Reply to: 3,000,000 house to be built by Labour

[Buffoon]

Ya gotta laugh!

The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said on Friday that the prime minister’s plans to increase housebuilding from 200,000 to 240,000 new homes a year by 2016 represented a drop in rate of growth of recent housebuilding.

It said that the policy implied a growth rate of 3.7 per cent in the number of new homes built until 2016, down from the average of 5.2 per cent achieved over the past five years.

FT: Brown accused of spin over home building targets

[Causus Deli]

Look it's official

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/green...123539,00.html

Makes no sense to limit kids and keep up this insane open-door policy. We are already limiting kids, 1.7 or someink to the indigenous population last I saw. Stop anymore coming and kick out those who should not be here. Simple, any takers?

[Causus Deli]

The effects on GW

Let’s look at an extreme situation that may amuse our slightly slow man-made GW friends. Let’s say the UK becomes the first country not to produce any carbon at all by 2020, a sort of ‘glasshopper’ carbon footprint. Unfortunately 1 billion more people will be on the earth by this time and as they are likely to be from developing countries, some a little bit nippy, they are not going to be as clever as we grasshoppers have been. It does not take a mathematician of my standing to show that if they each churn out CO2 at 6% of our previous thankfully lost rate we’ll be no better off in terms of overall world CO2. I would humbly suggest that 6% is ludicrous as is 0 emissions from the UK Of course if we are not producing any CO2 at all then we will have a shortage for our coniferous and deciduous friends, and , and…...

See how ludicrous the whole situation is. We are negligible in the whole massive expansion scheme of things.

[Causus Deli]

Only 3 million eh? Who are these houses for, I am conservatively estimating that’s about 10 million people? Where are these people just now, I checked under my bed and at the bottom of the garden and under my fave bridge but no signs? I can only conclude they are not here yet and this measure appears to be in anticipation of quite a few more million new fiends. Imagine the pop of the UK being 65+ million by 2020 and as history has shown half the increase being in London.

The population of the world is out of control, perhaps we should leave them to their over breeding and not burden ourselves further. The world will have an extra billion people by 2020, I would suggest that the government acknowledge this and take appropriate action (as can be found in many of my writings herein).

[zathras]

And it is the proposals for a massive house building programme, with a total of 3 million new homes built by 2020, that will draw the immediate attention.

Mr Brown promised the targets would be met through changes in the planning system, new private-public partnerships and the release of surplus public land.


I read that as:

Let the big co house builder Labour donors built more tiny dog kennels on green belt land

Let the public sector sell of all the publicly owned spaces to big co house builder Labour donors for a large sum of cash.

Win-win all round then?

Have they included the cost of the land on which these houses will stand, it is just last time they forgot.

[bogeyman]

According to Red Star research, in the late 1990s Tesco executives featured on six government task forces, more than for any single company and far more than the other supermarket chains.

Indeed so, my dear old invertebrate.

It won't be long before they rename the United Kingdom 'Tescoland'.

I hear that Tesco is already the capital of the Scilly Isles.

[DimPrawn]

It's just open to abuse - it's amazing how big firms e.g. Tesco can get land reclassified so they can stick a frickin car park and megastore on it.

According to Red Star research, in the late 1990s Tesco executives featured on six government task forces, more than for any single company and far more than the other supermarket chains. These included Terry Leahy, who sat on the Board of Trade's Competitiveness Advisory Group (although from the DTI website it is unclear whether this still exists in 2004) and former Tesco Retail director, Michael Wemms, who was a member of the New Deal Task Force.

Currently, John Longworth, group trading, law and technical director of Tesco PLC, sits on the Government Advisory Committee on Packaging Waste and Recycling, and is also one of nine commissioners of the Health and Safety Commission. Lucy Neville Rolfe, Tesco's Director of Group Corporate Affairs, also sits on Government committees (see below).

Tesco gave the Labour Party more than £5,000 in sponsorship in 1997 and 1998. It is the biggest backer of the New Deal scheme119 and has offered 1500 'opportunities' for New Deal applicants.Tesco's former Chief Executive Ian McLaurin sits in the House of Lords, and in 1999 Tony Blair's government launched its first annual report in Kensington Tesco.

Tesco was also a £12m sponsor of the Millennium Dome. It was reported in The Observer at the time that lobbying firm, LLM - involved in a campaign on behalf of Tesco to block plans for a tax on shopping centre car parks - had 'suggested that a £12 million Tesco donation to the Millennium Dome was part of a 'quid pro quo deal'—giving its support to a government project in order to endear itself to New Labour. The paper went on to say that there is no suggestion that Tesco made the Dome donation to help it get its way over the car park tax issue. But the plan to impose the tax was dropped from the White Paper on transport—and the terms of the exemption were exactly as LLM's Ben Lucas had suggested. The Sunday Times said that the estimated cost to Tesco of the car park tax would have been £40 million.

Tesco has had a prominent presence at Labour Party conferences. In 2002, it sponsored the National Reception at the Party conference. In 2003, it sponsored the Constituency Delegates' Welcome reception, and co-ran a fringe debate 'Promising the Earth? Food, Farming and Rural Communities': presumably a fascinating 'greenwash' occasion considering the reality of Tesco's total contempt for UK farmers and rural communities. See section on 'Tesco's dealing with suppliers and farmers'.

It is quite clear that Tony Blair has a fascination for successful corporate bosses, including Terry Leahy who was knighted in 2002. Rumours in Management Today (January 2004) suggest that the government wants Terry Leahy to sort out the National Health Service.

Many campaigners believe that supermarkets bring undue influence on local government, especially when seeking planning permission for stores. Transforming local government is certainly on Tesco's agenda. Tesco is a corporate partner of the New Local Government Network (NLGN) which is 'an independent think tank seeking to transform public services, revitalise local political leadership and empower local communities'. NLGN has been favourably endorsed by Tony Blair, 'Modernising local government is vital to the future of our communities. NLGN contributes innovative and thought-provoking ideas to the debate on how we achieve that'.

Sucking up to New Labour, every little helps.

Now if the PCG had taken this view early on we would all probably have received knighthoods by now.

[Zorba]

It's just open to abuse - it's amazing how big firms e.g. Tesco can get land reclassified so they can stick a frickin car park and megastore on it.

[bogeyman]

Do you think there should be a couple more definitions of land, so that brownfield and greenfield can't be abused?

E.g. greyfield - former industrial or boarded up housing estate
yellowfield - monocultured farmland
bluefield - flood plains that will flood the next time it rains.

Good point.

'Brownfield' can mean almost anything the government or developers want it to mean.

Surely there should be gradations of 'used' land that take into account its suitability for building, difficulty to clean up, present amenity value to the community, flood risk etc.

This green/brown thing is a bit black and white, if you follow me.

[Zorba]

Do you think there should be a couple more definitions of land, so that brownfield and greenfield can't be abused?

E.g. greyfield - former industrial or boarded up housing estate
yellowfield - monocultured farmland
bluefield - flood plains that will flood the next time it rains.

[Chugnut]

There are plenty of existing brownfield sites to use which wouldn't be to the detriment of the current inhabitants. Old sprawling abandoned industrial estates which the businesses have left for all the new landscaped business parks. Plenty of these could be redeveloped and relandscaped first without resorting to trashing the greenbelt.

They would have the added benefit of already having the vital (and frequently overlooked) supporting infrastructure - roads, drains, services.

[Ardesco]

Greenfield is for farmers getting subsidies to spray pesticides and raise genetically modified crops etc.?

And land left to nature, all of our forests are greenfield.

What do you think our wonderful nu Liemore government are going to dig up, farmers land or a few forests?

[hugebrain]

I thought about countering this statement but the utter bloody stupidity of it left me too numb to do anything but sit at my keyboard an gawp like a landed trout.

Am I wrong then? I thought brownfield included parks and gardens and allotments and playing fields, stuff that is pretty important in towns and cities.

Greenfield is for farmers getting subsidies to spray pesticides and raise genetically modified crops etc.?

[Chugnut]

I thought about countering this statement but the utter bloody stupidity of it left me too numb to do anything but sit at my keyboard an gawp like a landed trout.

Another trout, right here.

[bogeyman]

Also, building on the green belt (mostly wasted mono-culture farmland) is much better than building on brownfield (our gardens and playing fields).

I thought about countering this statement but the utter bloody stupidity of it left me too numb to do anything but sit at my keyboard an gawp like a landed trout.