject his latest peace offer or he wouldn't have made it. He was right.

Withdraw from Crimea sounds wildly optimistic, consider how much territory there is just to even get to Crimea. If they could even close the landbridge (the goal of the full scale counter offensive a few years ago which failed), that would be a tremendous achievement surely, not sure that is even something they would be contemplating.

Be wary of Russia closing the drone innovation gap.

Russia cannot supply Crimea. They cannot defend Crimea. Ukraine doesn't need to capture all the land in between for the Russian position there to become untenable. Drones are in the process of changing warfare as we watch. Gathering together a force large enough to attack now is nothing short of suicidal. Supplying it is pretty much impossible. The front line is 100km deep and nothing in that territory is remotely safe. How do you fight any sort of conventional war in such circumstances?

You don't. You fuck off back home.

Unless your commanding officer is one Vladimir Putin.

In which case, surrender.

As I have suggested before, Zelenskyy should indicate to the commander of the Crimean garrison that he will take their surrender and allow his men - but no weapons - to leave over the Kerch Bridge... A time-limited offer.