Look at this stunning development on the outskirts of the town. They are new builds yet the express a timeless beauty, the elegance of the best Georgian townhouses married with the flamboyance of Victorian Gothic, even the adorable oddities of Tudor and Jacobean. Most of all, they scream: NUNEATON
These are houses that could only be in Nuneaton, the same way the Ca d'Oro could only exist on the Grand Canal. They have the intrinsic beauty of Nuneaton stonework and artistry, and capture the Nuneaton essence in their noom. Every single brick is, simply, Nuneaton, down to its atoms
Nuneaton is thankful you will never want to go there. The architecture of these new towns is specifically designed accordiing to stringent guidelines to keep the likes of SeanT out. And as someone who lives in a new town I too am thankful. Let's home more people from Hong Kong and less Camden ****s
Come on, we could do so much better than these identikit horrors. Surely.
We could. And if you came to my part of the town - built around 2000 - you can see that they succeeded.
But please don't ignore the important part of my post - you could have a lovely, well built an unique house in the middle of a 10-lane motorway and it'd be a shit house. The environment the house is in matters as much - in my view more - than the house itself. People are focusing too much on the building, and not where it sits.
This is where the 15-minute cities (and similar) are utterly correct - and the concepts' detractors are being silly. When my son was a toddler, being able to easily push him safely in a pram to nursery, the supermarket, five different playparks, a leisure centre, the doctor's, the library, etc, etc, was absolutely priceless. A friend of mine who lives in South London had to drive to get to most of those - except the supermarket, which was across a busy main road.
But that is merely your view of a nice environment, personally I would absolutely detest it.
Why?
Already answered it, some people are gregarious and take comfort being in the herd. You are I assume one. Some of us like to keep as much distance as possible from random people and prefer just to mix with friends
Look at this stunning development on the outskirts of the town. They are new builds yet the express a timeless beauty, the elegance of the best Georgian townhouses married with the flamboyance of Victorian Gothic, even the adorable oddities of Tudor and Jacobean. Most of all, they scream: NUNEATON
These are houses that could only be in Nuneaton, the same way the Ca d'Oro could only exist on the Grand Canal. They have the intrinsic beauty of Nuneaton stonework and artistry, and capture the Nuneaton essence in their noom. Every single brick is, simply, Nuneaton, down to its atoms
Nuneaton is thankful you will never want to go there. The architecture of these new towns is specifically designed accordiing to stringent guidelines to keep the likes of SeanT out. And as someone who lives in a new town I too am thankful. Let's home more people from Hong Kong and less Camden ****s
Come on, we could do so much better than these identikit horrors. Surely.
We could. And if you came to my part of the town - built around 2000 - you can see that they succeeded.
But please don't ignore the important part of my post - you could have a lovely, well built an unique house in the middle of a 10-lane motorway and it'd be a shit house. The environment the house is in matters as much - in my view more - than the house itself. People are focusing too much on the building, and not where it sits.
This is where the 15-minute cities (and similar) are utterly correct - and the concepts' detractors are being silly. When my son was a toddler, being able to easily push him safely in a pram to nursery, the supermarket, five different playparks, a leisure centre, the doctor's, the library, etc, etc, was absolutely priceless. A friend of mine who lives in South London had to drive to get to most of those - except the supermarket, which was across a busy main road.
I know there are practicalities, but honestly, they just look so ... depressing.
You could surely have all these facilities with just a little less density, a bit more green, and a bit less uniformity.
When gardens are postage stamps overlooked by the 10 neighbours it is no wonder they all end up as astroturf.
[Edit: I think the house in the M62 would be quite an interesting place to live, to be honest]
At that density it's just silly not to build flats. You could put a half of the land over to 1-bed and 2-bed flats with a nice park, the other half to big family homes with decent gardens.
Though we disagree a lot, I cannot help but agree here.
Look at this stunning development on the outskirts of the town. They are new builds yet the express a timeless beauty, the elegance of the best Georgian townhouses married with the flamboyance of Victorian Gothic, even the adorable oddities of Tudor and Jacobean. Most of all, they scream: NUNEATON
These are houses that could only be in Nuneaton, the same way the Ca d'Oro could only exist on the Grand Canal. They have the intrinsic beauty of Nuneaton stonework and artistry, and capture the Nuneaton essence in their noom. Every single brick is, simply, Nuneaton, down to its atoms
Nuneaton is thankful you will never want to go there. The architecture of these new towns is specifically designed accordiing to stringent guidelines to keep the likes of SeanT out. And as someone who lives in a new town I too am thankful. Let's home more people from Hong Kong and less Camden ****s
Come on, we could do so much better than these identikit horrors. Surely.
We could. And if you came to my part of the town - built around 2000 - you can see that they succeeded.
But please don't ignore the important part of my post - you could have a lovely, well built an unique house in the middle of a 10-lane motorway and it'd be a shit house. The environment the house is in matters as much - in my view more - than the house itself. People are focusing too much on the building, and not where it sits.
This is where the 15-minute cities (and similar) are utterly correct - and the concepts' detractors are being silly. When my son was a toddler, being able to easily push him safely in a pram to nursery, the supermarket, five different playparks, a leisure centre, the doctor's, the library, etc, etc, was absolutely priceless. A friend of mine who lives in South London had to drive to get to most of those - except the supermarket, which was across a busy main road.
I know there are practicalities, but honestly, they just look so ... depressing.
You could surely have all these facilities with just a little less density, a bit more green, and a bit less uniformity.
When gardens are postage stamps overlooked by the 10 neighbours it is no wonder they all end up as astroturf.
[Edit: I think the house in the M62 would be quite an interesting place to live, to be honest]
At that density it's just silly not to build flats. You could put a half of the land over to 1-bed and 2-bed flats with a nice park, the other half to big family homes with decent gardens.
I agree. I'd much rather have a nice flat overlooking a park than one of these 'executive' houses.
The BBC commentary on this deal encapsulates one of the reasons the pro-European cause has had such a poor run in recent years.
Opening sentence: “this is undoubtedly a significant deal. In a funny way, though, for Sir Keir Starmer to succeed he needs it to seem as insignificant and uncontroversial as possible”.
I couldn’t disagree more. This has been the repeated failing of politicians on Europe. They fear the Eurosceptics and the Daily Mail, so they play down the positives and understate everything. Which means voters don’t notice or appreciate the good stuff while the silence then leaves the floor for the Mail et al to paint their own pictures. And the understatement just makes them look shifty.
Shout it from the rooftops for once. Take control of the narrative. Does Trump try to make all his new measures seem as insignificant and uncontroversial as possible? No.
The BBC seems to be turning into GB News with its negative slant . And Chris Mason is just parroting the betrayal narrative with his ridiculous question .
Yes, BBC R4 news summary at 2pm was: Starmer's done a deal with the EU. Some fishermen are unhappy. Farage and Badenoch are unhappy. Then Lord Frost featured, being scathing. That was it. Utterly unbalanced.
I'm a Leaver and abhor this craven, useless government , yet I am essentially content with this deal. It is a sensible compromise between two powers that are bound to trade freely, and benefit from doing so
On the face of it, it is not the capitulation I expected from Starmer and his team. They have won real positives in return for a surrender on fishing. Both sides stand to gain
So if they can persuade an enemy like me that this is Not Bad, even Quite Good, then they should be able to persuade Britain. This is on the Labour comms team. Can they do it?
Ultimately this will help in the real world, and a non-insignificant proportion of the public will notice before 2028/9: - People don't like queueing at the "slow lane" at airports. Let's assume it's not ready by this summer, but people will notice in the next couple of years. - Both parents and young people will like the youth mobility scheme. - The food deal means we can export more to Europe again: real world benefit with little cost given our standard are already aligned - ...fishing "sell out" keeps the status quo except our fishermen can now export back into Europe much more easily (so a net improvement even there) - Defence and security pact important given Russia/Ukraine/Trump dynamic, and will benefit our defence companies down the line
Think back to Brexit negotiations: there was much talk of "the four freedoms are indivisible". Well, Starmer has just carved out being (essentially) part of the single market for food, fish, energy and defence, while not conceding on freedom of movement where it matters.
Clearly there's lots of detail to be ironed out, but it's a step in the right direction.
Not really, the UK has become a rule taker on food regulation which I hope a future government will reverse. It's dynamic alignment all over again which the Tories rightly refused and Labour have just given in. Useless
We have? Trump was lobbied hard to impose US rules on the UK. We did not take those rules and said no. In this new SPS deal we have the right to be consulted early about changes to food standards.
Remember that as things stands we are already aligned with the EU. Both UK and EU are committed to only raising standards so the only debate is how fast those improvements are being made.
Consulted just means ignored in reality. Didn't we also have a right to a consultation on reducing the CAP when Blair gave up a third of the rebate? Our politicians never learn.
I'm trying to get worked up about this deal.... but I can't
It's OK, fuck it, we have to follow EU rules on food so companies can have an easier time exporting there. I hate the ECJ doing anything over our heads but... pff.... it's biscuits and sausages
Also if we are going to follow any food standards I would genuinely prefer us to go the EU way than the US way. The EU way on food is one of the few areas the EU is clearly superior by a distance
I also like the egates (even tho the EU refusing to let us use them was sheer spite in the first place); the pet passports; youth mobility - let the Spanish girls come work in our bars again
I am sorry for the fisherpeople but at least their deal hasn't gotten WORSE
The deal is not gamechanging. It's more a modest but needed rapprochement after a nasty divorce, so the kids can stop being traumatised by all the acrimony and tea-pot throwing. It will do
Yes, I'm not particularly fussed either way, but it will mean that some gene editing and the UK's food biotech industry is now regulated from Brussels rather than from Westminster, it's an area where the UK is probably among the global leaders and the EU very much not so expect hostile regulations from Brussels to damage what is currently a small but very fast growing industry in this country. I expect what could have become a $10bn industry might just end up being strangled at birth or just end up being sold to US competitors for the IP and then once the EU catches up to where we would have been otherwise it will be too late and we'll end up having to import the IP/licences from the US.
It's probably not a deal breaker but it's a definite downside risk factor in that it doesn't necessarily kill many jobs today but it will probably prevent us from having a big food biotech industry.
Yes, that's the one area that genuinely troubles me
Indeed, and this is what I mean by being a rule taker. Dynamic alignment vs mutual standards recognition was always the debate and the government basically just waved the white flag. I think this is a short term gain for a probable long term loss overall because Brussels is a poorer regulator. Just as the government is pushing UK regulators for a growth agenda we've signed away food regulation to a known entity which is a big drag on growth. However, given that the industry is small it won't be a huge overall loss in near terms and really we'll never know what would have happened otherwise so will we miss what we never had?
The previous government had eight years to come up with some ideas as to how diverging standards might benefit us, and of course they didn’t, because the downsides would have outweighed any upside.
We diverged on AI regulations quite substantially and the UK's AI industry is larger than the EU27 combined by quite a large amount. That's hundreds of thousands of very highly paid jobs in the UK that would otherwise be in the US or somewhere in Asia and it's still our fastest growing industry and will likely become position 3 after finance and pharma in the next decade.
Gene editing and food biotech is/was the next big divergence that could drive a big new UK industry to make up for lost EU exports but alas we may never know as I suspect the innovators will sell their nascent startups to US rivals and move to the US over the next few years as Brussels snuffs the life out of them.
Allie Renison of the IoD is on X claiming that EU laws are being seriously relaxed RIGHT NOW to allow European companies to do this tech wizardry, following the success in the UK
So unless they can frame those laws to hinder the UK but still allow EU tech to do it (that seems very hard) our pessimism MIGHT be misplaced
The EC may look to relax the current tough regulations on it, yet it will be the know nothing MEPs that protect "traditional farming" and vote it down. A potential huge future industry for the UK may end up being thrown away by Hungarian or Belgian MEPs representing areas just as they made trouble for trade deals in the past. It's not an industry that they have or could realistically attract so blocking it off literally makes no difference to them. All of the onerous AI regulations came from the EU parliament rather than the commission too, again it's MEPs from countries who don't have serious AI industries or ambition voting to block something they'll never benefit from anyway.
What I am very glad to see is that the government has refused to trade away tech and financial regulations. I think we could have wiped 4-7% off GDP growth in the next 10 years if they had while the EU catches up to the rest of the world.
One thing that does give me modest hope is that Starmer's government do seem aware of British advantages and opportunities in tech areas. It's not just talk they genuinely seem to get it (or so I forlornly believe)
It's not surprising that they get it - as it offers one of the very few avenues for Britain to escape its low productivity, need-migration nightmare of stagnancy and social angst. Also it could save the NHS
I think it's so big now that they can't afford to fuck it up. AI jobs leaving the UK would result in huge losses in income tax and NI. Ideologically I'm sure that Starmer would love to sign us back up to dynamic alignment on finance and tech with the EU but the very real economic hit would impoverish the nation.
Why don't we just scrap GDPR?
In terms of slightly pointless red tape that constrains more innovative industries including AI, that's got to be pretty high up the list.
Depends, how much do you value data protection over “AI companies”?
The amount of hacks and data leaks recently suggest we need more GDPR not less
GDPR does absolutely nothing to stop hacks and data leaks.....tells us you know nothing about it
GDPR is about only retaining data you need. Therefore if you store less data, you’re less vulnerable to hacks.
The BBC news was a lot fairer with the coverage on today’s deal. So the Tories crummy CPTTP deal worth 2 billion , Labours deal with India 5 billion , today’s EU deal 9 billion .
When the Tories negotiate the UK loses .
Suck it up Kemi !
Ok dear.
I was using Kemi’s line and reversing it !
Thus showing you had internalised it and been upset by it.
Upset ! Oh give me a break . Poor Kemi cuts a rather tragic figure . It’s rather sad really .
Look at this stunning development on the outskirts of the town. They are new builds yet the express a timeless beauty, the elegance of the best Georgian townhouses married with the flamboyance of Victorian Gothic, even the adorable oddities of Tudor and Jacobean. Most of all, they scream: NUNEATON
These are houses that could only be in Nuneaton, the same way the Ca d'Oro could only exist on the Grand Canal. They have the intrinsic beauty of Nuneaton stonework and artistry, and capture the Nuneaton essence in their noom. Every single brick is, simply, Nuneaton, down to its atoms
Nuneaton is thankful you will never want to go there. The architecture of these new towns is specifically designed accordiing to stringent guidelines to keep the likes of SeanT out. And as someone who lives in a new town I too am thankful. Let's home more people from Hong Kong and less Camden ****s
Come on, we could do so much better than these identikit horrors. Surely.
We could. And if you came to my part of the town - built around 2000 - you can see that they succeeded.
But please don't ignore the important part of my post - you could have a lovely, well built an unique house in the middle of a 10-lane motorway and it'd be a shit house. The environment the house is in matters as much - in my view more - than the house itself. People are focusing too much on the building, and not where it sits.
This is where the 15-minute cities (and similar) are utterly correct - and the concepts' detractors are being silly. When my son was a toddler, being able to easily push him safely in a pram to nursery, the supermarket, five different playparks, a leisure centre, the doctor's, the library, etc, etc, was absolutely priceless. A friend of mine who lives in South London had to drive to get to most of those - except the supermarket, which was across a busy main road.
But that is merely your view of a nice environment, personally I would absolutely detest it.
Why?
Already answered it, some people are gregarious and take comfort being in the herd. You are I assume one. Some of us like to keep as much distance as possible from random people and prefer just to mix with friends
Fair enough. You can spend a million or more and buy a really nice house in the middle of the countryside, with no neighbours aside from some sheep and a few cows.
My sister raised her kids in a remote house, and one of her kids in particular hated the distance from his friends.
Look at this stunning development on the outskirts of the town. They are new builds yet the express a timeless beauty, the elegance of the best Georgian townhouses married with the flamboyance of Victorian Gothic, even the adorable oddities of Tudor and Jacobean. Most of all, they scream: NUNEATON
These are houses that could only be in Nuneaton, the same way the Ca d'Oro could only exist on the Grand Canal. They have the intrinsic beauty of Nuneaton stonework and artistry, and capture the Nuneaton essence in their noom. Every single brick is, simply, Nuneaton, down to its atoms
Nuneaton is thankful you will never want to go there. The architecture of these new towns is specifically designed accordiing to stringent guidelines to keep the likes of SeanT out. And as someone who lives in a new town I too am thankful. Let's home more people from Hong Kong and less Camden ****s
Come on, we could do so much better than these identikit horrors. Surely.
We could. And if you came to my part of the town - built around 2000 - you can see that they succeeded.
But please don't ignore the important part of my post - you could have a lovely, well built an unique house in the middle of a 10-lane motorway and it'd be a shit house. The environment the house is in matters as much - in my view more - than the house itself. People are focusing too much on the building, and not where it sits.
This is where the 15-minute cities (and similar) are utterly correct - and the concepts' detractors are being silly. When my son was a toddler, being able to easily push him safely in a pram to nursery, the supermarket, five different playparks, a leisure centre, the doctor's, the library, etc, etc, was absolutely priceless. A friend of mine who lives in South London had to drive to get to most of those - except the supermarket, which was across a busy main road.
I know there are practicalities, but honestly, they just look so ... depressing.
You could surely have all these facilities with just a little less density, a bit more green, and a bit less uniformity.
When gardens are postage stamps overlooked by the 10 neighbours it is no wonder they all end up as astroturf.
[Edit: I think the house in the M62 would be quite an interesting place to live, to be honest]
At that density it's just silly not to build flats. You could put a half of the land over to 1-bed and 2-bed flats with a nice park, the other half to big family homes with decent gardens.
I agree. I'd much rather have a nice flat overlooking a park than one of these 'executive' houses.
One of the things that Britain has hardly ever (?) got right. My flat in Spain was central, properly built and nice. Apart from the mansion blocks in central London, English flats are mostly rubbish.
Look at this stunning development on the outskirts of the town. They are new builds yet the express a timeless beauty, the elegance of the best Georgian townhouses married with the flamboyance of Victorian Gothic, even the adorable oddities of Tudor and Jacobean. Most of all, they scream: NUNEATON
These are houses that could only be in Nuneaton, the same way the Ca d'Oro could only exist on the Grand Canal. They have the intrinsic beauty of Nuneaton stonework and artistry, and capture the Nuneaton essence in their noom. Every single brick is, simply, Nuneaton, down to its atoms
Nuneaton is thankful you will never want to go there. The architecture of these new towns is specifically designed accordiing to stringent guidelines to keep the likes of SeanT out. And as someone who lives in a new town I too am thankful. Let's home more people from Hong Kong and less Camden ****s
Come on, we could do so much better than these identikit horrors. Surely.
We could. And if you came to my part of the town - built around 2000 - you can see that they succeeded.
But please don't ignore the important part of my post - you could have a lovely, well built an unique house in the middle of a 10-lane motorway and it'd be a shit house. The environment the house is in matters as much - in my view more - than the house itself. People are focusing too much on the building, and not where it sits.
This is where the 15-minute cities (and similar) are utterly correct - and the concepts' detractors are being silly. When my son was a toddler, being able to easily push him safely in a pram to nursery, the supermarket, five different playparks, a leisure centre, the doctor's, the library, etc, etc, was absolutely priceless. A friend of mine who lives in South London had to drive to get to most of those - except the supermarket, which was across a busy main road.
But that is merely your view of a nice environment, personally I would absolutely detest it.
If you don't mind me asking- why?
(My bit of just-before-the-war outer London suburbia is probably one of the last bits to get it right. Facilities- including a train to properly get the hell out of here- in walking distance, enough gardens and parks. Once you don't have to provide a pile of parking, agreeable urban design isn't that difficult.)
Because I grew up in the country, I don't like be on top of lots of people and having to tolerate their shit like the woman next door to me who routinely puts her extra loud washing machine on at 5am which on spin cycle slams repeatedly against the shared wall. Hell is other people
There are similar phrase to this in other northern European languages, but none in Italian or Greek, that I've know of. Hell for Southern Europeans Is being alone, either missing your evening walk to see others, or not sitting outside your house to see them.
Look at this stunning development on the outskirts of the town. They are new builds yet the express a timeless beauty, the elegance of the best Georgian townhouses married with the flamboyance of Victorian Gothic, even the adorable oddities of Tudor and Jacobean. Most of all, they scream: NUNEATON
These are houses that could only be in Nuneaton, the same way the Ca d'Oro could only exist on the Grand Canal. They have the intrinsic beauty of Nuneaton stonework and artistry, and capture the Nuneaton essence in their noom. Every single brick is, simply, Nuneaton, down to its atoms
Nuneaton is thankful you will never want to go there. The architecture of these new towns is specifically designed accordiing to stringent guidelines to keep the likes of SeanT out. And as someone who lives in a new town I too am thankful. Let's home more people from Hong Kong and less Camden ****s
Come on, we could do so much better than these identikit horrors. Surely.
We could. And if you came to my part of the town - built around 2000 - you can see that they succeeded.
But please don't ignore the important part of my post - you could have a lovely, well built an unique house in the middle of a 10-lane motorway and it'd be a shit house. The environment the house is in matters as much - in my view more - than the house itself. People are focusing too much on the building, and not where it sits.
This is where the 15-minute cities (and similar) are utterly correct - and the concepts' detractors are being silly. When my son was a toddler, being able to easily push him safely in a pram to nursery, the supermarket, five different playparks, a leisure centre, the doctor's, the library, etc, etc, was absolutely priceless. A friend of mine who lives in South London had to drive to get to most of those - except the supermarket, which was across a busy main road.
But that is merely your view of a nice environment, personally I would absolutely detest it.
Why?
Already answered it, some people are gregarious and take comfort being in the herd. You are I assume one. Some of us like to keep as much distance as possible from random people and prefer just to mix with friends
Fair enough. You can spend a million or more and buy a really nice house in the middle of the countryside, with no neighbours aside from some sheep and a few cows.
My sister raised her kids in a remote house, and one of her kids in particular hated the distance from his friends.
Nothing with either way was just pointing out not everyone wants to live cheek by jowl. Where I grew up there were 10 houses and 5 miles to the nearest shop
Look at this stunning development on the outskirts of the town. They are new builds yet the express a timeless beauty, the elegance of the best Georgian townhouses married with the flamboyance of Victorian Gothic, even the adorable oddities of Tudor and Jacobean. Most of all, they scream: NUNEATON
These are houses that could only be in Nuneaton, the same way the Ca d'Oro could only exist on the Grand Canal. They have the intrinsic beauty of Nuneaton stonework and artistry, and capture the Nuneaton essence in their noom. Every single brick is, simply, Nuneaton, down to its atoms
Nuneaton is thankful you will never want to go there. The architecture of these new towns is specifically designed accordiing to stringent guidelines to keep the likes of SeanT out. And as someone who lives in a new town I too am thankful. Let's home more people from Hong Kong and less Camden ****s
Come on, we could do so much better than these identikit horrors. Surely.
We could. And if you came to my part of the town - built around 2000 - you can see that they succeeded.
But please don't ignore the important part of my post - you could have a lovely, well built an unique house in the middle of a 10-lane motorway and it'd be a shit house. The environment the house is in matters as much - in my view more - than the house itself. People are focusing too much on the building, and not where it sits.
This is where the 15-minute cities (and similar) are utterly correct - and the concepts' detractors are being silly. When my son was a toddler, being able to easily push him safely in a pram to nursery, the supermarket, five different playparks, a leisure centre, the doctor's, the library, etc, etc, was absolutely priceless. A friend of mine who lives in South London had to drive to get to most of those - except the supermarket, which was across a busy main road.
I know there are practicalities, but honestly, they just look so ... depressing.
You could surely have all these facilities with just a little less density, a bit more green, and a bit less uniformity.
When gardens are postage stamps overlooked by the 10 neighbours it is no wonder they all end up as astroturf.
So you want bigger gardens? That means fewer houses per acre, which means greater cost. Ditto individual designs. One thing my part of town got right was using copycat designs, but interspersing them. So there is an identikit house to ours around the corner, but built in a different brick. Or an identical one five streets away. And in the row I can see out of my window, there are three different roof heights and two different roof angles.
But it does not go against my main point: the situation a house is in matter as much, if not more, than an individual house's design - as long as it meets standards.
You seem to want really expensive houses.
They wouldn't be really expensive if significantly more land were available for housing. That's where 70% of the cost of a house is, up from 2% in the 1930s. Not because we've suddenly shrunk as a country, but because the government has banned most new building except in places where no-one wants to live, and has been captured by the NIMBYs and the big housebuilders with their landbanks.
The cost of the building materials etc. for a large house vs a small, shitty one is spare change compared to the land values, at any rate in decent parts of the country.
I'm afraid everything comes back to our insane planning system. We won't sort housing out until we get government out of planning, or at least make it much more pro-growth. And the current government's reforms won't do more than tinker at the edges.
The BBC commentary on this deal encapsulates one of the reasons the pro-European cause has had such a poor run in recent years.
Opening sentence: “this is undoubtedly a significant deal. In a funny way, though, for Sir Keir Starmer to succeed he needs it to seem as insignificant and uncontroversial as possible”.
I couldn’t disagree more. This has been the repeated failing of politicians on Europe. They fear the Eurosceptics and the Daily Mail, so they play down the positives and understate everything. Which means voters don’t notice or appreciate the good stuff while the silence then leaves the floor for the Mail et al to paint their own pictures. And the understatement just makes them look shifty.
Shout it from the rooftops for once. Take control of the narrative. Does Trump try to make all his new measures seem as insignificant and uncontroversial as possible? No.
The BBC seems to be turning into GB News with its negative slant . And Chris Mason is just parroting the betrayal narrative with his ridiculous question .
Yes, BBC R4 news summary at 2pm was: Starmer's done a deal with the EU. Some fishermen are unhappy. Farage and Badenoch are unhappy. Then Lord Frost featured, being scathing. That was it. Utterly unbalanced.
I'm a Leaver and abhor this craven, useless government , yet I am essentially content with this deal. It is a sensible compromise between two powers that are bound to trade freely, and benefit from doing so
On the face of it, it is not the capitulation I expected from Starmer and his team. They have won real positives in return for a surrender on fishing. Both sides stand to gain
So if they can persuade an enemy like me that this is Not Bad, even Quite Good, then they should be able to persuade Britain. This is on the Labour comms team. Can they do it?
Ultimately this will help in the real world, and a non-insignificant proportion of the public will notice before 2028/9: - People don't like queueing at the "slow lane" at airports. Let's assume it's not ready by this summer, but people will notice in the next couple of years. - Both parents and young people will like the youth mobility scheme. - The food deal means we can export more to Europe again: real world benefit with little cost given our standard are already aligned - ...fishing "sell out" keeps the status quo except our fishermen can now export back into Europe much more easily (so a net improvement even there) - Defence and security pact important given Russia/Ukraine/Trump dynamic, and will benefit our defence companies down the line
Think back to Brexit negotiations: there was much talk of "the four freedoms are indivisible". Well, Starmer has just carved out being (essentially) part of the single market for food, fish, energy and defence, while not conceding on freedom of movement where it matters.
Clearly there's lots of detail to be ironed out, but it's a step in the right direction.
Not really, the UK has become a rule taker on food regulation which I hope a future government will reverse. It's dynamic alignment all over again which the Tories rightly refused and Labour have just given in. Useless
We have? Trump was lobbied hard to impose US rules on the UK. We did not take those rules and said no. In this new SPS deal we have the right to be consulted early about changes to food standards.
Remember that as things stands we are already aligned with the EU. Both UK and EU are committed to only raising standards so the only debate is how fast those improvements are being made.
Consulted just means ignored in reality. Didn't we also have a right to a consultation on reducing the CAP when Blair gave up a third of the rebate? Our politicians never learn.
I'm trying to get worked up about this deal.... but I can't
It's OK, fuck it, we have to follow EU rules on food so companies can have an easier time exporting there. I hate the ECJ doing anything over our heads but... pff.... it's biscuits and sausages
Also if we are going to follow any food standards I would genuinely prefer us to go the EU way than the US way. The EU way on food is one of the few areas the EU is clearly superior by a distance
I also like the egates (even tho the EU refusing to let us use them was sheer spite in the first place); the pet passports; youth mobility - let the Spanish girls come work in our bars again
I am sorry for the fisherpeople but at least their deal hasn't gotten WORSE
The deal is not gamechanging. It's more a modest but needed rapprochement after a nasty divorce, so the kids can stop being traumatised by all the acrimony and tea-pot throwing. It will do
Yes, I'm not particularly fussed either way, but it will mean that some gene editing and the UK's food biotech industry is now regulated from Brussels rather than from Westminster, it's an area where the UK is probably among the global leaders and the EU very much not so expect hostile regulations from Brussels to damage what is currently a small but very fast growing industry in this country. I expect what could have become a $10bn industry might just end up being strangled at birth or just end up being sold to US competitors for the IP and then once the EU catches up to where we would have been otherwise it will be too late and we'll end up having to import the IP/licences from the US.
It's probably not a deal breaker but it's a definite downside risk factor in that it doesn't necessarily kill many jobs today but it will probably prevent us from having a big food biotech industry.
Yes, that's the one area that genuinely troubles me
Indeed, and this is what I mean by being a rule taker. Dynamic alignment vs mutual standards recognition was always the debate and the government basically just waved the white flag. I think this is a short term gain for a probable long term loss overall because Brussels is a poorer regulator. Just as the government is pushing UK regulators for a growth agenda we've signed away food regulation to a known entity which is a big drag on growth. However, given that the industry is small it won't be a huge overall loss in near terms and really we'll never know what would have happened otherwise so will we miss what we never had?
The previous government had eight years to come up with some ideas as to how diverging standards might benefit us, and of course they didn’t, because the downsides would have outweighed any upside.
We diverged on AI regulations quite substantially and the UK's AI industry is larger than the EU27 combined by quite a large amount. That's hundreds of thousands of very highly paid jobs in the UK that would otherwise be in the US or somewhere in Asia and it's still our fastest growing industry and will likely become position 3 after finance and pharma in the next decade.
Gene editing and food biotech is/was the next big divergence that could drive a big new UK industry to make up for lost EU exports but alas we may never know as I suspect the innovators will sell their nascent startups to US rivals and move to the US over the next few years as Brussels snuffs the life out of them.
Allie Renison of the IoD is on X claiming that EU laws are being seriously relaxed RIGHT NOW to allow European companies to do this tech wizardry, following the success in the UK
So unless they can frame those laws to hinder the UK but still allow EU tech to do it (that seems very hard) our pessimism MIGHT be misplaced
The EC may look to relax the current tough regulations on it, yet it will be the know nothing MEPs that protect "traditional farming" and vote it down. A potential huge future industry for the UK may end up being thrown away by Hungarian or Belgian MEPs representing areas just as they made trouble for trade deals in the past. It's not an industry that they have or could realistically attract so blocking it off literally makes no difference to them. All of the onerous AI regulations came from the EU parliament rather than the commission too, again it's MEPs from countries who don't have serious AI industries or ambition voting to block something they'll never benefit from anyway.
What I am very glad to see is that the government has refused to trade away tech and financial regulations. I think we could have wiped 4-7% off GDP growth in the next 10 years if they had while the EU catches up to the rest of the world.
One thing that does give me modest hope is that Starmer's government do seem aware of British advantages and opportunities in tech areas. It's not just talk they genuinely seem to get it (or so I forlornly believe)
It's not surprising that they get it - as it offers one of the very few avenues for Britain to escape its low productivity, need-migration nightmare of stagnancy and social angst. Also it could save the NHS
I think it's so big now that they can't afford to fuck it up. AI jobs leaving the UK would result in huge losses in income tax and NI. Ideologically I'm sure that Starmer would love to sign us back up to dynamic alignment on finance and tech with the EU but the very real economic hit would impoverish the nation.
Why don't we just scrap GDPR?
In terms of slightly pointless red tape that constrains more innovative industries including AI, that's got to be pretty high up the list.
Depends, how much do you value data protection over “AI companies”?
The amount of hacks and data leaks recently suggest we need more GDPR not less
GDPR does absolutely nothing to stop hacks and data leaks.....tells us you know nothing about it
GDPR is about only retaining data you need. Therefore if you store less data, you’re less vulnerable to hacks.
In addition, the fewer people and systems that have access to any data you do store, opportunities for a data leak are much reduced.
Look at this stunning development on the outskirts of the town. They are new builds yet the express a timeless beauty, the elegance of the best Georgian townhouses married with the flamboyance of Victorian Gothic, even the adorable oddities of Tudor and Jacobean. Most of all, they scream: NUNEATON
These are houses that could only be in Nuneaton, the same way the Ca d'Oro could only exist on the Grand Canal. They have the intrinsic beauty of Nuneaton stonework and artistry, and capture the Nuneaton essence in their noom. Every single brick is, simply, Nuneaton, down to its atoms
Nuneaton is thankful you will never want to go there. The architecture of these new towns is specifically designed accordiing to stringent guidelines to keep the likes of SeanT out. And as someone who lives in a new town I too am thankful. Let's home more people from Hong Kong and less Camden ****s
Come on, we could do so much better than these identikit horrors. Surely.
We could. And if you came to my part of the town - built around 2000 - you can see that they succeeded.
But please don't ignore the important part of my post - you could have a lovely, well built an unique house in the middle of a 10-lane motorway and it'd be a shit house. The environment the house is in matters as much - in my view more - than the house itself. People are focusing too much on the building, and not where it sits.
This is where the 15-minute cities (and similar) are utterly correct - and the concepts' detractors are being silly. When my son was a toddler, being able to easily push him safely in a pram to nursery, the supermarket, five different playparks, a leisure centre, the doctor's, the library, etc, etc, was absolutely priceless. A friend of mine who lives in South London had to drive to get to most of those - except the supermarket, which was across a busy main road.
I know there are practicalities, but honestly, they just look so ... depressing.
You could surely have all these facilities with just a little less density, a bit more green, and a bit less uniformity.
When gardens are postage stamps overlooked by the 10 neighbours it is no wonder they all end up as astroturf.
[Edit: I think the house in the M62 would be quite an interesting place to live, to be honest]
At that density it's just silly not to build flats. You could put a half of the land over to 1-bed and 2-bed flats with a nice park, the other half to big family homes with decent gardens.
Though we disagree a lot, I cannot help but agree here.
I'm looking at population density map of my home town. The older housing estates are between 10 and 40 people per hectare (where I grew up). Stuff from about 20 years ago is about 50. The newest estate is 80-100!
I currently live in a flat with density of about 120, and we have a nice private garden and a drying green. I used to live in a tenement at density of 350. I'd bring in a land efficiency rule which means that anything over 80 pop per hectare has to be flats.
We're holidaying near Poitiers in the summer. Any suggestions on things to see/ do / avoid? Puy du Pou and Futoroscope are on the list. What else? We're driving, so transport generally shouldn't be an issue.
Avoid the area of Poitiers, one of the most boring corners of France
Boring areas are interesting; you get a truer feel for a place when it's not trying.
Anyway, nowhere in France is properly boring if you look properly.
I was kinda teasing, tho it is one of the less appealing regions of a generally beautiful country
In my experience, nowhere in the world is boring, if you look properly
Yes, even Wick. And Newent
Wick isn't boring. Its bleakness and emptiness are fascinating. I would love it if work sent me to Wick for a couple of days. I nearly got to go once, but a colleague got the gig. If you were told you had to spend two days in x, what value of x would provoke the greatest ennui? I suggest: Nuneaton.
Slough?
I'be interested to go to Slough becauae of The Office and the Betjeman poem. Not that interested. I'd rather be sent to Norwich. But more interested than Nuneaton.
The BBC commentary on this deal encapsulates one of the reasons the pro-European cause has had such a poor run in recent years.
Opening sentence: “this is undoubtedly a significant deal. In a funny way, though, for Sir Keir Starmer to succeed he needs it to seem as insignificant and uncontroversial as possible”.
I couldn’t disagree more. This has been the repeated failing of politicians on Europe. They fear the Eurosceptics and the Daily Mail, so they play down the positives and understate everything. Which means voters don’t notice or appreciate the good stuff while the silence then leaves the floor for the Mail et al to paint their own pictures. And the understatement just makes them look shifty.
Shout it from the rooftops for once. Take control of the narrative. Does Trump try to make all his new measures seem as insignificant and uncontroversial as possible? No.
The BBC seems to be turning into GB News with its negative slant . And Chris Mason is just parroting the betrayal narrative with his ridiculous question .
Yes, BBC R4 news summary at 2pm was: Starmer's done a deal with the EU. Some fishermen are unhappy. Farage and Badenoch are unhappy. Then Lord Frost featured, being scathing. That was it. Utterly unbalanced.
I'm a Leaver and abhor this craven, useless government , yet I am essentially content with this deal. It is a sensible compromise between two powers that are bound to trade freely, and benefit from doing so
On the face of it, it is not the capitulation I expected from Starmer and his team. They have won real positives in return for a surrender on fishing. Both sides stand to gain
So if they can persuade an enemy like me that this is Not Bad, even Quite Good, then they should be able to persuade Britain. This is on the Labour comms team. Can they do it?
Ultimately this will help in the real world, and a non-insignificant proportion of the public will notice before 2028/9: - People don't like queueing at the "slow lane" at airports. Let's assume it's not ready by this summer, but people will notice in the next couple of years. - Both parents and young people will like the youth mobility scheme. - The food deal means we can export more to Europe again: real world benefit with little cost given our standard are already aligned - ...fishing "sell out" keeps the status quo except our fishermen can now export back into Europe much more easily (so a net improvement even there) - Defence and security pact important given Russia/Ukraine/Trump dynamic, and will benefit our defence companies down the line
Think back to Brexit negotiations: there was much talk of "the four freedoms are indivisible". Well, Starmer has just carved out being (essentially) part of the single market for food, fish, energy and defence, while not conceding on freedom of movement where it matters.
Clearly there's lots of detail to be ironed out, but it's a step in the right direction.
Not really, the UK has become a rule taker on food regulation which I hope a future government will reverse. It's dynamic alignment all over again which the Tories rightly refused and Labour have just given in. Useless
We have? Trump was lobbied hard to impose US rules on the UK. We did not take those rules and said no. In this new SPS deal we have the right to be consulted early about changes to food standards.
Remember that as things stands we are already aligned with the EU. Both UK and EU are committed to only raising standards so the only debate is how fast those improvements are being made.
Consulted just means ignored in reality. Didn't we also have a right to a consultation on reducing the CAP when Blair gave up a third of the rebate? Our politicians never learn.
I'm trying to get worked up about this deal.... but I can't
It's OK, fuck it, we have to follow EU rules on food so companies can have an easier time exporting there. I hate the ECJ doing anything over our heads but... pff.... it's biscuits and sausages
Also if we are going to follow any food standards I would genuinely prefer us to go the EU way than the US way. The EU way on food is one of the few areas the EU is clearly superior by a distance
I also like the egates (even tho the EU refusing to let us use them was sheer spite in the first place); the pet passports; youth mobility - let the Spanish girls come work in our bars again
I am sorry for the fisherpeople but at least their deal hasn't gotten WORSE
The deal is not gamechanging. It's more a modest but needed rapprochement after a nasty divorce, so the kids can stop being traumatised by all the acrimony and tea-pot throwing. It will do
Yes, I'm not particularly fussed either way, but it will mean that some gene editing and the UK's food biotech industry is now regulated from Brussels rather than from Westminster, it's an area where the UK is probably among the global leaders and the EU very much not so expect hostile regulations from Brussels to damage what is currently a small but very fast growing industry in this country. I expect what could have become a $10bn industry might just end up being strangled at birth or just end up being sold to US competitors for the IP and then once the EU catches up to where we would have been otherwise it will be too late and we'll end up having to import the IP/licences from the US.
It's probably not a deal breaker but it's a definite downside risk factor in that it doesn't necessarily kill many jobs today but it will probably prevent us from having a big food biotech industry.
Yes, that's the one area that genuinely troubles me
Indeed, and this is what I mean by being a rule taker. Dynamic alignment vs mutual standards recognition was always the debate and the government basically just waved the white flag. I think this is a short term gain for a probable long term loss overall because Brussels is a poorer regulator. Just as the government is pushing UK regulators for a growth agenda we've signed away food regulation to a known entity which is a big drag on growth. However, given that the industry is small it won't be a huge overall loss in near terms and really we'll never know what would have happened otherwise so will we miss what we never had?
The previous government had eight years to come up with some ideas as to how diverging standards might benefit us, and of course they didn’t, because the downsides would have outweighed any upside.
We diverged on AI regulations quite substantially and the UK's AI industry is larger than the EU27 combined by quite a large amount. That's hundreds of thousands of very highly paid jobs in the UK that would otherwise be in the US or somewhere in Asia and it's still our fastest growing industry and will likely become position 3 after finance and pharma in the next decade.
Gene editing and food biotech is/was the next big divergence that could drive a big new UK industry to make up for lost EU exports but alas we may never know as I suspect the innovators will sell their nascent startups to US rivals and move to the US over the next few years as Brussels snuffs the life out of them.
Allie Renison of the IoD is on X claiming that EU laws are being seriously relaxed RIGHT NOW to allow European companies to do this tech wizardry, following the success in the UK
So unless they can frame those laws to hinder the UK but still allow EU tech to do it (that seems very hard) our pessimism MIGHT be misplaced
The EC may look to relax the current tough regulations on it, yet it will be the know nothing MEPs that protect "traditional farming" and vote it down. A potential huge future industry for the UK may end up being thrown away by Hungarian or Belgian MEPs representing areas just as they made trouble for trade deals in the past. It's not an industry that they have or could realistically attract so blocking it off literally makes no difference to them. All of the onerous AI regulations came from the EU parliament rather than the commission too, again it's MEPs from countries who don't have serious AI industries or ambition voting to block something they'll never benefit from anyway.
What I am very glad to see is that the government has refused to trade away tech and financial regulations. I think we could have wiped 4-7% off GDP growth in the next 10 years if they had while the EU catches up to the rest of the world.
One thing that does give me modest hope is that Starmer's government do seem aware of British advantages and opportunities in tech areas. It's not just talk they genuinely seem to get it (or so I forlornly believe)
It's not surprising that they get it - as it offers one of the very few avenues for Britain to escape its low productivity, need-migration nightmare of stagnancy and social angst. Also it could save the NHS
I think it's so big now that they can't afford to fuck it up. AI jobs leaving the UK would result in huge losses in income tax and NI. Ideologically I'm sure that Starmer would love to sign us back up to dynamic alignment on finance and tech with the EU but the very real economic hit would impoverish the nation.
Why don't we just scrap GDPR?
In terms of slightly pointless red tape that constrains more innovative industries including AI, that's got to be pretty high up the list.
Depends, how much do you value data protection over “AI companies”?
The amount of hacks and data leaks recently suggest we need more GDPR not less
GDPR does absolutely nothing to stop hacks and data leaks.....tells us you know nothing about it
GDPR is about only retaining data you need. Therefore if you store less data, you’re less vulnerable to hacks.
In addition, the fewer people and systems that have access to any data you do store, opportunities for a data leak are much reduced.
Storing less data (clue GDPR has made no difference to that in reality) does not make you less vulnerable, it would make you a less worthwhile target maybe but as most companies do an end run around gdpr by click the accept button all it has in effect done is to add a pretty pointless extra step for most customers where they have to click away the modal before they get to what they wanted
Look at this stunning development on the outskirts of the town. They are new builds yet the express a timeless beauty, the elegance of the best Georgian townhouses married with the flamboyance of Victorian Gothic, even the adorable oddities of Tudor and Jacobean. Most of all, they scream: NUNEATON
These are houses that could only be in Nuneaton, the same way the Ca d'Oro could only exist on the Grand Canal. They have the intrinsic beauty of Nuneaton stonework and artistry, and capture the Nuneaton essence in their noom. Every single brick is, simply, Nuneaton, down to its atoms
Nuneaton is thankful you will never want to go there. The architecture of these new towns is specifically designed accordiing to stringent guidelines to keep the likes of SeanT out. And as someone who lives in a new town I too am thankful. Let's home more people from Hong Kong and less Camden ****s
Come on, we could do so much better than these identikit horrors. Surely.
We could. And if you came to my part of the town - built around 2000 - you can see that they succeeded.
But please don't ignore the important part of my post - you could have a lovely, well built an unique house in the middle of a 10-lane motorway and it'd be a shit house. The environment the house is in matters as much - in my view more - than the house itself. People are focusing too much on the building, and not where it sits.
This is where the 15-minute cities (and similar) are utterly correct - and the concepts' detractors are being silly. When my son was a toddler, being able to easily push him safely in a pram to nursery, the supermarket, five different playparks, a leisure centre, the doctor's, the library, etc, etc, was absolutely priceless. A friend of mine who lives in South London had to drive to get to most of those - except the supermarket, which was across a busy main road.
But that is merely your view of a nice environment, personally I would absolutely detest it.
Why?
Already answered it, some people are gregarious and take comfort being in the herd. You are I assume one. Some of us like to keep as much distance as possible from random people and prefer just to mix with friends
Fair enough. You can spend a million or more and buy a really nice house in the middle of the countryside, with no neighbours aside from some sheep and a few cows.
My sister raised her kids in a remote house, and one of her kids in particular hated the distance from his friends.
Nothing with either way was just pointing out not everyone wants to live cheek by jowl. Where I grew up there were 10 houses and 5 miles to the nearest shop
I don't particularly *want* it. If I could get a house with 20 acres, stables (for a model railway, obvs...), a triple garage, and six bedrooms for £400k that was still within easy (*) walking distance of parks, schools, facilities then I'd be as happy as larry. But it's a case of compromise - and this compromise suits me well.
I can go out of my door and do a five-mile circular off-road run, only crossing three roads (after a 300-metre walk to get to the boundary path). That's priceless. You might not care. Others will.
(*) 'easy' required because my capacity for walking is large...
Just completed my two hour call with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. I believe it went very well. Russia and Ukraine will immediately start negotiations toward a Ceasefire and, more importantly, an END to the War. The conditions for that will be negotiated between the two parties, as it can only be, because they know details of a negotiation that nobody else would be aware of. The tone and spirit of the conversation were excellent. If it wasn't, I would say so now, rather than later. Russia wants to do largescale TRADE with the United States when this catastrophic "bloodbath" is over, and I agree. There is a tremendous opportunity for Russia to create massive amounts of jobs and wealth. Its potential is UNLIMITED. Likewise, Ukraine can be a great beneficiary on Trade, in the process of rebuilding its Country. Negotiations between Russia and Ukraine will begin immediately. I have so informed President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, of Ukraine, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, President Emmanuel Macron, of France, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, of Italy, Chancellor Friedrich Merz, of Germany, and President Alexander Stubb, of Finland, during a call with me, immediately after the call with President Putin. The Vatican, as represented by the Pope, has stated that it would be very interested in hosting the negotiations. Let the process begin!
The BBC commentary on this deal encapsulates one of the reasons the pro-European cause has had such a poor run in recent years.
Opening sentence: “this is undoubtedly a significant deal. In a funny way, though, for Sir Keir Starmer to succeed he needs it to seem as insignificant and uncontroversial as possible”.
I couldn’t disagree more. This has been the repeated failing of politicians on Europe. They fear the Eurosceptics and the Daily Mail, so they play down the positives and understate everything. Which means voters don’t notice or appreciate the good stuff while the silence then leaves the floor for the Mail et al to paint their own pictures. And the understatement just makes them look shifty.
Shout it from the rooftops for once. Take control of the narrative. Does Trump try to make all his new measures seem as insignificant and uncontroversial as possible? No.
The BBC seems to be turning into GB News with its negative slant . And Chris Mason is just parroting the betrayal narrative with his ridiculous question .
Yes, BBC R4 news summary at 2pm was: Starmer's done a deal with the EU. Some fishermen are unhappy. Farage and Badenoch are unhappy. Then Lord Frost featured, being scathing. That was it. Utterly unbalanced.
I'm a Leaver and abhor this craven, useless government , yet I am essentially content with this deal. It is a sensible compromise between two powers that are bound to trade freely, and benefit from doing so
On the face of it, it is not the capitulation I expected from Starmer and his team. They have won real positives in return for a surrender on fishing. Both sides stand to gain
So if they can persuade an enemy like me that this is Not Bad, even Quite Good, then they should be able to persuade Britain. This is on the Labour comms team. Can they do it?
Ultimately this will help in the real world, and a non-insignificant proportion of the public will notice before 2028/9: - People don't like queueing at the "slow lane" at airports. Let's assume it's not ready by this summer, but people will notice in the next couple of years. - Both parents and young people will like the youth mobility scheme. - The food deal means we can export more to Europe again: real world benefit with little cost given our standard are already aligned - ...fishing "sell out" keeps the status quo except our fishermen can now export back into Europe much more easily (so a net improvement even there) - Defence and security pact important given Russia/Ukraine/Trump dynamic, and will benefit our defence companies down the line
Think back to Brexit negotiations: there was much talk of "the four freedoms are indivisible". Well, Starmer has just carved out being (essentially) part of the single market for food, fish, energy and defence, while not conceding on freedom of movement where it matters.
Clearly there's lots of detail to be ironed out, but it's a step in the right direction.
Not really, the UK has become a rule taker on food regulation which I hope a future government will reverse. It's dynamic alignment all over again which the Tories rightly refused and Labour have just given in. Useless
We have? Trump was lobbied hard to impose US rules on the UK. We did not take those rules and said no. In this new SPS deal we have the right to be consulted early about changes to food standards.
Remember that as things stands we are already aligned with the EU. Both UK and EU are committed to only raising standards so the only debate is how fast those improvements are being made.
Consulted just means ignored in reality. Didn't we also have a right to a consultation on reducing the CAP when Blair gave up a third of the rebate? Our politicians never learn.
I'm trying to get worked up about this deal.... but I can't
It's OK, fuck it, we have to follow EU rules on food so companies can have an easier time exporting there. I hate the ECJ doing anything over our heads but... pff.... it's biscuits and sausages
Also if we are going to follow any food standards I would genuinely prefer us to go the EU way than the US way. The EU way on food is one of the few areas the EU is clearly superior by a distance
I also like the egates (even tho the EU refusing to let us use them was sheer spite in the first place); the pet passports; youth mobility - let the Spanish girls come work in our bars again
I am sorry for the fisherpeople but at least their deal hasn't gotten WORSE
The deal is not gamechanging. It's more a modest but needed rapprochement after a nasty divorce, so the kids can stop being traumatised by all the acrimony and tea-pot throwing. It will do
Yes, I'm not particularly fussed either way, but it will mean that some gene editing and the UK's food biotech industry is now regulated from Brussels rather than from Westminster, it's an area where the UK is probably among the global leaders and the EU very much not so expect hostile regulations from Brussels to damage what is currently a small but very fast growing industry in this country. I expect what could have become a $10bn industry might just end up being strangled at birth or just end up being sold to US competitors for the IP and then once the EU catches up to where we would have been otherwise it will be too late and we'll end up having to import the IP/licences from the US.
It's probably not a deal breaker but it's a definite downside risk factor in that it doesn't necessarily kill many jobs today but it will probably prevent us from having a big food biotech industry.
Yes, that's the one area that genuinely troubles me
Indeed, and this is what I mean by being a rule taker. Dynamic alignment vs mutual standards recognition was always the debate and the government basically just waved the white flag. I think this is a short term gain for a probable long term loss overall because Brussels is a poorer regulator. Just as the government is pushing UK regulators for a growth agenda we've signed away food regulation to a known entity which is a big drag on growth. However, given that the industry is small it won't be a huge overall loss in near terms and really we'll never know what would have happened otherwise so will we miss what we never had?
The previous government had eight years to come up with some ideas as to how diverging standards might benefit us, and of course they didn’t, because the downsides would have outweighed any upside.
We diverged on AI regulations quite substantially and the UK's AI industry is larger than the EU27 combined by quite a large amount. That's hundreds of thousands of very highly paid jobs in the UK that would otherwise be in the US or somewhere in Asia and it's still our fastest growing industry and will likely become position 3 after finance and pharma in the next decade.
Gene editing and food biotech is/was the next big divergence that could drive a big new UK industry to make up for lost EU exports but alas we may never know as I suspect the innovators will sell their nascent startups to US rivals and move to the US over the next few years as Brussels snuffs the life out of them.
Allie Renison of the IoD is on X claiming that EU laws are being seriously relaxed RIGHT NOW to allow European companies to do this tech wizardry, following the success in the UK
So unless they can frame those laws to hinder the UK but still allow EU tech to do it (that seems very hard) our pessimism MIGHT be misplaced
The EC may look to relax the current tough regulations on it, yet it will be the know nothing MEPs that protect "traditional farming" and vote it down. A potential huge future industry for the UK may end up being thrown away by Hungarian or Belgian MEPs representing areas just as they made trouble for trade deals in the past. It's not an industry that they have or could realistically attract so blocking it off literally makes no difference to them. All of the onerous AI regulations came from the EU parliament rather than the commission too, again it's MEPs from countries who don't have serious AI industries or ambition voting to block something they'll never benefit from anyway.
What I am very glad to see is that the government has refused to trade away tech and financial regulations. I think we could have wiped 4-7% off GDP growth in the next 10 years if they had while the EU catches up to the rest of the world.
One thing that does give me modest hope is that Starmer's government do seem aware of British advantages and opportunities in tech areas. It's not just talk they genuinely seem to get it (or so I forlornly believe)
It's not surprising that they get it - as it offers one of the very few avenues for Britain to escape its low productivity, need-migration nightmare of stagnancy and social angst. Also it could save the NHS
I think it's so big now that they can't afford to fuck it up. AI jobs leaving the UK would result in huge losses in income tax and NI. Ideologically I'm sure that Starmer would love to sign us back up to dynamic alignment on finance and tech with the EU but the very real economic hit would impoverish the nation.
Why don't we just scrap GDPR?
In terms of slightly pointless red tape that constrains more innovative industries including AI, that's got to be pretty high up the list.
Depends, how much do you value data protection over “AI companies”?
The amount of hacks and data leaks recently suggest we need more GDPR not less
GDPR does absolutely nothing to stop hacks and data leaks.....tells us you know nothing about it
GDPR is about only retaining data you need. Therefore if you store less data, you’re less vulnerable to hacks.
In addition, the fewer people and systems that have access to any data you do store, opportunities for a data leak are much reduced.
Storing less data (clue GDPR has made no difference to that in reality) does not make you less vulnerable, it would make you a less worthwhile target maybe but as most companies do an end run around gdpr by click the accept button all it has in effect done is to add a pretty pointless extra step for most customers where they have to click away the modal before they get to what they wanted
Of course it makes you less vulnerable. If you don’t store any sensitive data, you don’t really have to worry about data loss as there is no harm. The point of GDPR is to give people control over their sensitive data and not allow companies to simply store it willy nilly. Now you may argue that it doesn’t work and it probably doesn’t but getting rid of it is simply admitting defeat really.
Look at this stunning development on the outskirts of the town. They are new builds yet the express a timeless beauty, the elegance of the best Georgian townhouses married with the flamboyance of Victorian Gothic, even the adorable oddities of Tudor and Jacobean. Most of all, they scream: NUNEATON
These are houses that could only be in Nuneaton, the same way the Ca d'Oro could only exist on the Grand Canal. They have the intrinsic beauty of Nuneaton stonework and artistry, and capture the Nuneaton essence in their noom. Every single brick is, simply, Nuneaton, down to its atoms
Nuneaton is thankful you will never want to go there. The architecture of these new towns is specifically designed accordiing to stringent guidelines to keep the likes of SeanT out. And as someone who lives in a new town I too am thankful. Let's home more people from Hong Kong and less Camden ****s
Come on, we could do so much better than these identikit horrors. Surely.
We could. And if you came to my part of the town - built around 2000 - you can see that they succeeded.
But please don't ignore the important part of my post - you could have a lovely, well built an unique house in the middle of a 10-lane motorway and it'd be a shit house. The environment the house is in matters as much - in my view more - than the house itself. People are focusing too much on the building, and not where it sits.
This is where the 15-minute cities (and similar) are utterly correct - and the concepts' detractors are being silly. When my son was a toddler, being able to easily push him safely in a pram to nursery, the supermarket, five different playparks, a leisure centre, the doctor's, the library, etc, etc, was absolutely priceless. A friend of mine who lives in South London had to drive to get to most of those - except the supermarket, which was across a busy main road.
I know there are practicalities, but honestly, they just look so ... depressing.
You could surely have all these facilities with just a little less density, a bit more green, and a bit less uniformity.
When gardens are postage stamps overlooked by the 10 neighbours it is no wonder they all end up as astroturf.
[Edit: I think the house in the M62 would be quite an interesting place to live, to be honest]
At that density it's just silly not to build flats. You could put a half of the land over to 1-bed and 2-bed flats with a nice park, the other half to big family homes with decent gardens.
Though we disagree a lot, I cannot help but agree here.
I'm looking at population density map of my home town. The older housing estates are between 10 and 40 people per hectare (where I grew up). Stuff from about 20 years ago is about 50. The newest estate is 80-100!
I currently live in a flat with density of about 120, and we have a nice private garden and a drying green. I used to live in a tenement at density of 350. I'd bring in a land efficiency rule which means that anything over 80 pop per hectare has to be flats.
That's happened here, and something I'm against: the newer parts of town have much higher density than the older parts. I think it's gone too far. But the government wants more houses built, and the land is currently expensive.
We're holidaying near Poitiers in the summer. Any suggestions on things to see/ do / avoid? Puy du Pou and Futoroscope are on the list. What else? We're driving, so transport generally shouldn't be an issue.
Avoid the area of Poitiers, one of the most boring corners of France
Boring areas are interesting; you get a truer feel for a place when it's not trying.
Anyway, nowhere in France is properly boring if you look properly.
I was kinda teasing, tho it is one of the less appealing regions of a generally beautiful country
In my experience, nowhere in the world is boring, if you look properly
Yes, even Wick. And Newent
Wick isn't boring. Its bleakness and emptiness are fascinating. I would love it if work sent me to Wick for a couple of days. I nearly got to go once, but a colleague got the gig. If you were told you had to spend two days in x, what value of x would provoke the greatest ennui? I suggest: Nuneaton.
Slough?
I'be interested to go to Slough becauae of The Office and the Betjeman poem. Not that interested. I'd rather be sent to Norwich. But more interested than Nuneaton.
I lived in slough from 87 to 2022....triple axe murder, stabbing death, gang violence, a non fatal stabbing, next door flat being torched, sectarian violence, a roof almost killing me when the wind ripped it off a block of flats all in a street I lived on. In addition arrested probably about 50 times for looking like a person of interest. Yes I wouldn't call it boring shall we say
Just completed my two hour call with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. I believe it went very well. Russia and Ukraine will immediately start negotiations toward a Ceasefire and, more importantly, an END to the War. The conditions for that will be negotiated between the two parties, as it can only be, because they know details of a negotiation that nobody else would be aware of. The tone and spirit of the conversation were excellent. If it wasn't, I would say so now, rather than later. Russia wants to do largescale TRADE with the United States when this catastrophic "bloodbath" is over, and I agree. There is a tremendous opportunity for Russia to create massive amounts of jobs and wealth. Its potential is UNLIMITED. Likewise, Ukraine can be a great beneficiary on Trade, in the process of rebuilding its Country. Negotiations between Russia and Ukraine will begin immediately. I have so informed President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, of Ukraine, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, President Emmanuel Macron, of France, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, of Italy, Chancellor Friedrich Merz, of Germany, and President Alexander Stubb, of Finland, during a call with me, immediately after the call with President Putin. The Vatican, as represented by the Pope, has stated that it would be very interested in hosting the negotiations. Let the process begin!
So it will be a conditional ceasefire. And we know what conditions Russia will demand...
(It's interesting that Starmer was left off that call...)
We're holidaying near Poitiers in the summer. Any suggestions on things to see/ do / avoid? Puy du Pou and Futoroscope are on the list. What else? We're driving, so transport generally shouldn't be an issue.
Avoid the area of Poitiers, one of the most boring corners of France
Boring areas are interesting; you get a truer feel for a place when it's not trying.
Anyway, nowhere in France is properly boring if you look properly.
I was kinda teasing, tho it is one of the less appealing regions of a generally beautiful country
In my experience, nowhere in the world is boring, if you look properly
Yes, even Wick. And Newent
Wick isn't boring. Its bleakness and emptiness are fascinating. I would love it if work sent me to Wick for a couple of days. I nearly got to go once, but a colleague got the gig. If you were told you had to spend two days in x, what value of x would provoke the greatest ennui? I suggest: Nuneaton.
lol!
When I was choosing my archetypal boring place in middle England I nearly went for Nuneaton, over Newent. It was only the tedious small minded "sound" of the latter name that won the day
Western Europe has quite a few boring areas - not dismal enough to be interestingly bleak, like Wick, simply meh
Chunks of northern and central France. Most of inland Denmark in winter. Various mid size German cities, in fact large swathes of Germany away from mountains and sea
The burbs of Milan. The bit between Rotterdam and Amstersdam. The Veneto is a surprisingly boring part of Italy. It's like everything got packed into Venice and the rest is shite, despite the Palladio villas
The less posh bits of Geneva
Nuneaton
I have misunderstood a meme. I thought Newent grim, rather than meh. Sorry Newent. I shall reconsider.
Just completed my two hour call with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. I believe it went very well. Russia and Ukraine will immediately start negotiations toward a Ceasefire and, more importantly, an END to the War. The conditions for that will be negotiated between the two parties, as it can only be, because they know details of a negotiation that nobody else would be aware of. The tone and spirit of the conversation were excellent. If it wasn't, I would say so now, rather than later. Russia wants to do largescale TRADE with the United States when this catastrophic "bloodbath" is over, and I agree. There is a tremendous opportunity for Russia to create massive amounts of jobs and wealth. Its potential is UNLIMITED. Likewise, Ukraine can be a great beneficiary on Trade, in the process of rebuilding its Country. Negotiations between Russia and Ukraine will begin immediately. I have so informed President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, of Ukraine, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, President Emmanuel Macron, of France, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, of Italy, Chancellor Friedrich Merz, of Germany, and President Alexander Stubb, of Finland, during a call with me, immediately after the call with President Putin. The Vatican, as represented by the Pope, has stated that it would be very interested in hosting the negotiations. Let the process begin!
He obviously hates Starmer. He doesn't even give Starmer a name check. Hopefully he called Boris and Farage.
This is where I am right now. Primrose Hill. 5 minutes from my flat. One of the most beautiful urban burbs of the world
Is there any reason why we can’t build like this again? No. King Charles is doing it. The French are doing it across France. Likewise the Germans and Dutch
Reform was always going to own the total repudiation of the deal. The space for the Tories was to attack this deal as inferior to the deal that should have been struck; an impossible deal based on mutual recognition of standards, much reduced fishing access for the EU, and anything else they could think of up to and including reparations for the Danegeld.
When you’re in opposition, you don’t actually have to deliver, so you can say anything.
The BBC commentary on this deal encapsulates one of the reasons the pro-European cause has had such a poor run in recent years.
Opening sentence: “this is undoubtedly a significant deal. In a funny way, though, for Sir Keir Starmer to succeed he needs it to seem as insignificant and uncontroversial as possible”.
I couldn’t disagree more. This has been the repeated failing of politicians on Europe. They fear the Eurosceptics and the Daily Mail, so they play down the positives and understate everything. Which means voters don’t notice or appreciate the good stuff while the silence then leaves the floor for the Mail et al to paint their own pictures. And the understatement just makes them look shifty.
Shout it from the rooftops for once. Take control of the narrative. Does Trump try to make all his new measures seem as insignificant and uncontroversial as possible? No.
The BBC seems to be turning into GB News with its negative slant . And Chris Mason is just parroting the betrayal narrative with his ridiculous question .
Yes, BBC R4 news summary at 2pm was: Starmer's done a deal with the EU. Some fishermen are unhappy. Farage and Badenoch are unhappy. Then Lord Frost featured, being scathing. That was it. Utterly unbalanced.
I'm a Leaver and abhor this craven, useless government , yet I am essentially content with this deal. It is a sensible compromise between two powers that are bound to trade freely, and benefit from doing so
On the face of it, it is not the capitulation I expected from Starmer and his team. They have won real positives in return for a surrender on fishing. Both sides stand to gain
So if they can persuade an enemy like me that this is Not Bad, even Quite Good, then they should be able to persuade Britain. This is on the Labour comms team. Can they do it?
Ultimately this will help in the real world, and a non-insignificant proportion of the public will notice before 2028/9: - People don't like queueing at the "slow lane" at airports. Let's assume it's not ready by this summer, but people will notice in the next couple of years. - Both parents and young people will like the youth mobility scheme. - The food deal means we can export more to Europe again: real world benefit with little cost given our standard are already aligned - ...fishing "sell out" keeps the status quo except our fishermen can now export back into Europe much more easily (so a net improvement even there) - Defence and security pact important given Russia/Ukraine/Trump dynamic, and will benefit our defence companies down the line
Think back to Brexit negotiations: there was much talk of "the four freedoms are indivisible". Well, Starmer has just carved out being (essentially) part of the single market for food, fish, energy and defence, while not conceding on freedom of movement where it matters.
Clearly there's lots of detail to be ironed out, but it's a step in the right direction.
Not really, the UK has become a rule taker on food regulation which I hope a future government will reverse. It's dynamic alignment all over again which the Tories rightly refused and Labour have just given in. Useless
We have? Trump was lobbied hard to impose US rules on the UK. We did not take those rules and said no. In this new SPS deal we have the right to be consulted early about changes to food standards.
Remember that as things stands we are already aligned with the EU. Both UK and EU are committed to only raising standards so the only debate is how fast those improvements are being made.
Consulted just means ignored in reality. Didn't we also have a right to a consultation on reducing the CAP when Blair gave up a third of the rebate? Our politicians never learn.
I'm trying to get worked up about this deal.... but I can't
It's OK, fuck it, we have to follow EU rules on food so companies can have an easier time exporting there. I hate the ECJ doing anything over our heads but... pff.... it's biscuits and sausages
Also if we are going to follow any food standards I would genuinely prefer us to go the EU way than the US way. The EU way on food is one of the few areas the EU is clearly superior by a distance
I also like the egates (even tho the EU refusing to let us use them was sheer spite in the first place); the pet passports; youth mobility - let the Spanish girls come work in our bars again
I am sorry for the fisherpeople but at least their deal hasn't gotten WORSE
The deal is not gamechanging. It's more a modest but needed rapprochement after a nasty divorce, so the kids can stop being traumatised by all the acrimony and tea-pot throwing. It will do
Yes, I'm not particularly fussed either way, but it will mean that some gene editing and the UK's food biotech industry is now regulated from Brussels rather than from Westminster, it's an area where the UK is probably among the global leaders and the EU very much not so expect hostile regulations from Brussels to damage what is currently a small but very fast growing industry in this country. I expect what could have become a $10bn industry might just end up being strangled at birth or just end up being sold to US competitors for the IP and then once the EU catches up to where we would have been otherwise it will be too late and we'll end up having to import the IP/licences from the US.
It's probably not a deal breaker but it's a definite downside risk factor in that it doesn't necessarily kill many jobs today but it will probably prevent us from having a big food biotech industry.
Yes, that's the one area that genuinely troubles me
Indeed, and this is what I mean by being a rule taker. Dynamic alignment vs mutual standards recognition was always the debate and the government basically just waved the white flag. I think this is a short term gain for a probable long term loss overall because Brussels is a poorer regulator. Just as the government is pushing UK regulators for a growth agenda we've signed away food regulation to a known entity which is a big drag on growth. However, given that the industry is small it won't be a huge overall loss in near terms and really we'll never know what would have happened otherwise so will we miss what we never had?
The previous government had eight years to come up with some ideas as to how diverging standards might benefit us, and of course they didn’t, because the downsides would have outweighed any upside.
We diverged on AI regulations quite substantially and the UK's AI industry is larger than the EU27 combined by quite a large amount. That's hundreds of thousands of very highly paid jobs in the UK that would otherwise be in the US or somewhere in Asia and it's still our fastest growing industry and will likely become position 3 after finance and pharma in the next decade.
Gene editing and food biotech is/was the next big divergence that could drive a big new UK industry to make up for lost EU exports but alas we may never know as I suspect the innovators will sell their nascent startups to US rivals and move to the US over the next few years as Brussels snuffs the life out of them.
Allie Renison of the IoD is on X claiming that EU laws are being seriously relaxed RIGHT NOW to allow European companies to do this tech wizardry, following the success in the UK
So unless they can frame those laws to hinder the UK but still allow EU tech to do it (that seems very hard) our pessimism MIGHT be misplaced
The EC may look to relax the current tough regulations on it, yet it will be the know nothing MEPs that protect "traditional farming" and vote it down. A potential huge future industry for the UK may end up being thrown away by Hungarian or Belgian MEPs representing areas just as they made trouble for trade deals in the past. It's not an industry that they have or could realistically attract so blocking it off literally makes no difference to them. All of the onerous AI regulations came from the EU parliament rather than the commission too, again it's MEPs from countries who don't have serious AI industries or ambition voting to block something they'll never benefit from anyway.
What I am very glad to see is that the government has refused to trade away tech and financial regulations. I think we could have wiped 4-7% off GDP growth in the next 10 years if they had while the EU catches up to the rest of the world.
One thing that does give me modest hope is that Starmer's government do seem aware of British advantages and opportunities in tech areas. It's not just talk they genuinely seem to get it (or so I forlornly believe)
It's not surprising that they get it - as it offers one of the very few avenues for Britain to escape its low productivity, need-migration nightmare of stagnancy and social angst. Also it could save the NHS
I think it's so big now that they can't afford to fuck it up. AI jobs leaving the UK would result in huge losses in income tax and NI. Ideologically I'm sure that Starmer would love to sign us back up to dynamic alignment on finance and tech with the EU but the very real economic hit would impoverish the nation.
Why don't we just scrap GDPR?
In terms of slightly pointless red tape that constrains more innovative industries including AI, that's got to be pretty high up the list.
Depends, how much do you value data protection over “AI companies”?
The amount of hacks and data leaks recently suggest we need more GDPR not less
GDPR does absolutely nothing to stop hacks and data leaks.....tells us you know nothing about it
GDPR is about only retaining data you need. Therefore if you store less data, you’re less vulnerable to hacks.
In addition, the fewer people and systems that have access to any data you do store, opportunities for a data leak are much reduced.
Storing less data (clue GDPR has made no difference to that in reality) does not make you less vulnerable, it would make you a less worthwhile target maybe but as most companies do an end run around gdpr by click the accept button all it has in effect done is to add a pretty pointless extra step for most customers where they have to click away the modal before they get to what they wanted
Of course it makes you less vulnerable. If you don’t store any sensitive data, you don’t really have to worry about data loss as there is no harm. The point of GDPR is to give people control over their sensitive data and not allow companies to simply store it willy nilly. Now you may argue that it doesn’t work and it probably doesn’t but getting rid of it is simply admitting defeat really.
I have worked in IT for years, if you think we ever stopped storing data because of GDPR you are deluded. We merely put in a click this to agree dialog
Look at this stunning development on the outskirts of the town. They are new builds yet the express a timeless beauty, the elegance of the best Georgian townhouses married with the flamboyance of Victorian Gothic, even the adorable oddities of Tudor and Jacobean. Most of all, they scream: NUNEATON
These are houses that could only be in Nuneaton, the same way the Ca d'Oro could only exist on the Grand Canal. They have the intrinsic beauty of Nuneaton stonework and artistry, and capture the Nuneaton essence in their noom. Every single brick is, simply, Nuneaton, down to its atoms
Nuneaton is thankful you will never want to go there. The architecture of these new towns is specifically designed accordiing to stringent guidelines to keep the likes of SeanT out. And as someone who lives in a new town I too am thankful. Let's home more people from Hong Kong and less Camden ****s
Come on, we could do so much better than these identikit horrors. Surely.
We could. And if you came to my part of the town - built around 2000 - you can see that they succeeded.
But please don't ignore the important part of my post - you could have a lovely, well built an unique house in the middle of a 10-lane motorway and it'd be a shit house. The environment the house is in matters as much - in my view more - than the house itself. People are focusing too much on the building, and not where it sits.
This is where the 15-minute cities (and similar) are utterly correct - and the concepts' detractors are being silly. When my son was a toddler, being able to easily push him safely in a pram to nursery, the supermarket, five different playparks, a leisure centre, the doctor's, the library, etc, etc, was absolutely priceless. A friend of mine who lives in South London had to drive to get to most of those - except the supermarket, which was across a busy main road.
I know there are practicalities, but honestly, they just look so ... depressing.
You could surely have all these facilities with just a little less density, a bit more green, and a bit less uniformity.
When gardens are postage stamps overlooked by the 10 neighbours it is no wonder they all end up as astroturf.
[Edit: I think the house in the M62 would be quite an interesting place to live, to be honest]
At that density it's just silly not to build flats. You could put a half of the land over to 1-bed and 2-bed flats with a nice park, the other half to big family homes with decent gardens.
I agree. I'd much rather have a nice flat overlooking a park than one of these 'executive' houses.
I'd much rather a house on it's own than a flat anywhere.
Liberate planning and let people decide what they want to build, and where, with the cost of land back at 2% of the cost of the house, not upto 70% of it.
Then people can decide if they want a house, or a flat, or anything else. Their choice, not yours or mine, or the developers.
Just completed my two hour call with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. I believe it went very well. Russia and Ukraine will immediately start negotiations toward a Ceasefire and, more importantly, an END to the War. The conditions for that will be negotiated between the two parties, as it can only be, because they know details of a negotiation that nobody else would be aware of. The tone and spirit of the conversation were excellent. If it wasn't, I would say so now, rather than later. Russia wants to do largescale TRADE with the United States when this catastrophic "bloodbath" is over, and I agree. There is a tremendous opportunity for Russia to create massive amounts of jobs and wealth. Its potential is UNLIMITED. Likewise, Ukraine can be a great beneficiary on Trade, in the process of rebuilding its Country. Negotiations between Russia and Ukraine will begin immediately. I have so informed President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, of Ukraine, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, President Emmanuel Macron, of France, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, of Italy, Chancellor Friedrich Merz, of Germany, and President Alexander Stubb, of Finland, during a call with me, immediately after the call with President Putin. The Vatican, as represented by the Pope, has stated that it would be very interested in hosting the negotiations. Let the process begin!
Trump appears to be very squeamish about war casualties.
That's a weakness if the USA ever needs to get involved in military operations.
Look at this stunning development on the outskirts of the town. They are new builds yet the express a timeless beauty, the elegance of the best Georgian townhouses married with the flamboyance of Victorian Gothic, even the adorable oddities of Tudor and Jacobean. Most of all, they scream: NUNEATON
These are houses that could only be in Nuneaton, the same way the Ca d'Oro could only exist on the Grand Canal. They have the intrinsic beauty of Nuneaton stonework and artistry, and capture the Nuneaton essence in their noom. Every single brick is, simply, Nuneaton, down to its atoms
Nuneaton is thankful you will never want to go there. The architecture of these new towns is specifically designed accordiing to stringent guidelines to keep the likes of SeanT out. And as someone who lives in a new town I too am thankful. Let's home more people from Hong Kong and less Camden ****s
Come on, we could do so much better than these identikit horrors. Surely.
We could. And if you came to my part of the town - built around 2000 - you can see that they succeeded.
But please don't ignore the important part of my post - you could have a lovely, well built an unique house in the middle of a 10-lane motorway and it'd be a shit house. The environment the house is in matters as much - in my view more - than the house itself. People are focusing too much on the building, and not where it sits.
This is where the 15-minute cities (and similar) are utterly correct - and the concepts' detractors are being silly. When my son was a toddler, being able to easily push him safely in a pram to nursery, the supermarket, five different playparks, a leisure centre, the doctor's, the library, etc, etc, was absolutely priceless. A friend of mine who lives in South London had to drive to get to most of those - except the supermarket, which was across a busy main road.
I know there are practicalities, but honestly, they just look so ... depressing.
You could surely have all these facilities with just a little less density, a bit more green, and a bit less uniformity.
When gardens are postage stamps overlooked by the 10 neighbours it is no wonder they all end up as astroturf.
[Edit: I think the house in the M62 would be quite an interesting place to live, to be honest]
At that density it's just silly not to build flats. You could put a half of the land over to 1-bed and 2-bed flats with a nice park, the other half to big family homes with decent gardens.
Though we disagree a lot, I cannot help but agree here.
I'm looking at population density map of my home town. The older housing estates are between 10 and 40 people per hectare (where I grew up). Stuff from about 20 years ago is about 50. The newest estate is 80-100!
I currently live in a flat with density of about 120, and we have a nice private garden and a drying green. I used to live in a tenement at density of 350. I'd bring in a land efficiency rule which means that anything over 80 pop per hectare has to be flats.
It's possible to build high quality, dense housing if you build up. 3 story homes can provide 3 to 5 bedrooms in a small footprint.
But if land and planning were liberated there'd be less reason to build on a small footprint.
Just completed my two hour call with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. I believe it went very well. Russia and Ukraine will immediately start negotiations toward a Ceasefire and, more importantly, an END to the War. The conditions for that will be negotiated between the two parties, as it can only be, because they know details of a negotiation that nobody else would be aware of. The tone and spirit of the conversation were excellent. If it wasn't, I would say so now, rather than later. Russia wants to do largescale TRADE with the United States when this catastrophic "bloodbath" is over, and I agree. There is a tremendous opportunity for Russia to create massive amounts of jobs and wealth. Its potential is UNLIMITED. Likewise, Ukraine can be a great beneficiary on Trade, in the process of rebuilding its Country. Negotiations between Russia and Ukraine will begin immediately. I have so informed President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, of Ukraine, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, President Emmanuel Macron, of France, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, of Italy, Chancellor Friedrich Merz, of Germany, and President Alexander Stubb, of Finland, during a call with me, immediately after the call with President Putin. The Vatican, as represented by the Pope, has stated that it would be very interested in hosting the negotiations. Let the process begin!
Look at this stunning development on the outskirts of the town. They are new builds yet the express a timeless beauty, the elegance of the best Georgian townhouses married with the flamboyance of Victorian Gothic, even the adorable oddities of Tudor and Jacobean. Most of all, they scream: NUNEATON
These are houses that could only be in Nuneaton, the same way the Ca d'Oro could only exist on the Grand Canal. They have the intrinsic beauty of Nuneaton stonework and artistry, and capture the Nuneaton essence in their noom. Every single brick is, simply, Nuneaton, down to its atoms
Nuneaton is thankful you will never want to go there. The architecture of these new towns is specifically designed accordiing to stringent guidelines to keep the likes of SeanT out. And as someone who lives in a new town I too am thankful. Let's home more people from Hong Kong and less Camden ****s
Come on, we could do so much better than these identikit horrors. Surely.
We could. And if you came to my part of the town - built around 2000 - you can see that they succeeded.
But please don't ignore the important part of my post - you could have a lovely, well built an unique house in the middle of a 10-lane motorway and it'd be a shit house. The environment the house is in matters as much - in my view more - than the house itself. People are focusing too much on the building, and not where it sits.
This is where the 15-minute cities (and similar) are utterly correct - and the concepts' detractors are being silly. When my son was a toddler, being able to easily push him safely in a pram to nursery, the supermarket, five different playparks, a leisure centre, the doctor's, the library, etc, etc, was absolutely priceless. A friend of mine who lives in South London had to drive to get to most of those - except the supermarket, which was across a busy main road.
I know there are practicalities, but honestly, they just look so ... depressing.
You could surely have all these facilities with just a little less density, a bit more green, and a bit less uniformity.
When gardens are postage stamps overlooked by the 10 neighbours it is no wonder they all end up as astroturf.
[Edit: I think the house in the M62 would be quite an interesting place to live, to be honest]
At that density it's just silly not to build flats. You could put a half of the land over to 1-bed and 2-bed flats with a nice park, the other half to big family homes with decent gardens.
I agree. I'd much rather have a nice flat overlooking a park than one of these 'executive' houses.
I'd much rather a house on it's own than a flat anywhere.
Liberate planning and let people decide what they want to build, and where, with the cost of land back at 2% of the cost of the house, not upto 70% of it.
Then people can decide if they want a house, or a flat, or anything else. Their choice, not yours or mine, or the developers.
I lived on the 20th floor of a tower block as a kid in Hong Kong, I would never live in another high rise after that
This is where I am right now. Primrose Hill. 5 minutes from my flat. One of the most beautiful urban burbs of the world
Is there any reason why we can’t build like this again? No. King Charles is doing it. The French are doing it across France. Likewise the Germans and Dutch
Enough ticky tacky redbrick boxes. Build beauty
How much do those houses go for? I mean the whole house, not individual flats within.
Reform was always going to own the total repudiation of the deal. The space for the Tories was to attack this deal as inferior to the deal that should have been struck; an impossible deal based on mutual recognition of standards, much reduced fishing access for the EU, and anything else they could think of up to and including reparations for the Danegeld.
When you’re in opposition, you don’t actually have to deliver, so you can say anything.
Look at this stunning development on the outskirts of the town. They are new builds yet the express a timeless beauty, the elegance of the best Georgian townhouses married with the flamboyance of Victorian Gothic, even the adorable oddities of Tudor and Jacobean. Most of all, they scream: NUNEATON
These are houses that could only be in Nuneaton, the same way the Ca d'Oro could only exist on the Grand Canal. They have the intrinsic beauty of Nuneaton stonework and artistry, and capture the Nuneaton essence in their noom. Every single brick is, simply, Nuneaton, down to its atoms
Nuneaton is thankful you will never want to go there. The architecture of these new towns is specifically designed accordiing to stringent guidelines to keep the likes of SeanT out. And as someone who lives in a new town I too am thankful. Let's home more people from Hong Kong and less Camden ****s
Come on, we could do so much better than these identikit horrors. Surely.
We could. And if you came to my part of the town - built around 2000 - you can see that they succeeded.
But please don't ignore the important part of my post - you could have a lovely, well built an unique house in the middle of a 10-lane motorway and it'd be a shit house. The environment the house is in matters as much - in my view more - than the house itself. People are focusing too much on the building, and not where it sits.
This is where the 15-minute cities (and similar) are utterly correct - and the concepts' detractors are being silly. When my son was a toddler, being able to easily push him safely in a pram to nursery, the supermarket, five different playparks, a leisure centre, the doctor's, the library, etc, etc, was absolutely priceless. A friend of mine who lives in South London had to drive to get to most of those - except the supermarket, which was across a busy main road.
I know there are practicalities, but honestly, they just look so ... depressing.
You could surely have all these facilities with just a little less density, a bit more green, and a bit less uniformity.
When gardens are postage stamps overlooked by the 10 neighbours it is no wonder they all end up as astroturf.
[Edit: I think the house in the M62 would be quite an interesting place to live, to be honest]
At that density it's just silly not to build flats. You could put a half of the land over to 1-bed and 2-bed flats with a nice park, the other half to big family homes with decent gardens.
I agree. I'd much rather have a nice flat overlooking a park than one of these 'executive' houses.
I'd much rather a house on it's own than a flat anywhere.
Liberate planning and let people decide what they want to build, and where, with the cost of land back at 2% of the cost of the house, not upto 70% of it.
Then people can decide if they want a house, or a flat, or anything else. Their choice, not yours or mine, or the developers.
I lived on the 20th floor of a tower block as a kid in Hong Kong, I would never live in another high rise after that
A lot of HK'ers have moved to our village. I find it uplifting that many have apparently taken to gardening, seeing it as a very British thing to do. Several of the new houses have rather pleasant formative front gardens.
They didn't exactly have much of an option back in HK.
Reform was always going to own the total repudiation of the deal. The space for the Tories was to attack this deal as inferior to the deal that should have been struck; an impossible deal based on mutual recognition of standards, much reduced fishing access for the EU, and anything else they could think of up to and including reparations for the Danegeld.
When you’re in opposition, you don’t actually have to deliver, so you can say anything.
Look at this stunning development on the outskirts of the town. They are new builds yet the express a timeless beauty, the elegance of the best Georgian townhouses married with the flamboyance of Victorian Gothic, even the adorable oddities of Tudor and Jacobean. Most of all, they scream: NUNEATON
These are houses that could only be in Nuneaton, the same way the Ca d'Oro could only exist on the Grand Canal. They have the intrinsic beauty of Nuneaton stonework and artistry, and capture the Nuneaton essence in their noom. Every single brick is, simply, Nuneaton, down to its atoms
Nuneaton is thankful you will never want to go there. The architecture of these new towns is specifically designed accordiing to stringent guidelines to keep the likes of SeanT out. And as someone who lives in a new town I too am thankful. Let's home more people from Hong Kong and less Camden ****s
Come on, we could do so much better than these identikit horrors. Surely.
We could. And if you came to my part of the town - built around 2000 - you can see that they succeeded.
But please don't ignore the important part of my post - you could have a lovely, well built an unique house in the middle of a 10-lane motorway and it'd be a shit house. The environment the house is in matters as much - in my view more - than the house itself. People are focusing too much on the building, and not where it sits.
This is where the 15-minute cities (and similar) are utterly correct - and the concepts' detractors are being silly. When my son was a toddler, being able to easily push him safely in a pram to nursery, the supermarket, five different playparks, a leisure centre, the doctor's, the library, etc, etc, was absolutely priceless. A friend of mine who lives in South London had to drive to get to most of those - except the supermarket, which was across a busy main road.
I know there are practicalities, but honestly, they just look so ... depressing.
You could surely have all these facilities with just a little less density, a bit more green, and a bit less uniformity.
When gardens are postage stamps overlooked by the 10 neighbours it is no wonder they all end up as astroturf.
[Edit: I think the house in the M62 would be quite an interesting place to live, to be honest]
At that density it's just silly not to build flats. You could put a half of the land over to 1-bed and 2-bed flats with a nice park, the other half to big family homes with decent gardens.
I agree. I'd much rather have a nice flat overlooking a park than one of these 'executive' houses.
I'd much rather a house on it's own than a flat anywhere.
Liberate planning and let people decide what they want to build, and where, with the cost of land back at 2% of the cost of the house, not upto 70% of it.
Then people can decide if they want a house, or a flat, or anything else. Their choice, not yours or mine, or the developers.
I lived on the 20th floor of a tower block as a kid in Hong Kong, I would never live in another high rise after that
A lot of HK'ers have moved to our village. I find it uplifting that many have apparently taken to gardening, seeing it as a very British thing to do. Several of the new houses have rather pleasant formative front gardens.
They didn't exactly have much of an option back in HK.
Not a hong konger merely my father was posted there for 2 years
So much for the argument that Trump would intimidate Putin into a ceasefire by being unpredictable. Trump is entirely unwilling to do anything to intimidate Putin. Trump is embarrassingly craven towards him.
Greggs moves products from self service to behind the counter in ‘trial’ at 5 stores due to huge rise in shoplifting. Some stores are targetted by the same people every 20 minutes.
This is where I am right now. Primrose Hill. 5 minutes from my flat. One of the most beautiful urban burbs of the world
Is there any reason why we can’t build like this again? No. King Charles is doing it. The French are doing it across France. Likewise the Germans and Dutch
Enough ticky tacky redbrick boxes. Build beauty
The reason is that builders always go the cheapest way, hence breeze block covered in redbrick.
Mr Football-in-my-Garden seems to have a persecution complex - incoming Daily Mail Quotation warning:
Mr Bakhaty, 77, claimed the school 'deliberately' built the football pitch to 'upset' him and his wife.
Er .. it's a Primary School.
(Added essential Daily Mail context: "The school, whose alumni include former glamour model Lucy Pinder and television presenter Philipa Forrester..")
tbf if the school is losing a football every other day then maybe it ought to have thought a bit harder about where to put the pitch, how high to build the fence, and whether to hire a better football coach.
ETA it has been a long time but I really can't recall ever losing a ball from playground football games. Is it possible one or two of the kids are either shockingly bad strikers or are deliberately targeting the complainant?
Haven't been following but at that rate the footballs must be quite new ones. Presumably the householder is allowed to sell them on ebay or wherever?
Would that not be theft?
He knows who they belong to, and there is proof of intention to permanently deprive them of ownership.
Probably that's so. But I doubt if he does know who they belong to. Just some youngster. He could offer a Come & Collect Your Football service for a modest fee. How's he to know the young person collecting isn't reclaiming their own ball?
Reform was always going to own the total repudiation of the deal. The space for the Tories was to attack this deal as inferior to the deal that should have been struck; an impossible deal based on mutual recognition of standards, much reduced fishing access for the EU, and anything else they could think of up to and including reparations for the Danegeld.
When you’re in opposition, you don’t actually have to deliver, so you can say anything.
Opposition opposes isn't exactly breaking news.
What does that to do with my point?
Oppositions almost always reflexively oppose, as they've done today. It's not newsworthy, or shocking, that they've done that.
Nor is it really counterproductive. The vast majority of the public doesn't care for nitty gritty splicing of differences of shades of opposition.
This is where I am right now. Primrose Hill. 5 minutes from my flat. One of the most beautiful urban burbs of the world
Is there any reason why we can’t build like this again? No. King Charles is doing it. The French are doing it across France. Likewise the Germans and Dutch
Enough ticky tacky redbrick boxes. Build beauty
The reason is that builders always go the cheapest way, hence breeze block covered in redbrick.
The only ones doing it now are "grand designs" people.
Sir Keir is gimp to the dominatrix that is the EU.
Oddly Boris Johnson forgets he was pegged senseless by the EU by putting a border in the Irish Sea, something Boris Johnson said no UK PM could ever do.
It's not really a particularly hilarious reference.
Are you suggesting Johnson was Ned Beatty to the EU rednecks?
This is where I am right now. Primrose Hill. 5 minutes from my flat. One of the most beautiful urban burbs of the world
Is there any reason why we can’t build like this again? No. King Charles is doing it. The French are doing it across France. Likewise the Germans and Dutch
Enough ticky tacky redbrick boxes. Build beauty
The reason is that builders always go the cheapest way, hence breeze block covered in redbrick.
And our planning policy gives permission to an oligopopy of developers whose only goal is to churn through developments.
Liberate planning and houses can be built one at a time, rather than as blocky developments, and the grand designs variety can be the norm not the exception.
See Japan where a street can have a hodgepodge of interesting and different buildings next to each other, based on each buildings owners preferences, rather than pure identikit similarity.
This is where I am right now. Primrose Hill. 5 minutes from my flat. One of the most beautiful urban burbs of the world
Is there any reason why we can’t build like this again? No. King Charles is doing it. The French are doing it across France. Likewise the Germans and Dutch
Enough ticky tacky redbrick boxes. Build beauty
How much do those houses go for? I mean the whole house, not individual flats within.
Insane money. £3m? £6m?
The mad thing is when much of Primrose Hill was built it was seen as nice housing for the middle classes. Or even lower middle classes. Not billionaires
So much for the argument that Trump would intimidate Putin into a ceasefire by being unpredictable. Trump is entirely unwilling to do anything to intimidate Putin. Trump is embarrassingly craven towards him.
Trump's first Presidency (2017-2021) did NOTHING to persuade Putin to withdraw from Crimea and the Donbas.
This is where I am right now. Primrose Hill. 5 minutes from my flat. One of the most beautiful urban burbs of the world
Is there any reason why we can’t build like this again? No. King Charles is doing it. The French are doing it across France. Likewise the Germans and Dutch
Enough ticky tacky redbrick boxes. Build beauty
The reason is that builders always go the cheapest way, hence breeze block covered in redbrick.
Breeze blocks are old hat now. Many being built around here have wooden insulated frames that go up in a matter of days, with a brick outer shell.
As can be seen being erected here:
(Yes, I go around taking photos of buildings under construction...)
This is where I am right now. Primrose Hill. 5 minutes from my flat. One of the most beautiful urban burbs of the world
Is there any reason why we can’t build like this again? No. King Charles is doing it. The French are doing it across France. Likewise the Germans and Dutch
Enough ticky tacky redbrick boxes. Build beauty
How much do those houses go for? I mean the whole house, not individual flats within.
Insane money. £3m? £6m?
The mad thing is when much of Primrose Hill was built it was seen as nice housing for the middle classes. Or even lower middle classes. Not billionaires
And many other houses built at the same time are no more. There is a certain amount of survivor's bias going on.
As I typed this I’m passing a large group of Southern Europeans (Spanish Italian and maybe Greek) all crowded round an estate agent window trying to find out how much it is to live in a lovely place like Primrose Hill
This is where I am right now. Primrose Hill. 5 minutes from my flat. One of the most beautiful urban burbs of the world
Is there any reason why we can’t build like this again? No. King Charles is doing it. The French are doing it across France. Likewise the Germans and Dutch
Enough ticky tacky redbrick boxes. Build beauty
The reason is that builders always go the cheapest way, hence breeze block covered in redbrick.
And our planning policy gives permission to an oligopopy of developers whose only goal is to churn through developments.
Liberate planning and houses can be built one at a time, rather than as blocky developments, and the grand designs variety can be the norm not the exception.
See Japan where a street can have a hodgepodge of interesting and different buildings next to each other, based on each buildings owners preferences, rather than pure identikit similarity.
I actually agree in principle with this. But the issue is these developers have a massive economies of scale compared with your Grand Designs couple.
And we also have homogeneity across London, Edinburgh. Whole estates designed by the same architect (e.g. Chesser). So it's not a new phenomenon.
What's complete madness is making such estates conditional on a new playpark, a new cycle lane. Councils should be allowed to borrow and buy the land, build the infrastructure, and sell plots either individually or as a whole, depending on what generates most cash.
Mr Football-in-my-Garden seems to have a persecution complex - incoming Daily Mail Quotation warning:
Mr Bakhaty, 77, claimed the school 'deliberately' built the football pitch to 'upset' him and his wife.
Er .. it's a Primary School.
(Added essential Daily Mail context: "The school, whose alumni include former glamour model Lucy Pinder and television presenter Philipa Forrester..")
tbf if the school is losing a football every other day then maybe it ought to have thought a bit harder about where to put the pitch, how high to build the fence, and whether to hire a better football coach.
ETA it has been a long time but I really can't recall ever losing a ball from playground football games. Is it possible one or two of the kids are either shockingly bad strikers or are deliberately targeting the complainant?
Haven't been following but at that rate the footballs must be quite new ones. Presumably the householder is allowed to sell them on ebay or wherever?
The kids are 100% doing it deliberately. It will now be a rite of passage in Winchester to punt a ball into their garden.
Absolutely they were winding him up when it opened.
I've had my photo quota today, but this is the size of the bushes between the two. It was temporary and they dealt with it. The neighbour is like a dog with a bone; he's like one of those nimbies who think they own the view.
As I typed this I’m passing a large group of Southern Europeans (Spanish Italian and maybe Greek) all crowded round an estate agent window trying to find out how much it is to live in a lovely place like Primrose Hill
This is where I am right now. Primrose Hill. 5 minutes from my flat. One of the most beautiful urban burbs of the world
Is there any reason why we can’t build like this again? No. King Charles is doing it. The French are doing it across France. Likewise the Germans and Dutch
Enough ticky tacky redbrick boxes. Build beauty
How much do those houses go for? I mean the whole house, not individual flats within.
Insane money. £3m? £6m?
The mad thing is when much of Primrose Hill was built it was seen as nice housing for the middle classes. Or even lower middle classes. Not billionaires
And many other houses built at the same time are no more. There is a certain amount of survivor's bias going on.
This is where I am right now. Primrose Hill. 5 minutes from my flat. One of the most beautiful urban burbs of the world
Is there any reason why we can’t build like this again? No. King Charles is doing it. The French are doing it across France. Likewise the Germans and Dutch
Enough ticky tacky redbrick boxes. Build beauty
How much do those houses go for? I mean the whole house, not individual flats within.
Insane money. £3m? £6m?
The mad thing is when much of Primrose Hill was built it was seen as nice housing for the middle classes. Or even lower middle classes. Not billionaires
And many other houses built at the same time are no more. There is a certain amount of survivor's bias going on.
But this isn’t true
You can see it across london which has very large areas of period housing dating 1800-1930 (when things began to go wrong). They are nearly all charming (and now desirable)
It’s not survivor bias. They simply built more beautiful homes back then - even for quite poor people
Now take that Nuneaton development. Houses costing £400,000!! There is zero attempt at beauty. No thought for aesthetics. No human has sat down and thought - people will live here, how can we make it stand out, make it lovelier, add beauty and charm. It screams “maximum profit and minimum effort”
This is where I am right now. Primrose Hill. 5 minutes from my flat. One of the most beautiful urban burbs of the world
Is there any reason why we can’t build like this again? No. King Charles is doing it. The French are doing it across France. Likewise the Germans and Dutch
Enough ticky tacky redbrick boxes. Build beauty
The reason is that builders always go the cheapest way, hence breeze block covered in redbrick.
That's not the only reason. Stucco isn't expensive - it was first introduced because it was cheap.
Architectural ugliness is trained in architects. And enforced by planners.
This is where I am right now. Primrose Hill. 5 minutes from my flat. One of the most beautiful urban burbs of the world
Is there any reason why we can’t build like this again? No. King Charles is doing it. The French are doing it across France. Likewise the Germans and Dutch
Enough ticky tacky redbrick boxes. Build beauty
How much do those houses go for? I mean the whole house, not individual flats within.
Insane money. £3m? £6m?
The mad thing is when much of Primrose Hill was built it was seen as nice housing for the middle classes. Or even lower middle classes. Not billionaires
And many other houses built at the same time are no more. There is a certain amount of survivor's bias going on.
But this isn’t true
You can see it across london which has very large areas of period housing dating 1800-1930 (when things began to go wrong). They are nearly all charming (and now desirable)
It’s not survivor bias. They simply built more beautiful homes back then - even for quite poor people
Now take that Nuneaton development. Houses costing £400,000!! There is zero attempt at beauty. No thought for aesthetics. No human has sat down and thought - people will live here, how can we make it stand out, make it lovelier, add beauty and charm. It screams “maximum profit and minimum effort”
Its hideous. Ticky tacky identikit hideousness
Because of our planning system giving an oligopoly of developers control over developments.
And it is survivor bias. Plenty of utterly awful, shit homes were built in the late 19th century too. Which were subsequently bulldozed.
This is where I am right now. Primrose Hill. 5 minutes from my flat. One of the most beautiful urban burbs of the world
Is there any reason why we can’t build like this again? No. King Charles is doing it. The French are doing it across France. Likewise the Germans and Dutch
Enough ticky tacky redbrick boxes. Build beauty
The reason is that builders always go the cheapest way, hence breeze block covered in redbrick.
And our planning policy gives permission to an oligopopy of developers whose only goal is to churn through developments.
Liberate planning and houses can be built one at a time, rather than as blocky developments, and the grand designs variety can be the norm not the exception.
See Japan where a street can have a hodgepodge of interesting and different buildings next to each other, based on each buildings owners preferences, rather than pure identikit similarity.
I love Japan and I broadly agree with you that we need to radically deconstruct our planning laws, but it's hard to look at the average Japanese urban or suburban streetscape and see it as full of "grand designs" style projects or beautiful vernacular architecture. People mostly build what they can afford, which might well be whatever the builder offers as their stock house type. Plus the "value is in the land and the house is not valued much by the next buyer" market they have doesn't encourage investing in higher quality housing...
Your proposed reforms have good arguments going for them, but I think this one's a bit shaky.
This is where I am right now. Primrose Hill. 5 minutes from my flat. One of the most beautiful urban burbs of the world
Is there any reason why we can’t build like this again? No. King Charles is doing it. The French are doing it across France. Likewise the Germans and Dutch
Enough ticky tacky redbrick boxes. Build beauty
How much do those houses go for? I mean the whole house, not individual flats within.
Insane money. £3m? £6m?
The mad thing is when much of Primrose Hill was built it was seen as nice housing for the middle classes. Or even lower middle classes. Not billionaires
And many other houses built at the same time are no more. There is a certain amount of survivor's bias going on.
But this isn’t true
You can see it across london which has very large areas of period housing dating 1800-1930 (when things began to go wrong). They are nearly all charming (and now desirable)
It’s not survivor bias. They simply built more beautiful homes back then - even for quite poor people
Now take that Nuneaton development. Houses costing £400,000!! There is zero attempt at beauty. No thought for aesthetics. No human has sat down and thought - people will live here, how can we make it stand out, make it lovelier, add beauty and charm. It screams “maximum profit and minimum effort”
Its hideous. Ticky tacky identikit hideousness
Because of our planning system giving an oligopoly of developers control over developments.
And it is survivor bias. Plenty of utterly awful, shit homes were built in the late 19th century too. Which were subsequently bulldozed.
You’re largely wrong about survivor bias but I actually agree with you on your “liberate the designs” ethos. Let people build their own houses within a certain price range. At least then we’d get character and variety not this soulless redbrick duplication
This is where I am right now. Primrose Hill. 5 minutes from my flat. One of the most beautiful urban burbs of the world
Is there any reason why we can’t build like this again? No. King Charles is doing it. The French are doing it across France. Likewise the Germans and Dutch
Enough ticky tacky redbrick boxes. Build beauty
How much do those houses go for? I mean the whole house, not individual flats within.
Insane money. £3m? £6m?
The mad thing is when much of Primrose Hill was built it was seen as nice housing for the middle classes. Or even lower middle classes. Not billionaires
And many other houses built at the same time are no more. There is a certain amount of survivor's bias going on.
But this isn’t true
You can see it across london which has very large areas of period housing dating 1800-1930 (when things began to go wrong). They are nearly all charming (and now desirable)
It’s not survivor bias. They simply built more beautiful homes back then - even for quite poor people
Now take that Nuneaton development. Houses costing £400,000!! There is zero attempt at beauty. No thought for aesthetics. No human has sat down and thought - people will live here, how can we make it stand out, make it lovelier, add beauty and charm. It screams “maximum profit and minimum effort”
Its hideous. Ticky tacky identikit hideousness
You talk about 'identikit' after posting a piccie of a row of identical houses...
This is where I am right now. Primrose Hill. 5 minutes from my flat. One of the most beautiful urban burbs of the world
Is there any reason why we can’t build like this again? No. King Charles is doing it. The French are doing it across France. Likewise the Germans and Dutch
Enough ticky tacky redbrick boxes. Build beauty
The reason is that builders always go the cheapest way, hence breeze block covered in redbrick.
And our planning policy gives permission to an oligopopy of developers whose only goal is to churn through developments.
Liberate planning and houses can be built one at a time, rather than as blocky developments, and the grand designs variety can be the norm not the exception.
See Japan where a street can have a hodgepodge of interesting and different buildings next to each other, based on each buildings owners preferences, rather than pure identikit similarity.
I love Japan and I broadly agree with you that we need to radically deconstruct our planning laws, but it's hard to look at the average Japanese urban or suburban streetscape and see it as full of "grand designs" style projects or beautiful vernacular architecture. People mostly build what they can afford, which might well be whatever the builder offers as their stock house type. Plus the "value is in the land and the house is not valued much by the next buyer" market they have doesn't encourage investing in higher quality housing...
Your proposed reforms have good arguments going for them, but I think this one's a bit shaky.
Japan has really ugly houses but for different reasons to this
1. There was a massive population boom postwar so they had to build cheap and quick
2. Of course half the country had also burned down. So they did them even cheaper and quicker
3 lack of urban space means almost no gardens and few parks. Very bleak
4. Japan is prone to earthquakes fires and tsunamis so there is no sense of “build for the future”. There isn’t one. Houses are just machines for living in
This is where I am right now. Primrose Hill. 5 minutes from my flat. One of the most beautiful urban burbs of the world
Is there any reason why we can’t build like this again? No. King Charles is doing it. The French are doing it across France. Likewise the Germans and Dutch
Enough ticky tacky redbrick boxes. Build beauty
How much do those houses go for? I mean the whole house, not individual flats within.
Insane money. £3m? £6m?
The mad thing is when much of Primrose Hill was built it was seen as nice housing for the middle classes. Or even lower middle classes. Not billionaires
And many other houses built at the same time are no more. There is a certain amount of survivor's bias going on.
But this isn’t true
You can see it across london which has very large areas of period housing dating 1800-1930 (when things began to go wrong). They are nearly all charming (and now desirable)
It’s not survivor bias. They simply built more beautiful homes back then - even for quite poor people
Now take that Nuneaton development. Houses costing £400,000!! There is zero attempt at beauty. No thought for aesthetics. No human has sat down and thought - people will live here, how can we make it stand out, make it lovelier, add beauty and charm. It screams “maximum profit and minimum effort”
Its hideous. Ticky tacky identikit hideousness
Because of our planning system giving an oligopoly of developers control over developments.
And it is survivor bias. Plenty of utterly awful, shit homes were built in the late 19th century too. Which were subsequently bulldozed.
Human beings have evolved to have very specific signals and markers that attract us to other humans who are good breeding material, foods that are nutritious and won't kill us, and vegetation and clean water that will make a good place to live. I am not sure why you wouldn't think this is also true of dwellings. There are universal laws of architectural beauty, and it doesn't matter if a building went up yesterday or in the 13th century, they still apply. You can pretend that these beauty standards don't exist and that you're happy living in a pebble dashed assymetrical rabbit hutch with a barbed wire fence, and yes, it is still better than being homeless and cold, but it isn't desirable.
All things being equal, you would choose to live in a more traditionally beautiful house if one were offered to you, and if you didn't, your wife certainly would.
This is where I am right now. Primrose Hill. 5 minutes from my flat. One of the most beautiful urban burbs of the world
Is there any reason why we can’t build like this again? No. King Charles is doing it. The French are doing it across France. Likewise the Germans and Dutch
Enough ticky tacky redbrick boxes. Build beauty
How much do those houses go for? I mean the whole house, not individual flats within.
Insane money. £3m? £6m?
The mad thing is when much of Primrose Hill was built it was seen as nice housing for the middle classes. Or even lower middle classes. Not billionaires
And many other houses built at the same time are no more. There is a certain amount of survivor's bias going on.
But this isn’t true
You can see it across london which has very large areas of period housing dating 1800-1930 (when things began to go wrong). They are nearly all charming (and now desirable)
It’s not survivor bias. They simply built more beautiful homes back then - even for quite poor people
Now take that Nuneaton development. Houses costing £400,000!! There is zero attempt at beauty. No thought for aesthetics. No human has sat down and thought - people will live here, how can we make it stand out, make it lovelier, add beauty and charm. It screams “maximum profit and minimum effort”
Its hideous. Ticky tacky identikit hideousness
Because of our planning system giving an oligopoly of developers control over developments.
And it is survivor bias. Plenty of utterly awful, shit homes were built in the late 19th century too. Which were subsequently bulldozed.
You’re largely wrong about survivor bias but I actually agree with you on your “liberate the designs” ethos. Let people build their own houses within a certain price range. At least then we’d get character and variety not this soulless redbrick duplication
The most effective immediate reform would be to abolish the requirement for a percentage of 'affordable' houses to be included in new developments. It's a false economy in every respect.
This is where I am right now. Primrose Hill. 5 minutes from my flat. One of the most beautiful urban burbs of the world
Is there any reason why we can’t build like this again? No. King Charles is doing it. The French are doing it across France. Likewise the Germans and Dutch
Enough ticky tacky redbrick boxes. Build beauty
How much do those houses go for? I mean the whole house, not individual flats within.
Insane money. £3m? £6m?
The mad thing is when much of Primrose Hill was built it was seen as nice housing for the middle classes. Or even lower middle classes. Not billionaires
And many other houses built at the same time are no more. There is a certain amount of survivor's bias going on.
But this isn’t true
You can see it across london which has very large areas of period housing dating 1800-1930 (when things began to go wrong). They are nearly all charming (and now desirable)
It’s not survivor bias. They simply built more beautiful homes back then - even for quite poor people
Now take that Nuneaton development. Houses costing £400,000!! There is zero attempt at beauty. No thought for aesthetics. No human has sat down and thought - people will live here, how can we make it stand out, make it lovelier, add beauty and charm. It screams “maximum profit and minimum effort”
Its hideous. Ticky tacky identikit hideousness
Back in 19th century London over 90% of people would have been renters.
Would you prefer to rent in a 'beautiful' property or own an 'identikit' property ?
And do you regard all those 'corrie' style terraced streets as beautiful or hideous identikit - they were perhaps the first attempt to produce housing that the urban C1C2s could afford to buy.
This is where I am right now. Primrose Hill. 5 minutes from my flat. One of the most beautiful urban burbs of the world
Is there any reason why we can’t build like this again? No. King Charles is doing it. The French are doing it across France. Likewise the Germans and Dutch
Enough ticky tacky redbrick boxes. Build beauty
How much do those houses go for? I mean the whole house, not individual flats within.
Insane money. £3m? £6m?
The mad thing is when much of Primrose Hill was built it was seen as nice housing for the middle classes. Or even lower middle classes. Not billionaires
And many other houses built at the same time are no more. There is a certain amount of survivor's bias going on.
But this isn’t true
You can see it across london which has very large areas of period housing dating 1800-1930 (when things began to go wrong). They are nearly all charming (and now desirable)
It’s not survivor bias. They simply built more beautiful homes back then - even for quite poor people
Now take that Nuneaton development. Houses costing £400,000!! There is zero attempt at beauty. No thought for aesthetics. No human has sat down and thought - people will live here, how can we make it stand out, make it lovelier, add beauty and charm. It screams “maximum profit and minimum effort”
Its hideous. Ticky tacky identikit hideousness
Because of our planning system giving an oligopoly of developers control over developments.
And it is survivor bias. Plenty of utterly awful, shit homes were built in the late 19th century too. Which were subsequently bulldozed.
Human beings have evolved to have very specific signals and markers that attract us to other humans who are good breeding material, foods that are nutritious and won't kill us, and vegetation and clean water that will make a good place to live. I am not sure why you wouldn't think this is also true of dwellings. There are universal laws of architectural beauty, and it doesn't matter if a building went up yesterday or in the 13th century, they still apply. You can pretend that these beauty standards don't exist and that you're happy living in a pebble dashed assymetrical rabbit hutch with a barbed wire fence, and yes, it is still better than being homeless and cold, but it isn't desirable.
All things being equal, you would choose to live in a more traditionally beautiful house if one were offered to you, and if you didn't, your wife certainly would.
Very true
All the most desirable and expensive towns in the UK are towns with a preponderance of Georgian and Victorian housing
Look at this stunning development on the outskirts of the town. They are new builds yet the express a timeless beauty, the elegance of the best Georgian townhouses married with the flamboyance of Victorian Gothic, even the adorable oddities of Tudor and Jacobean. Most of all, they scream: NUNEATON
These are houses that could only be in Nuneaton, the same way the Ca d'Oro could only exist on the Grand Canal. They have the intrinsic beauty of Nuneaton stonework and artistry, and capture the Nuneaton essence in their noom. Every single brick is, simply, Nuneaton, down to its atoms
Nuneaton is thankful you will never want to go there. The architecture of these new towns is specifically designed accordiing to stringent guidelines to keep the likes of SeanT out. And as someone who lives in a new town I too am thankful. Let's home more people from Hong Kong and less Camden ****s
Come on, we could do so much better than these identikit horrors. Surely.
We could. And if you came to my part of the town - built around 2000 - you can see that they succeeded.
But please don't ignore the important part of my post - you could have a lovely, well built an unique house in the middle of a 10-lane motorway and it'd be a shit house. The environment the house is in matters as much - in my view more - than the house itself. People are focusing too much on the building, and not where it sits.
This is where the 15-minute cities (and similar) are utterly correct - and the concepts' detractors are being silly. When my son was a toddler, being able to easily push him safely in a pram to nursery, the supermarket, five different playparks, a leisure centre, the doctor's, the library, etc, etc, was absolutely priceless. A friend of mine who lives in South London had to drive to get to most of those - except the supermarket, which was across a busy main road.
I know there are practicalities, but honestly, they just look so ... depressing.
You could surely have all these facilities with just a little less density, a bit more green, and a bit less uniformity.
When gardens are postage stamps overlooked by the 10 neighbours it is no wonder they all end up as astroturf.
[Edit: I think the house in the M62 would be quite an interesting place to live, to be honest]
At that density it's just silly not to build flats. You could put a half of the land over to 1-bed and 2-bed flats with a nice park, the other half to big family homes with decent gardens.
I agree. I'd much rather have a nice flat overlooking a park than one of these 'executive' houses.
One of the things that Britain has hardly ever (?) got right. My flat in Spain was central, properly built and nice. Apart from the mansion blocks in central London, English flats are mostly rubbish.
There are some beautiful tenements in Glasgow and Edinburgh. It’s a pity good tenements were never widespread south of the border
You could improve the new housing estates by planting proper hedges and trees. You don't realise how much work they are doing to improve older estates until your neighbour cuts them down and turns their garden into a parking space.
This is where I am right now. Primrose Hill. 5 minutes from my flat. One of the most beautiful urban burbs of the world
Is there any reason why we can’t build like this again? No. King Charles is doing it. The French are doing it across France. Likewise the Germans and Dutch
Enough ticky tacky redbrick boxes. Build beauty
How much do those houses go for? I mean the whole house, not individual flats within.
Insane money. £3m? £6m?
The mad thing is when much of Primrose Hill was built it was seen as nice housing for the middle classes. Or even lower middle classes. Not billionaires
And many other houses built at the same time are no more. There is a certain amount of survivor's bias going on.
But this isn’t true
You can see it across london which has very large areas of period housing dating 1800-1930 (when things began to go wrong). They are nearly all charming (and now desirable)
It’s not survivor bias. They simply built more beautiful homes back then - even for quite poor people
Now take that Nuneaton development. Houses costing £400,000!! There is zero attempt at beauty. No thought for aesthetics. No human has sat down and thought - people will live here, how can we make it stand out, make it lovelier, add beauty and charm. It screams “maximum profit and minimum effort”
Its hideous. Ticky tacky identikit hideousness
Because of our planning system giving an oligopoly of developers control over developments.
And it is survivor bias. Plenty of utterly awful, shit homes were built in the late 19th century too. Which were subsequently bulldozed.
Human beings have evolved to have very specific signals and markers that attract us to other humans who are good breeding material, foods that are nutritious and won't kill us, and vegetation and clean water that will make a good place to live. I am not sure why you wouldn't think this is also true of dwellings. There are universal laws of architectural beauty, and it doesn't matter if a building went up yesterday or in the 13th century, they still apply. You can pretend that these beauty standards don't exist and that you're happy living in a pebble dashed assymetrical rabbit hutch with a barbed wire fence, and yes, it is still better than being homeless and cold, but it isn't desirable.
All things being equal, you would choose to live in a more traditionally beautiful house if one were offered to you, and if you didn't, your wife certainly would.
Very true
All the most desirable and expensive towns in the UK are towns with a preponderance of Georgian and Victorian housing
Number 10 Downing Street, perhaps the most famous house in Britain, is rather infamously poorly built and was, as Churchill put it: "shaky and lightly built by the profiteering contractor whose name they bear"
It has also had to be rebuilt because of its shodiness:
"A team of ex-miners, sent down to reconstruct the houses’ timber foundations, found them shallow and severely water damaged, rotted and crumbling.[viii] The walls of Downing Street’s superstructure were found to consist of rubble with timber, rather than proper brickwork, creating the ideal conditions for dry rot. Many were also suffering from insect damage. Wartime strengthening work on several of No. 10’s floors, performed alongside the construction of an air raid shelter in the basement, had proved inadequate, leaving several rooms unstable.[ix] Many of the diseased walls were also significantly ‘out of true’ (i.e. not properly aligned) and structurally unsound; the BBC’s Christopher Jones recorded that in some cases, ‘apparently solid walls were held up only by the plaster covering them’.[x]"
Look at this stunning development on the outskirts of the town. They are new builds yet the express a timeless beauty, the elegance of the best Georgian townhouses married with the flamboyance of Victorian Gothic, even the adorable oddities of Tudor and Jacobean. Most of all, they scream: NUNEATON
These are houses that could only be in Nuneaton, the same way the Ca d'Oro could only exist on the Grand Canal. They have the intrinsic beauty of Nuneaton stonework and artistry, and capture the Nuneaton essence in their noom. Every single brick is, simply, Nuneaton, down to its atoms
Nuneaton is thankful you will never want to go there. The architecture of these new towns is specifically designed accordiing to stringent guidelines to keep the likes of SeanT out. And as someone who lives in a new town I too am thankful. Let's home more people from Hong Kong and less Camden ****s
Come on, we could do so much better than these identikit horrors. Surely.
We could. And if you came to my part of the town - built around 2000 - you can see that they succeeded.
But please don't ignore the important part of my post - you could have a lovely, well built an unique house in the middle of a 10-lane motorway and it'd be a shit house. The environment the house is in matters as much - in my view more - than the house itself. People are focusing too much on the building, and not where it sits.
This is where the 15-minute cities (and similar) are utterly correct - and the concepts' detractors are being silly. When my son was a toddler, being able to easily push him safely in a pram to nursery, the supermarket, five different playparks, a leisure centre, the doctor's, the library, etc, etc, was absolutely priceless. A friend of mine who lives in South London had to drive to get to most of those - except the supermarket, which was across a busy main road.
I know there are practicalities, but honestly, they just look so ... depressing.
You could surely have all these facilities with just a little less density, a bit more green, and a bit less uniformity.
When gardens are postage stamps overlooked by the 10 neighbours it is no wonder they all end up as astroturf.
[Edit: I think the house in the M62 would be quite an interesting place to live, to be honest]
At that density it's just silly not to build flats. You could put a half of the land over to 1-bed and 2-bed flats with a nice park, the other half to big family homes with decent gardens.
I agree. I'd much rather have a nice flat overlooking a park than one of these 'executive' houses.
One of the things that Britain has hardly ever (?) got right. My flat in Spain was central, properly built and nice. Apart from the mansion blocks in central London, English flats are mostly rubbish.
There are some beautiful tenements in Glasgow and Edinburgh. It’s a pity good tenements were never widespread south of the border
This is where I am right now. Primrose Hill. 5 minutes from my flat. One of the most beautiful urban burbs of the world
Is there any reason why we can’t build like this again? No. King Charles is doing it. The French are doing it across France. Likewise the Germans and Dutch
Enough ticky tacky redbrick boxes. Build beauty
How much do those houses go for? I mean the whole house, not individual flats within.
Insane money. £3m? £6m?
The mad thing is when much of Primrose Hill was built it was seen as nice housing for the middle classes. Or even lower middle classes. Not billionaires
And many other houses built at the same time are no more. There is a certain amount of survivor's bias going on.
But this isn’t true
You can see it across london which has very large areas of period housing dating 1800-1930 (when things began to go wrong). They are nearly all charming (and now desirable)
It’s not survivor bias. They simply built more beautiful homes back then - even for quite poor people
Now take that Nuneaton development. Houses costing £400,000!! There is zero attempt at beauty. No thought for aesthetics. No human has sat down and thought - people will live here, how can we make it stand out, make it lovelier, add beauty and charm. It screams “maximum profit and minimum effort”
Its hideous. Ticky tacky identikit hideousness
Back in 19th century London over 90% of people would have been renters.
Would you prefer to rent in a 'beautiful' property or own an 'identikit' property ?
And do you regard all those 'corrie' style terraced streets as beautiful or hideous identikit - they were perhaps the first attempt to produce housing that the urban C1C2s could afford to buy.
There are plenty of slumhouses surviving in places like Borough, Oval, Hackney and Vauxhall that are now desirable. Why? Because they still adhere to basic principles of beauty
Here's my favourite example, which I've used before on PB. Bob Cratchitt's House is about five minutes from me (the other direction from Primrose Hill). We know it is Bob Cratchitt's house (from Dickens' Christmas Carol) because Dickens' places the house in grotty, smoggy Camden Town and the description exactly matches the house Dickens himself lived in, in Camden, on Bayham Street. Cratchitt is definitely C1, C2... lower middle class and struggling
You could improve the new housing estates by planting proper hedges and trees. You don't realise how much work they are doing to improve older estates until your neighbour cuts them down and turns their garden into a parking space.
But they are (quite literally) a fig leaf for ugly buildings. Every monstrous piece of shit that people want to build uses artists impressions with numerous trees outside it to make it look more bearable. I support the presence of trees and shrubs but I would rather they be there to enhance the beauty of the existing buildings, not to put lipstick on a pig.
Keir Starmer has tonight told his MPs: “The Conservatives are not our principal opponent. Reform are our main rivals for power. We have a moral responsibility to make sure Farage never wins.”
And PM takes off gloves: “We have to be clear that every opportunity he has had in this Parliament to back working people he’s voted against. Telling the workers at Jaguar Land Rover they deserve to go bust. A state-slashing, NHS-privatising, Putin apologist. Without a single patriotic bone in his body. We will take to fight to him. We will fight as Labour.”
Keir Starmer has tonight told his MPs: “The Conservatives are not our principal opponent. Reform are our main rivals for power. We have a moral responsibility to make sure Farage never wins.”
And PM takes off gloves: “We have to be clear that every opportunity he has had in this Parliament to back working people he’s voted against. Telling the workers at Jaguar Land Rover they deserve to go bust. A state-slashing, NHS-privatising, Putin apologist. Without a single patriotic bone in his body. We will take to fight to him. We will fight as Labour.”
It will be particularly delightful seeing his slapped bottom features when he's down to double figure MPs.
Look at this stunning development on the outskirts of the town. They are new builds yet the express a timeless beauty, the elegance of the best Georgian townhouses married with the flamboyance of Victorian Gothic, even the adorable oddities of Tudor and Jacobean. Most of all, they scream: NUNEATON
These are houses that could only be in Nuneaton, the same way the Ca d'Oro could only exist on the Grand Canal. They have the intrinsic beauty of Nuneaton stonework and artistry, and capture the Nuneaton essence in their noom. Every single brick is, simply, Nuneaton, down to its atoms
Nuneaton is thankful you will never want to go there. The architecture of these new towns is specifically designed accordiing to stringent guidelines to keep the likes of SeanT out. And as someone who lives in a new town I too am thankful. Let's home more people from Hong Kong and less Camden ****s
Come on, we could do so much better than these identikit horrors. Surely.
We could. And if you came to my part of the town - built around 2000 - you can see that they succeeded.
But please don't ignore the important part of my post - you could have a lovely, well built an unique house in the middle of a 10-lane motorway and it'd be a shit house. The environment the house is in matters as much - in my view more - than the house itself. People are focusing too much on the building, and not where it sits.
This is where the 15-minute cities (and similar) are utterly correct - and the concepts' detractors are being silly. When my son was a toddler, being able to easily push him safely in a pram to nursery, the supermarket, five different playparks, a leisure centre, the doctor's, the library, etc, etc, was absolutely priceless. A friend of mine who lives in South London had to drive to get to most of those - except the supermarket, which was across a busy main road.
I know there are practicalities, but honestly, they just look so ... depressing.
You could surely have all these facilities with just a little less density, a bit more green, and a bit less uniformity.
When gardens are postage stamps overlooked by the 10 neighbours it is no wonder they all end up as astroturf.
[Edit: I think the house in the M62 would be quite an interesting place to live, to be honest]
At that density it's just silly not to build flats. You could put a half of the land over to 1-bed and 2-bed flats with a nice park, the other half to big family homes with decent gardens.
I agree. I'd much rather have a nice flat overlooking a park than one of these 'executive' houses.
One of the things that Britain has hardly ever (?) got right. My flat in Spain was central, properly built and nice. Apart from the mansion blocks in central London, English flats are mostly rubbish.
There are some beautiful tenements in Glasgow and Edinburgh. It’s a pity good tenements were never widespread south of the border
I had a look at some Redrow videos and written material, and it appears it is expanding into wooden frame construction, planning to built 9000/22000 = approx 30% of all its homes using wood frame per annum
Its usual construction methods for the other 70% are concrete foundations following the walls (ie not slabs), with brick over breeze block for the walls and tile over wood frame for the roof.
You could improve the new housing estates by planting proper hedges and trees. You don't realise how much work they are doing to improve older estates until your neighbour cuts them down and turns their garden into a parking space.
I genuinely believe this should be illegal, as it impacts the beauty of an entire neighborhood and lowers the value of everyone's home
Keir Starmer has tonight told his MPs: “The Conservatives are not our principal opponent. Reform are our main rivals for power. We have a moral responsibility to make sure Farage never wins.”
And PM takes off gloves: “We have to be clear that every opportunity he has had in this Parliament to back working people he’s voted against. Telling the workers at Jaguar Land Rover they deserve to go bust. A state-slashing, NHS-privatising, Putin apologist. Without a single patriotic bone in his body. We will take to fight to him. We will fight as Labour.”
I’m happy to hear that. Farage is a fraud and it’s time he was held to account . Labour need to stop messing around and go for the jugular .
Look at this stunning development on the outskirts of the town. They are new builds yet the express a timeless beauty, the elegance of the best Georgian townhouses married with the flamboyance of Victorian Gothic, even the adorable oddities of Tudor and Jacobean. Most of all, they scream: NUNEATON
These are houses that could only be in Nuneaton, the same way the Ca d'Oro could only exist on the Grand Canal. They have the intrinsic beauty of Nuneaton stonework and artistry, and capture the Nuneaton essence in their noom. Every single brick is, simply, Nuneaton, down to its atoms
Nuneaton is thankful you will never want to go there. The architecture of these new towns is specifically designed accordiing to stringent guidelines to keep the likes of SeanT out. And as someone who lives in a new town I too am thankful. Let's home more people from Hong Kong and less Camden ****s
Come on, we could do so much better than these identikit horrors. Surely.
We could. And if you came to my part of the town - built around 2000 - you can see that they succeeded.
But please don't ignore the important part of my post - you could have a lovely, well built an unique house in the middle of a 10-lane motorway and it'd be a shit house. The environment the house is in matters as much - in my view more - than the house itself. People are focusing too much on the building, and not where it sits.
This is where the 15-minute cities (and similar) are utterly correct - and the concepts' detractors are being silly. When my son was a toddler, being able to easily push him safely in a pram to nursery, the supermarket, five different playparks, a leisure centre, the doctor's, the library, etc, etc, was absolutely priceless. A friend of mine who lives in South London had to drive to get to most of those - except the supermarket, which was across a busy main road.
I know there are practicalities, but honestly, they just look so ... depressing.
You could surely have all these facilities with just a little less density, a bit more green, and a bit less uniformity.
When gardens are postage stamps overlooked by the 10 neighbours it is no wonder they all end up as astroturf.
[Edit: I think the house in the M62 would be quite an interesting place to live, to be honest]
At that density it's just silly not to build flats. You could put a half of the land over to 1-bed and 2-bed flats with a nice park, the other half to big family homes with decent gardens.
I agree. I'd much rather have a nice flat overlooking a park than one of these 'executive' houses.
One of the things that Britain has hardly ever (?) got right. My flat in Spain was central, properly built and nice. Apart from the mansion blocks in central London, English flats are mostly rubbish.
There are some beautiful tenements in Glasgow and Edinburgh. It’s a pity good tenements were never widespread south of the border
Stunning! They have used a bit of a wide-angle lens on those rooms though - I am sure its spacious but those make it look like you need a golf buggy to get to the next room.
This is where I am right now. Primrose Hill. 5 minutes from my flat. One of the most beautiful urban burbs of the world
Is there any reason why we can’t build like this again? No. King Charles is doing it. The French are doing it across France. Likewise the Germans and Dutch
Enough ticky tacky redbrick boxes. Build beauty
The reason is that builders always go the cheapest way, hence breeze block covered in redbrick.
And our planning policy gives permission to an oligopopy of developers whose only goal is to churn through developments.
Liberate planning and houses can be built one at a time, rather than as blocky developments, and the grand designs variety can be the norm not the exception.
See Japan where a street can have a hodgepodge of interesting and different buildings next to each other, based on each buildings owners preferences, rather than pure identikit similarity.
I love Japan and I broadly agree with you that we need to radically deconstruct our planning laws, but it's hard to look at the average Japanese urban or suburban streetscape and see it as full of "grand designs" style projects or beautiful vernacular architecture. People mostly build what they can afford, which might well be whatever the builder offers as their stock house type. Plus the "value is in the land and the house is not valued much by the next buyer" market they have doesn't encourage investing in higher quality housing...
Your proposed reforms have good arguments going for them, but I think this one's a bit shaky.
Japan has really ugly houses but for different reasons to this
1. There was a massive population boom postwar so they had to build cheap and quick
2. Of course half the country had also burned down. So they did them even cheaper and quicker
3 lack of urban space means almost no gardens and few parks. Very bleak
4. Japan is prone to earthquakes fires and tsunamis so there is no sense of “build for the future”. There isn’t one. Houses are just machines for living in
Your 1 and 2 would make sense for postwar houses, but most houses now are much newer than that (because they're all built with short lifespans and demolished to build something new): only 7% were built before 1970, and nearly 40% were built this century (source: https://www.mitsuifudosan.co.jp/english/realestate_statics/download/fudousantoukei_47_2_1.pdf ). You can't blame WW2 for an ugly 1990s house.
The weird thing about Japanese parks is they do have various tiny pockets of communal land labelled "parks" scattered around but they're almost invariably rather low on vegetation, being more like gravelled areas with a few benches and some childrens' play equipment and the odd tree or two round the edges. They have much less in the way of roadside trees than the average UK town too, which I always miss when I'm out there.
You could improve the new housing estates by planting proper hedges and trees. You don't realise how much work they are doing to improve older estates until your neighbour cuts them down and turns their garden into a parking space.
But they are (quite literally) a fig leaf for ugly buildings. Every monstrous piece of shit that people want to build uses artists impressions with numerous trees outside it to make it look more bearable. I support the presence of trees and shrubs but I would rather they be there to enhance the beauty of the existing buildings, not to put lipstick on a pig.
Oh I agree. Indeed, the lack of trees in Edinburgh's New Town is deliberate - to show off the gorgeous architecture. You fill the shared garden in the square/circus with them instead.
But for the new build estates, we need to seed-bomb them from altitude with a C130.
Keir Starmer has tonight told his MPs: “The Conservatives are not our principal opponent. Reform are our main rivals for power. We have a moral responsibility to make sure Farage never wins.”
And PM takes off gloves: “We have to be clear that every opportunity he has had in this Parliament to back working people he’s voted against. Telling the workers at Jaguar Land Rover they deserve to go bust. A state-slashing, NHS-privatising, Putin apologist. Without a single patriotic bone in his body. We will take to fight to him. We will fight as Labour.”
I’m happy to hear that. Farage is a fraud and it’s time he was held to account . Labour need to stop messing around and go for the jugular .
Labour very, very particularly need to mention Farage's responsibility for the huge post-Brexit rise in immigration, if they're finally going to say the truth.
This is where I am right now. Primrose Hill. 5 minutes from my flat. One of the most beautiful urban burbs of the world
Is there any reason why we can’t build like this again? No. King Charles is doing it. The French are doing it across France. Likewise the Germans and Dutch
Enough ticky tacky redbrick boxes. Build beauty
How much do those houses go for? I mean the whole house, not individual flats within.
Insane money. £3m? £6m?
The mad thing is when much of Primrose Hill was built it was seen as nice housing for the middle classes. Or even lower middle classes. Not billionaires
And many other houses built at the same time are no more. There is a certain amount of survivor's bias going on.
But this isn’t true
You can see it across london which has very large areas of period housing dating 1800-1930 (when things began to go wrong). They are nearly all charming (and now desirable)
It’s not survivor bias. They simply built more beautiful homes back then - even for quite poor people
Now take that Nuneaton development. Houses costing £400,000!! There is zero attempt at beauty. No thought for aesthetics. No human has sat down and thought - people will live here, how can we make it stand out, make it lovelier, add beauty and charm. It screams “maximum profit and minimum effort”
Its hideous. Ticky tacky identikit hideousness
Back in 19th century London over 90% of people would have been renters.
Would you prefer to rent in a 'beautiful' property or own an 'identikit' property ?
And do you regard all those 'corrie' style terraced streets as beautiful or hideous identikit - they were perhaps the first attempt to produce housing that the urban C1C2s could afford to buy.
There are plenty of slumhouses surviving in places like Borough, Oval, Hackney and Vauxhall that are now desirable. Why? Because they still adhere to basic principles of beauty
Here's my favourite example, which I've used before on PB. Bob Cratchitt's House is about five minutes from me (the other direction from Primrose Hill). We know it is Bob Cratchitt's house (from Dickens' Christmas Carol) because Dickens' places the house in grotty, smoggy Camden Town and the description exactly matches the house Dickens himself lived in, in Camden, on Bayham Street. Cratchitt is definitely C1, C2... lower middle class and struggling
Keir Starmer has tonight told his MPs: “The Conservatives are not our principal opponent. Reform are our main rivals for power. We have a moral responsibility to make sure Farage never wins.”
And PM takes off gloves: “We have to be clear that every opportunity he has had in this Parliament to back working people he’s voted against. Telling the workers at Jaguar Land Rover they deserve to go bust. A state-slashing, NHS-privatising, Putin apologist. Without a single patriotic bone in his body. We will take to fight to him. We will fight as Labour.”
I’m happy to hear that. Farage is a fraud and it’s time he was held to account . Labour need to stop messing around and go for the jugular .
Labour very, very particularly need to mention Farage's responsibility for the huge post-Brexit rise in immigration, if they're finally going to say the truth.
Boris owns the Boriswave. It would be difficult to pin it on Farage.
Keir Starmer has tonight told his MPs: “The Conservatives are not our principal opponent. Reform are our main rivals for power. We have a moral responsibility to make sure Farage never wins.”
And PM takes off gloves: “We have to be clear that every opportunity he has had in this Parliament to back working people he’s voted against. Telling the workers at Jaguar Land Rover they deserve to go bust. A state-slashing, NHS-privatising, Putin apologist. Without a single patriotic bone in his body. We will take to fight to him. We will fight as Labour.”
I’m happy to hear that. Farage is a fraud and it’s time he was held to account . Labour need to stop messing around and go for the jugular .
Isn't it governments that are meant to be held to account?
This is where I am right now. Primrose Hill. 5 minutes from my flat. One of the most beautiful urban burbs of the world
Is there any reason why we can’t build like this again? No. King Charles is doing it. The French are doing it across France. Likewise the Germans and Dutch
Enough ticky tacky redbrick boxes. Build beauty
The reason is that builders always go the cheapest way, hence breeze block covered in redbrick.
And our planning policy gives permission to an oligopopy of developers whose only goal is to churn through developments.
Liberate planning and houses can be built one at a time, rather than as blocky developments, and the grand designs variety can be the norm not the exception.
See Japan where a street can have a hodgepodge of interesting and different buildings next to each other, based on each buildings owners preferences, rather than pure identikit similarity.
I love Japan and I broadly agree with you that we need to radically deconstruct our planning laws, but it's hard to look at the average Japanese urban or suburban streetscape and see it as full of "grand designs" style projects or beautiful vernacular architecture. People mostly build what they can afford, which might well be whatever the builder offers as their stock house type. Plus the "value is in the land and the house is not valued much by the next buyer" market they have doesn't encourage investing in higher quality housing...
Your proposed reforms have good arguments going for them, but I think this one's a bit shaky.
Japan has really ugly houses but for different reasons to this
1. There was a massive population boom postwar so they had to build cheap and quick
2. Of course half the country had also burned down. So they did them even cheaper and quicker
3 lack of urban space means almost no gardens and few parks. Very bleak
4. Japan is prone to earthquakes fires and tsunamis so there is no sense of “build for the future”. There isn’t one. Houses are just machines for living in
Do the Japanese themselves see their housing as 'ugly', or is it a cultural norm?
Keir Starmer has tonight told his MPs: “The Conservatives are not our principal opponent. Reform are our main rivals for power. We have a moral responsibility to make sure Farage never wins.”
And PM takes off gloves: “We have to be clear that every opportunity he has had in this Parliament to back working people he’s voted against. Telling the workers at Jaguar Land Rover they deserve to go bust. A state-slashing, NHS-privatising, Putin apologist. Without a single patriotic bone in his body. We will take to fight to him. We will fight as Labour.”
I’m happy to hear that. Farage is a fraud and it’s time he was held to account . Labour need to stop messing around and go for the jugular .
Labour very, very particularly need to mention Farage's responsibility for the huge post-Brexit rise in immigration, if they're finally going to say the truth.
Keir Starmer has tonight told his MPs: “The Conservatives are not our principal opponent. Reform are our main rivals for power. We have a moral responsibility to make sure Farage never wins.”
And PM takes off gloves: “We have to be clear that every opportunity he has had in this Parliament to back working people he’s voted against. Telling the workers at Jaguar Land Rover they deserve to go bust. A state-slashing, NHS-privatising, Putin apologist. Without a single patriotic bone in his body. We will take to fight to him. We will fight as Labour.”
More of this please, Keir. Maybe, in Farage, Keir has found an enemy which inspires him to do better.
Keir Starmer has tonight told his MPs: “The Conservatives are not our principal opponent. Reform are our main rivals for power. We have a moral responsibility to make sure Farage never wins.”
And PM takes off gloves: “We have to be clear that every opportunity he has had in this Parliament to back working people he’s voted against. Telling the workers at Jaguar Land Rover they deserve to go bust. A state-slashing, NHS-privatising, Putin apologist. Without a single patriotic bone in his body. We will take to fight to him. We will fight as Labour.”
I’m happy to hear that. Farage is a fraud and it’s time he was held to account . Labour need to stop messing around and go for the jugular .
Labour very, very particularly need to mention Farage's responsibility for the huge post-Brexit rise in immigration, if they're finally going to say the truth.
Give Farage the chance to talk about immigration you say?
Keir Starmer has tonight told his MPs: “The Conservatives are not our principal opponent. Reform are our main rivals for power. We have a moral responsibility to make sure Farage never wins.”
And PM takes off gloves: “We have to be clear that every opportunity he has had in this Parliament to back working people he’s voted against. Telling the workers at Jaguar Land Rover they deserve to go bust. A state-slashing, NHS-privatising, Putin apologist. Without a single patriotic bone in his body. We will take to fight to him. We will fight as Labour.”
I’m happy to hear that. Farage is a fraud and it’s time he was held to account . Labour need to stop messing around and go for the jugular .
Labour very, very particularly need to mention Farage's responsibility for the huge post-Brexit rise in immigration, if they're finally going to say the truth.
He’ll say that he wasn’t in power so couldn’t affect that . They’re better hammering him on the NHS and trashing the Reform manifesto which would have seen huge cuts to public services .
This is where I am right now. Primrose Hill. 5 minutes from my flat. One of the most beautiful urban burbs of the world
Is there any reason why we can’t build like this again? No. King Charles is doing it. The French are doing it across France. Likewise the Germans and Dutch
Enough ticky tacky redbrick boxes. Build beauty
How much do those houses go for? I mean the whole house, not individual flats within.
Insane money. £3m? £6m?
The mad thing is when much of Primrose Hill was built it was seen as nice housing for the middle classes. Or even lower middle classes. Not billionaires
And many other houses built at the same time are no more. There is a certain amount of survivor's bias going on.
But this isn’t true
You can see it across london which has very large areas of period housing dating 1800-1930 (when things began to go wrong). They are nearly all charming (and now desirable)
It’s not survivor bias. They simply built more beautiful homes back then - even for quite poor people
Now take that Nuneaton development. Houses costing £400,000!! There is zero attempt at beauty. No thought for aesthetics. No human has sat down and thought - people will live here, how can we make it stand out, make it lovelier, add beauty and charm. It screams “maximum profit and minimum effort”
Its hideous. Ticky tacky identikit hideousness
Because of our planning system giving an oligopoly of developers control over developments.
And it is survivor bias. Plenty of utterly awful, shit homes were built in the late 19th century too. Which were subsequently bulldozed.
You’re largely wrong about survivor bias but I actually agree with you on your “liberate the designs” ethos. Let people build their own houses within a certain price range. At least then we’d get character and variety not this soulless redbrick duplication
I'm glad we can agree on the liberation issue as that's the main issue.
The survivor bias point is more nitpicking and relatively trivial in comparison, but the issue is that you are falling for thinking that all homes then were like those that have survived but the good ones have survived deliberately.
"Cratchitt's" house was not one of the slum houses, which is why its survived, and why its beautiful.
An estimated quarter of a million slum homes were cleared in the 1930s alone. You would definitely not be begging to live in any of them, if they'd survived as they were until today.
Keir Starmer has tonight told his MPs: “The Conservatives are not our principal opponent. Reform are our main rivals for power. We have a moral responsibility to make sure Farage never wins.”
And PM takes off gloves: “We have to be clear that every opportunity he has had in this Parliament to back working people he’s voted against. Telling the workers at Jaguar Land Rover they deserve to go bust. A state-slashing, NHS-privatising, Putin apologist. Without a single patriotic bone in his body. We will take to fight to him. We will fight as Labour.”
I’m happy to hear that. Farage is a fraud and it’s time he was held to account . Labour need to stop messing around and go for the jugular .
Labour very, very particularly need to mention Farage's responsibility for the huge post-Brexit rise in immigration, if they're finally going to say the truth.
Boris owns the Boriswave. It would be difficult to pin it on Farage.
I wouldn't agree there. Farage would have had no choice but to do the same, had been in power then, or watch the economy go into a depressing.
It shouldn't be too diffucult to highlight the actual figures of the number of sectors left dangerously short after Brexit , as referenced in detail in past discussions on here.
This is where I am right now. Primrose Hill. 5 minutes from my flat. One of the most beautiful urban burbs of the world
Is there any reason why we can’t build like this again? No. King Charles is doing it. The French are doing it across France. Likewise the Germans and Dutch
Enough ticky tacky redbrick boxes. Build beauty
The reason is that builders always go the cheapest way, hence breeze block covered in redbrick.
And our planning policy gives permission to an oligopopy of developers whose only goal is to churn through developments.
Liberate planning and houses can be built one at a time, rather than as blocky developments, and the grand designs variety can be the norm not the exception.
See Japan where a street can have a hodgepodge of interesting and different buildings next to each other, based on each buildings owners preferences, rather than pure identikit similarity.
I love Japan and I broadly agree with you that we need to radically deconstruct our planning laws, but it's hard to look at the average Japanese urban or suburban streetscape and see it as full of "grand designs" style projects or beautiful vernacular architecture. People mostly build what they can afford, which might well be whatever the builder offers as their stock house type. Plus the "value is in the land and the house is not valued much by the next buyer" market they have doesn't encourage investing in higher quality housing...
Your proposed reforms have good arguments going for them, but I think this one's a bit shaky.
Japan has really ugly houses but for different reasons to this
1. There was a massive population boom postwar so they had to build cheap and quick
2. Of course half the country had also burned down. So they did them even cheaper and quicker
3 lack of urban space means almost no gardens and few parks. Very bleak
4. Japan is prone to earthquakes fires and tsunamis so there is no sense of “build for the future”. There isn’t one. Houses are just machines for living in
Incidentally if you want to see what some of the worst of that postwar housing was like, this youtube video is a Japanese documentary film from the early 1960s about the urban slums: https://youtu.be/cHry5vBkHs4 . (Narration in Japanese, obviously, but the images do 90% of the work, and there's always the autotranslate captioning.)
Comments
My sister raised her kids in a remote house, and one of her kids in particular hated the distance from his friends.
Is being alone, either missing your evening walk to see others, or not sitting outside your house to see them.
The cost of the building materials etc. for a large house vs a small, shitty one is spare change compared to the land values, at any rate in decent parts of the country.
I'm afraid everything comes back to our insane planning system. We won't sort housing out until we get government out of planning, or at least make it much more pro-growth. And the current government's reforms won't do more than tinker at the edges.
I currently live in a flat with density of about 120, and we have a nice private garden and a drying green. I used to live in a tenement at density of 350. I'd bring in a land efficiency rule which means that anything over 80 pop per hectare has to be flats.
Not that interested. I'd rather be sent to Norwich. But more interested than Nuneaton.
I can go out of my door and do a five-mile circular off-road run, only crossing three roads (after a 300-metre walk to get to the boundary path). That's priceless. You might not care. Others will.
(*) 'easy' required because my capacity for walking is large...
Just completed my two hour call with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. I believe it went very well. Russia and Ukraine will immediately start negotiations toward a Ceasefire and, more importantly, an END to the War. The conditions for that will be negotiated between the two parties, as it can only be, because they know details of a negotiation that nobody else would be aware of. The tone and spirit of the conversation were excellent. If it wasn't, I would say so now, rather than later. Russia wants to do largescale TRADE with the United States when this catastrophic "bloodbath" is over, and I agree. There is a tremendous opportunity for Russia to create massive amounts of jobs and wealth. Its potential is UNLIMITED. Likewise, Ukraine can be a great beneficiary on Trade, in the process of rebuilding its Country. Negotiations between Russia and Ukraine will begin immediately. I have so informed President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, of Ukraine, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, President Emmanuel Macron, of France, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, of Italy, Chancellor Friedrich Merz, of Germany, and President Alexander Stubb, of Finland, during a call with me, immediately after the call with President Putin. The Vatican, as represented by the Pope, has stated that it would be very interested in hosting the negotiations. Let the process begin!
Starmer really should have increased the UK fishing rights, if only from 25% to 26%, so that he could then say he had done better than Boris.
As it is the media narrative is that Starmer gave away 'last minute concessions' to get a deal.
Which is also something that will be noted by any country this government negotiates with.
Overall he's done better than Blair, Brown and Cameron did but not as well as Sunak.
(It's interesting that Starmer was left off that call...)
Is there any reason why we can’t build like this again? No. King Charles is doing it. The French are doing it across France. Likewise the Germans and Dutch
Enough ticky tacky redbrick boxes. Build beauty
Reform was always going to own the total repudiation of the deal. The space for the Tories was to attack this deal as inferior to the deal that should have been struck; an impossible deal based on mutual recognition of standards, much reduced fishing access for the EU, and anything else they could think of up to and including reparations for the Danegeld.
When you’re in opposition, you don’t actually have to deliver, so you can say anything.
Liberate planning and let people decide what they want to build, and where, with the cost of land back at 2% of the cost of the house, not upto 70% of it.
Then people can decide if they want a house, or a flat, or anything else. Their choice, not yours or mine, or the developers.
That's a weakness if the USA ever needs to get involved in military operations.
I'm sure that China will have noticed this.
But if land and planning were liberated there'd be less reason to build on a small footprint.
They didn't exactly have much of an option back in HK.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c17r52rvj2lo
If only there was a group of people in London who were able to investigate and tackle crime.
Nor is it really counterproductive. The vast majority of the public doesn't care for nitty gritty splicing of differences of shades of opposition.
Are you suggesting Johnson was Ned Beatty to the EU rednecks?
Where you at, @Nigel_Farage ?
https://x.com/conservatives/status/1924509256872575163?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
Liberate planning and houses can be built one at a time, rather than as blocky developments, and the grand designs variety can be the norm not the exception.
See Japan where a street can have a hodgepodge of interesting and different buildings next to each other, based on each buildings owners preferences, rather than pure identikit similarity.
The mad thing is when much of Primrose Hill was built it was seen as nice housing for the middle classes. Or even lower middle classes. Not billionaires
As can be seen being erected here:
(Yes, I go around taking photos of buildings under construction...)
The man is a graceless [removed].
As I typed this I’m passing a large group of Southern Europeans (Spanish Italian and maybe Greek) all crowded round an estate agent window trying to find out how much it is to live in a lovely place like Primrose Hill
And we also have homogeneity across London, Edinburgh. Whole estates designed by the same architect (e.g. Chesser). So it's not a new phenomenon.
What's complete madness is making such estates conditional on a new playpark, a new cycle lane. Councils should be allowed to borrow and buy the land, build the infrastructure, and sell plots either individually or as a whole, depending on what generates most cash.
(Note that you've changed my mind on this).
Why not pick the winners?
You can see it across london which has very large areas of period housing dating 1800-1930 (when things began to go wrong). They are nearly all charming (and now desirable)
It’s not survivor bias. They simply built more beautiful homes back then - even for quite poor people
Now take that Nuneaton development. Houses costing £400,000!! There is zero attempt at beauty. No thought for aesthetics. No human has sat down and thought - people will live here, how can we make it stand out, make it lovelier, add beauty and charm. It screams “maximum profit and minimum effort”
Its hideous. Ticky tacky identikit hideousness
Architectural ugliness is trained in architects. And enforced by planners.
https://youtu.be/C9pg2j2oGy0?si=F0ix2z6FFov_TfNO
And it is survivor bias. Plenty of utterly awful, shit homes were built in the late 19th century too. Which were subsequently bulldozed.
Your proposed reforms have good arguments going for them, but I think this one's a bit shaky.
1. There was a massive population boom postwar so they had to build cheap and quick
2. Of course half the country had also burned down. So they did them even cheaper and quicker
3 lack of urban space means almost no gardens and few parks. Very bleak
4. Japan is prone to earthquakes fires and tsunamis so there is no sense of “build for the future”. There isn’t one. Houses are just machines for living in
All things being equal, you would choose to live in a more traditionally beautiful house if one were offered to you, and if you didn't, your wife certainly would.
Would you prefer to rent in a 'beautiful' property or own an 'identikit' property ?
And do you regard all those 'corrie' style terraced streets as beautiful or hideous identikit - they were perhaps the first attempt to produce housing that the urban C1C2s could afford to buy.
All the most desirable and expensive towns in the UK are towns with a preponderance of Georgian and Victorian housing
https://www.scruton.org/building-beautiful
It has also had to be rebuilt because of its shodiness:
"A team of ex-miners, sent down to reconstruct the houses’ timber foundations, found them shallow and severely water damaged, rotted and crumbling.[viii] The walls of Downing Street’s superstructure were found to consist of rubble with timber, rather than proper brickwork, creating the ideal conditions for dry rot. Many were also suffering from insect damage. Wartime strengthening work on several of No. 10’s floors, performed alongside the construction of an air raid shelter in the basement, had proved inadequate, leaving several rooms unstable.[ix] Many of the diseased walls were also significantly ‘out of true’ (i.e. not properly aligned) and structurally unsound; the BBC’s Christopher Jones recorded that in some cases, ‘apparently solid walls were held up only by the plaster covering them’.[x]"
https://history.blog.gov.uk/2017/07/19/rebuilding-no-10-downing-street/
Here's my favourite example, which I've used before on PB. Bob Cratchitt's House is about five minutes from me (the other direction from Primrose Hill). We know it is Bob Cratchitt's house (from Dickens' Christmas Carol) because Dickens' places the house in grotty, smoggy Camden Town and the description exactly matches the house Dickens himself lived in, in Camden, on Bayham Street. Cratchitt is definitely C1, C2... lower middle class and struggling
It would have been exactly like this
https://www.camdenbus.co.uk/properties/bayham-street-camden-town
A beautiful house now worth £1.2m
Keir Starmer has tonight told his MPs: “The Conservatives are not our principal opponent. Reform are our main rivals for power. We have a moral responsibility to make sure Farage never wins.”
And PM takes off gloves: “We have to be clear that every opportunity he has had in this Parliament to back working people he’s voted against. Telling the workers at Jaguar Land Rover they deserve to go bust. A state-slashing, NHS-privatising, Putin apologist. Without a single patriotic bone in his body. We will take to fight to him. We will fight as Labour.”
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/161084033#/?channel=RES_BUY
Its usual construction methods for the other 70% are concrete foundations following the walls (ie not slabs), with brick over breeze block for the walls and tile over wood frame for the roof.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ct8eyyWIKjg
https://www.facebook.com/Redrow/videos/construction-view-home-tour-1mp4/297603733044136/
https://www.offsitehub.co.uk/barratt-redrows-timber-frame-division-achieves-record-year-following-expansion/#:~:text=In the long term, the,of homes built off-site.
Could save yourself some cash and bag this tenement flat in Ramsay Garden.
https://www.primelocation.com/for-sale/details/69866307/?search_identifier=81091f4e92202f9a69899f86465fb777
The weird thing about Japanese parks is they do have various tiny pockets of communal land labelled "parks" scattered around but they're almost invariably rather low on vegetation, being more like gravelled areas with a few benches and some childrens' play equipment and the odd tree or two round the edges. They have much less in the way of roadside trees than the average UK town too, which I always miss when I'm out there.
But for the new build estates, we need to seed-bomb them from altitude with a C130.
Why were such places not desirable in the 70s and 80s when SeanT was squatting in them ?
Not because of the aesthetics but because there wasn't the demand to live in the area.
Maybe, in Farage, Keir has found an enemy which inspires him to do better.
The survivor bias point is more nitpicking and relatively trivial in comparison, but the issue is that you are falling for thinking that all homes then were like those that have survived but the good ones have survived deliberately.
"Cratchitt's" house was not one of the slum houses, which is why its survived, and why its beautiful.
An estimated quarter of a million slum homes were cleared in the 1930s alone. You would definitely not be begging to live in any of them, if they'd survived as they were until today.
It shouldn't be too diffucult to highlight the actual figures of the number of sectors left dangerously short after Brexit , as referenced in detail in past discussions on here.