“Vote Blue, Go Green.” Remember that? And, of course, “the greenest government ever”? Listen as the peals of maniacal laughter echo down the corridors of power.Last week DEFRA launched its triennial review of Natural England and the Environment Agency. According to his foreword to the consultation paper, Environment Secretary Owen Paterson sees his job asContinueContinue reading “Seismic Shift?”
Category Archives: Environment
Sowing Bricks
The Conservatives, one-time party of the countryside, continue to plot their destructive, and self-destructive, course. Planning Minister Nick Boles told Newsnight this week that he wants to concrete-over 1,500 square miles, twice the area of Greater London, though he didn’t seem quite sure of the figures. Never mind. A million acres. Or thereabouts. Did heContinueContinue reading “Sowing Bricks”
All At Sea
Cornwall is bigger than Wessex. Yes or no? It depends on definitions. Land area is one thing, but there are some rights of sovereignty that extend out to the 200-mile limit of the Continental Shelf. And it’s not just sovereign states who have clearly demarcated areas of seabed to their name. So do the devolvedContinueContinue reading “All At Sea”
The Democracy Haters
“He did not know her name, but he knew that she worked in the Fiction Department. Presumably – since he had sometimes seen her with oily hands and carrying a spanner – she had some mechanical job on one of the novel-writing machines.”George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-FourOrwell’s technicians at Minitrue work for David Cameron these days,ContinueContinue reading “The Democracy Haters”
Analysing ‘Dave’
The MP for Witney is a Tory Prime Minister for our times. Not too blatant a representative of the landowning and military class (though do scratch and sniff), nor the child of a grocer, but a public relations man. What you see is anything but what you get. Like Blair, Cameron is first and foremostContinueContinue reading “Analysing ‘Dave’”
The Great Turn-Off
In his 1915 poem In Time of ‘the Breaking of Nations’, Thomas Hardy wrote of young love and the agricultural routine as the unchangeable backdrop to war, the things that ‘will go onward the same, though dynasties pass’. The first verse features a man guiding a horse, still then the unassailable essence of farm powerContinueContinue reading “The Great Turn-Off”
Circuses & Bread
The euphoria will pass. And then what?Today, as the Olympic Games draw to a close, David Cameron hosts a two-hour summit meeting on hunger. It’s an excellent opportunity to talk about everything but the real issue. No doubt there’ll be much condemnation of barriers to global free enterprise (like communal land rights), a little tokenContinueContinue reading “Circuses & Bread”
Bye Bye Beauty
Last week saw the first results published from the 2011 census of England (& Cornwall) & Wales. (We’ll call that ‘ECW’ for short.) The results are interesting both for what they say and what they don’t. There’s a gap of maybe a few million who aren’t included and therefore have to be estimated. It’s anContinueContinue reading “Bye Bye Beauty”
Squeezed Down The Plughole
“Man stalks across the landscape, and desert follows his footsteps.”Herodotus (5th century BC)North-eastern Wessex, along with much of the rest of southern and eastern England, is now subject to a hosepipe ban. Parts of western Wessex are heading that way too.Why? Last night, the BBC’s reporter let slip that one component of the problem isContinueContinue reading “Squeezed Down The Plughole”
Building a Worse World
We didn’t ask for the National Planning Policy Framework. We pointed out that a government actually committed to localism wouldn’t issue detailed instructions on how local powers are to be used; it would get out of the control freakery business altogether.Nevertheless, the NPPF arrived, on Tuesday, amidst much trepidation. Environmental groups, alarmed by the slash-and-burnContinueContinue reading “Building a Worse World”
Wessex Regionalists 