Cererean Scratchpad

The race for the next Prime Minister is getting started. But judging by the focus of the candidates (culture war and tax cuts), none of them are serious about the crises gripping this country. It looks like whoever wins, we lose. This country will continue to go downhill, with the next PM promising to get into the driving seat and put his or her foot on the accelerator. If we're to thrive through this, we need to rediscover the pre-war English model of not relying on central government to get anything done. Unfortunately, local government is a mess, and doing anything on a large scale invites the meddling of both them and Westminster. Anything requiring a competent government just isn't going to happen. Realistically, we need to be focused on the upper left of this grid -- solutions that require relatively small amounts of resources and which can be done without buy in from The Powers That Be (co-ordination difficult as I use it here comprises both the number of stakeholders yo...

Britain needs housing, and we all know who is to blame for our lack of supply: those dastardly NIMBYs and their unenlightened self interest in keeping property prices high. Or maybe that's not really what's going on. Most people agree that we need more homes. When you look at most opposition to new housing, a pattern emerges -- most opposition to housebuilding is opposition to concreting fields with deanoboxes, not to adding new homes. In fact, the only organised and large scale opposition tends to be over greenfield development. There's no Council for the Protection of Urban England pushing to keep brownfield land as brownfield. Brits like their green and pleasant land and wish to keep it; they aren't usually so bothered by a couple of houses being built on a garden. And who can blame them? The costs of greenfield development, both aesthetically (loss of visual appeal replaced by boxes on concrete) and logistically (increased demand on infrastructure) fall on existing ...