“Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.”Kenneth Boulding (1910-1993), founder of evolutionary economics and co-founder of General Systems TheoryOne of the philosopher Bertrand Russell’s best analogies was ‘the inductivist turkey’. A repeated experiment apparently gives the same answer every time. Has anContinueContinue reading “Cycling At The Edge”
Tag Archives: Planning
Panic Over?
“The question remains whether, as the Berliners say, ‘the situation is desperate, but not hopeless,’ or ‘hopeless but not desperate,’ as the Viennese used to put it.” Walter C. Dowling (US Ambassador to Korea), 1957 Consider three documents. The first is the State of the South West Report 2011, which informs us that human activityContinueContinue reading “Panic Over?”
Back to School
This month, young Eric was at it again. Pickles’ Communities & Local Government Department issued new planning rules for schools, ordering local councils to allow good schools to expand and threatening the cane if they exercise their own democratic judgment. This is, to put it bluntly, an idiotic policy, created by idiots, for idiots toContinueContinue reading “Back to School”
Ecocidal Maniacs Rule!
“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the systemContinueContinue reading “Ecocidal Maniacs Rule!”
When Will Wessex Flag Ban Cease?
We are the dispossessed. Dispossessed of our liberties by the Norman Conquest. Dispossessed of our livelihoods by the enclosures. And now dispossessed by the Coalition as it flogs our communities’ assets to pay bankers their bonuses. Bonuses then spent squeezing us out of our homeland to make way for commuter mansions and weekend cottages. TheContinueContinue reading “When Will Wessex Flag Ban Cease?”
Resentment & Resistance
BBC Radio 4 this morning picked at the dilemma facing the Coalition over planning. On the one hand are those concerned, genuinely or for electoral reasons, that our environment is being serially degraded by development and that something needs to be done about this. Handing control to local folk seems like a good start, thoughContinueContinue reading “Resentment & Resistance”
Localism, R.I.P.
We have long been critical of the Coalition’s localism agenda. Not because we disagree with it in principle. Far from it. We would devolve power further and faster, and instead of dismantling those anti-democratic regional institutions we would democratise them in the form of a Wessex Parliament – the ‘Witan’ – an accountable voice forContinueContinue reading “Localism, R.I.P.”
Six Months
That’s all it took. All it took for the Coalition’s true programme to be made manifest. It talks the talk about decentralisation and localism but does it walk the walk?We await with interest the so-called Decentralisation & Localism Bill. We shall withhold judgment until we can read it, but recent pronouncements on housing and educationContinueContinue reading “Six Months”
Nonsense. Nonsense. Nonsense.
So there we have it. Three practically identical guided tours of Fantasy Island, courtesy of the main London parties.Now that the manifestos are out we can see that the all-pervading theme of this election is that the sins of the bankers are to be visited upon the users of public services, even unto the tenthContinueContinue reading “Nonsense. Nonsense. Nonsense.”
Hippies in Denial
This time last month (30 May), there was a gathering at Glastonbury Town Hall to discuss the town’s ‘transition’ to a post-oil world. It began with a talk from a leading light in Transition Town Totnes (TTT), the pioneers of transition thinking in the UK. Sadly, amidst all the joyful envisioning of local self-sufficiency, thereContinueContinue reading “Hippies in Denial”
Wessex Regionalists 