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jabby posted:That's great, but how many other people would you rather see on the streets than see houses built on that bit of countryside? It's not really about what you would prefer for yourself. That's a false dichotomy because we could easily house everyone without wrecking areas of outstanding natural beauty and scientific interest. e: 1948, the National Assistance Act abolished the poor laws, declaring in section 1 that "The existing poor law shall cease to have effect" Oh dear me fucked around with this message at 02:27 on Feb 8, 2017 |
# ? Feb 8, 2017 02:16 |
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# ? May 18, 2024 18:13 |
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Oh dear me posted:That's a false dichotomy because we could easily house everyone without wrecking areas of outstanding natural beauty and scientific interest. We seem to be arguing at cross purposes here. My initial point is that protectionism of green belt land has reached ridiculous levels to the point where councils are being castigated for building a few thousand houses there. Rules should be relaxed about building on green belts, and councils should be supported in doing so rather than criticised. Because for the most part the objections of people living there are garbage and should be disregarded. You seem to think this means paving over every inch of the countryside with wilful abandon. Of course you can keep areas of outstanding beauty and scientific interest. That doesn't describe most green belt land. As you say you can house everybody without taking away much of the countryside that exists. You just can't do it easily or well if you insist on maintaining huge swathes of empty land around every major city and forcing people to either live in high rises or commute in from dozens of miles away. That's not particularly good for the environment either, and enforcing green belt rules with an iron fist just means houses go up in some other far less suitable bit of countryside. If they go up at all.
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# ? Feb 8, 2017 02:23 |
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We could probably house quite a lot of them in the 70% or so of the country currently covered in farmland that I'm pretty sure has bugger all scientific interest and aside from the 10% or so of the country that's national park probably could be replicated in terms of prettiness by just planting some trees or something.
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# ? Feb 8, 2017 02:22 |
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Oh dear me posted:That's a false dichotomy because we could easily house everyone without wrecking areas of outstanding natural beauty and scientific interest. In fact, we could easily house everyone without destroying any areas of mediocre natural beauty or passing scientific interest. Just, not without tanking the housing 'market' and so losing the next 5 elections on a scale Corbyn could only dream of.
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# ? Feb 8, 2017 02:25 |
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jabby posted:Of course, and this is why housebuilding should be done in large part by local authorities rather than lovely developers. Most of the people involved just didn't want new houses for reasons of 'new people' and 'house prices' though. It would be a great thing if there was a scientific body that could determine where the optimal places for new estates were without local or regional bias, some platonic local authority body that didn't have to report to an unfortunately Tory council. I think you could get 60% of the houses that developers want but actually distribute them to people that needed them if done in that manner.
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# ? Feb 8, 2017 02:25 |
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jabby posted:You seem to think this means paving over every inch of the countryside with wilful abandon. No, not at all, but I was talking about the loveliest bits of Cornwall when you asked me how many people I'd be happy to see sleeping on the streets before we built there. I'd stopped talking about the green belt some time ago - I know next to nothing about it - and was just arguing against the "only classist racists care about the countryside, people would rather have homes than nature" claims. E: sorry for confusion anyway, I am very tired and shall go to bed.
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# ? Feb 8, 2017 02:41 |
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radmonger posted:Just, not without tanking the housing 'market' and so losing the next 5 elections on a scale Corbyn could only dream of. Do it while brexit's happening, people will barely notice alongside everything else.
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# ? Feb 8, 2017 02:56 |
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So in the middle of complaining about the Speaker of the House of Commons not inviting a foreign citizen to address Parliament (zomg no platforming!), the Republicans tried to censor a US Senator reading a letter from Martin Luther King's widow. In Black History Month.
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# ? Feb 8, 2017 04:16 |
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I don't mind the idea of building on green belt land if necessary, but my own observations from commuting in the last 7 years or so, suggest that if many more people have to commute into London Liverpool Street from the edge of the city, commuter trains will be full long before they get to my station, which is 10 miles out. London has the most intensive transport network in the UK and it's almost collapsed because people have no choice but to live miles away from where they work and commute in because of prohibitive rents or house prices. Build inner city en masse, build on the fringes selectively.
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# ? Feb 8, 2017 07:35 |
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OwlFancier posted:We could probably house quite a lot of them in the 70% or so of the country currently covered in farmland that I'm pretty sure has bugger all scientific interest and aside from the 10% or so of the country that's national park probably could be replicated in terms of prettiness by just planting some trees or something. On a slightly different note, abolishing subsidies for sheep farming (which is fundamentally unprofitable in the uk and can't be carried on without constant state handouts) and allowing the great swathes of upland that are currently environmentally devastated by sheep to return to forest would be one of the best things we could possibly do for Britain's natural environment. I honestly think sheep farming only survives in the UK because people like to see the fluffy white dots on the hills as they drive between towns.
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# ? Feb 8, 2017 07:41 |
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Oh dear me posted:No it doesn't. You are just quoting the part in my link where he outlines the BBC report I was pretty sure you got your figure from. Read on and you will see: If the criterion is "untouched by human activity" then there is virtually zero countryside anywhere in Britain. Almost every wood has been managed and coppiced, farms certainly don't count, the Highlands are not a natural landscape etc.
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# ? Feb 8, 2017 08:54 |
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Jose posted:I thought you were a Leeds supporter Mods ban this vile filth.
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# ? Feb 8, 2017 09:20 |
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I'm a planning consultant and from where I stand the greatest impediment to getting more houses built are poorly funded and demotivated local authority planning departments. Also NIMBIES, we are also going to get to a point where every major route in and out of towns is completely hosed because despite how much is talked about sustainable travel, car ownership just increases.
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# ? Feb 8, 2017 09:40 |
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it doesn't help that buses + trains are expensive and poo poo. even major metropolitain areas in the united states have cheaper busses + trains than the UK. in New york it costs $125 for a month of unlimited subway + bus use, Chicago it's $100 for unlimited subway + busses. in England rural bus routes are being cut all the time, which effect old people + the poor + young the most.
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# ? Feb 8, 2017 09:49 |
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On the other hand, there is no public transport at all in rural America.
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# ? Feb 8, 2017 09:54 |
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Zephro posted:I have some sympathy for this view but to be consistent we should also exclude all farmland, because that's very much not natural. Farms are food factories. There's nothing natural about them and they are bad for biodiversity. Yes, I agree with all of this, and would add that a plot of ground that had never been touched by human hand would nevertheless be environmentally depleted if it were surrounded by roads, because other species need to travel and mate and so on. So I don't think 'untouched' would be a sensible criterion any more than 'grass grows here' is, it's biodiversity that matters most.
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# ? Feb 8, 2017 09:55 |
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Pissflaps posted:On the other hand, there is no public transport at all in rural America. yeah, but gas is cheap and the roads straight and simple. the difference in scale between the two places is ridiculous. having a comprehensive public transport system in rural America would be insane simply because of the distances involved. a lot of suburban areas do have pretty good public transport systems.
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# ? Feb 8, 2017 10:04 |
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If there is any truth to these rumours, surely the most logical time would be after May triggers article 50. It would mean that the new leader won't have any of that on their hands when they take over.
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# ? Feb 8, 2017 10:07 |
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I think it's bobbins tbh.
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# ? Feb 8, 2017 10:16 |
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JFairfax posted:it doesn't help that buses + trains are expensive and poo poo. High density housing is one big reason. High population density = cheap and good public transport.
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# ? Feb 8, 2017 10:23 |
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Pissflaps posted:I think it's bobbins tbh. Agreed, it would make too much sense for him to quit now.
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# ? Feb 8, 2017 10:39 |
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I mean it's always going to be expensive to send a bus tooling out ten miles to the middle of Ruralshire to pick up one or two people Basically as someone who lives in the countryside, the countryside is poo poo and you should try to live in a city instead It's too late for me, but you can still save yourselves
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# ? Feb 8, 2017 10:48 |
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Zephro posted:I mean it's always going to be expensive to send a bus tooling out ten miles to the middle of Ruralshire to pick up one or two people the problem comes when you have to make it profitable
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# ? Feb 8, 2017 10:50 |
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# ? Feb 8, 2017 10:53 |
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It'll all change when we have electric driverless taxis that are dirt cheap. edit: ^^^^^^^^ jfc why the hell have you posted that monstrosity.
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# ? Feb 8, 2017 10:54 |
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JFairfax posted:the problem comes when you have to make it profitable Services in the countryside are always going to be crap compared to services in the city, it's inevitable. It's part of the reality of living there.
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# ? Feb 8, 2017 10:58 |
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things have got a lot worse with rural bus routes over the last 15 years. e/ also some british cities are still poo poo with public transport. Bristol for instance, it's a loving mess, it should have a tram or some sort of better train system. you cannot get a train directly from south of the river to north of the river, you have to change at temple meads. madness. JFairfax fucked around with this message at 11:07 on Feb 8, 2017 |
# ? Feb 8, 2017 11:05 |
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bristol buses 5 years ago were atrocious, they're slightly better now, but congestion is still a huge problem now they're working on the metro rail system at the moment ^
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# ? Feb 8, 2017 11:08 |
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when you say working on, do you mean 'talking about' ? because they've been talking about it since the 1990s
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# ? Feb 8, 2017 11:09 |
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Zephro posted:I mean it's always going to be expensive to send a bus tooling out ten miles to the middle of Ruralshire to pick up one or two people Speaking of everything imploding: quote:The Government is clear – the NHS is and always will be protected in trade deals. Our world-class healthcare sector benefits from international trade and should not be excluded. e: JFairfax posted:Bristol for instance, it's a loving mess, it should have a tram or some sort of better train system.
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# ? Feb 8, 2017 11:23 |
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There was going to be a tram from the docks to...somewhere, I can't remember off the top of my head, planning started in the 90's but there was a bitter divide between the Lib Dem (pro tram) and Tory councillors (anti tram). The Tories eventually solved the problem by building a housing estate in the way of the proposed route. No more tram!
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# ? Feb 8, 2017 11:27 |
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JFairfax posted:you cannot get a train directly from south of the river to north of the river, you have to change at temple meads. madness. e: Also, when comparing public transport available in cities you have to consider their populations because an investment that is economically sound with a large population to serve won't necessarily make sense with a much smaller one. For example, people have been comparing british cities to Hong Kong (pop 7m), Chicago (pop ~3m) and New York (pop ~8m). The largest UK city outside London is Birmingham, whose population barely breaks 1m. LemonDrizzle fucked around with this message at 11:35 on Feb 8, 2017 |
# ? Feb 8, 2017 11:29 |
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this is slanderous. BS3 superiority.
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# ? Feb 8, 2017 11:33 |
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The Shadow Over Winford.
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# ? Feb 8, 2017 11:35 |
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JFairfax posted:when you say working on, do you mean 'talking about' ? talking about is probably a better phrasing it finished the second round of consultations last december https://travelwest.info/projects/metrowest i honestly believe they will do this, it's not planned to be operational till 2020 at the earliest, but it will be more useful than the loving metrobus the new estate they're building at cribbs/patchway is having easy rail access planned as well BS8 reppin'
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# ? Feb 8, 2017 11:45 |
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Looke posted:talking about is probably a better phrasing oh sweet naive child
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# ? Feb 8, 2017 11:51 |
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it'll be real i swear!!11 being honest though both metrorail and metrobus were huge vanity projects by the gently caress in the red trousers the metrorail would be good and nice though
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# ? Feb 8, 2017 11:51 |
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Zephro posted:I have some sympathy for this view but to be consistent we should also exclude all farmland, because that's very much not natural. Farms are food factories. There's nothing natural about them and they are bad for biodiversity. At least our farmers still keep hedges. I wonder if that's going to be an unhappy consequence of Brexit - didn't the EU incentivise farmers to keep land fallow and various other measures to protect biodiversity? Re nimbyism, flooding is a huge problem for new builds, as are unscrupulous developers. I haven't lived in *that* many places, and I can think of three modern developments that have either been torn down or had huge amounts of remedial work due to bodging the conditions for building. I agree that it's a false dichotomy between housing people and building on the green belt, but I think much of the opposition would disappear if houses were built sympathetically to the existing ones. It's perfectly possible to have either flatpack houses that look acceptable in a rural setting: Or modern houses that meet all the energy standards but still look like old cottages: A picture postcard village near where I grew up had a bunch of prominent new houses, but because they were painted the same, and had the same character as those around them, there was surprise, acceptance and general nodding of heads about how it was a good thing.
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# ? Feb 8, 2017 11:53 |
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Those houses don't look like affordable houses.
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# ? Feb 8, 2017 11:56 |
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# ? May 18, 2024 18:13 |
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https://twitter.com/britainelects/status/829129993984888835 On the topic, multiple people have said lately that an IndyRef campaign needs to really be tight on the economic stance. Whether or not it's true, or could happen, any time any trade amount with England is brought up, Sturgeon should just point out the FTA May wants with the EU and just say if that is May's stance, I'm sure we could work out the same for Scotland. Boom, no more Little Englanders talking about how much Scotland relies on English trade, because if they dismiss the possibility, they'll need to admit May's hope of FTA with other countries is similarly ridiculous.
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# ? Feb 8, 2017 12:08 |