GreenBelt Thinking - Civilisation and Environment before Margins: March 2013

I am not anti conservative, I am not anti labour. I view myself as a free thinker, not politically aligned, but if you want to put me in a red/yellow/blue box then that is your choice, not mine. I don't like insincerity and double-speak from any party. The party presently in power said in their manifesto:

We will protect the environment for future generations, make our economy more environmentally sustainable, and improve our quality of life and well-being. There is no contradiction between going green and supporting the economy – we can and will do both.
http://www.conservatives.com/Policy/Where_we_stand/Environment.aspx

I wholly support the concept that the environment and economy go together. As a society that aspires to be civilised this is exactly the right approach (three pillars of sustainability being Environment, Economy and Society).

Conservatives in their budget said:

An extra £15bn for new road, rail and construction projects by 2020, starting with £3bn in 2015-16(BBC Website)

While at the same time failing to recognise our roads and infrastructure are falling apart. Why are they falling apart? Because the maintenance budget is already unsustainably high and every local authority in the country has no money left, or staff left. or both.

The Government worsened this situation by capping public sector pay rises to 1% = the brain drain in local authorities continue and the cap means a 1.5% cut in pay for the employee in real terms. You pay peanuts and you'll get monkeys; mind you the more monkeys the Conservatives get in to Local Authorities the more they can turn their myth of the public sector as useless in to fact. Furthermore why do all parties say you can't cap or tax the high flyer's in business because we will lose those great people to other countries, yet it is acceptable to not allow the high achievers in the public sector to flourish or be rewarded. The Local Authority brain drain accelerates with this budget.

So we're going to spend £15billion on roads and construction but have absolutely zero idea where the maintenance cash will come from.

I also read:

Pottery industry in Midlands to be exempt from climate change levy................

So the Government believes in climate change clearly as they have a climate change levy, strange that, Mr Gove wants to remove it from our children's education at school (see: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/why-its-a-mistake-to-trim-climate-change-from-the-curriculum-8540423.html). So let's get this right, Government taxes business and individuals for the affects they have on the climate (unless you live in Stoke) and have a Department of Energy and Climate Change, but they don't want your children educated in climate change. I wonder why. This will keep future generations in the dark for sure.

And the oil slick on top of the cake is the a tax INCENTIVE for fracking;
Tax allowances for investment in shale gas (BBC website). I am no expert on fracking, but concerns have been raised and it's a desperate way to retrieve energy if it is true that the energy spent extracting shale gas is greater than what will be extracted. In other words wasting energy to get energy.

If this was a true green Government they should tax greenfield development to the value equivalent or more than brownfield development and/or regeneration and further tax incentivise wood fuel, solar and tidal energies. I think its time they felled the tree on their logo and replaced it with a logo consisting of an empty shopping mall and an unmaintained road leading to it.

PS, According to a BBC the Government also provided nil incentives in the budget for the self employed, small businesses and enterprises...and they wonder why Town High Streets are failing...?!

A really good protest march in my home town against the proposed development of a modern shopping centre in a traditional market town. The market town I live in isn't particularly pretty, planners have already a made a dogs dinner of it in the past with Costa Coffee occupying a Germanic style building, while next door is the glass fronted modern architecture of a Bank and across the town square from there some kind of neo-classical town hall with Tuscan columns supporting a portico. So overall pretty well architecturally confused, without theme, reason or rhyme. Planners and developers want the residents to accept similar mistakes all over again with new proposals.

Planners do not seem to be aware of the internet. We shop on the internet. It is a powerful tool that decimates our high street shops. We shop in shopping malls (appalling though they truly are). Cities and Malls have the big brands and the smaller towns can not retain them any longer. My home town needs to do some serious looking in to the future, fill the small shops with local businesses and bespoke shops. Identify a theme and brand and stick with it.

They will of course fail because central Government keeps telling them different. That is the Government who are fat on the molasses of half truths from big development/building companies, preaching localism but ignoring the outputs of localism.

I hope the proposal to develop my market town gets kicked out, but for the time being here are some photos from local people performing localism, though it has to be said it was good to see an MP on a bench with a megaphone talking about only allowing brownfield development - time will tell if he can stick to his words.