Brush with Democracy - another shade

After losing at two appeals and on the fifth application a local site nearby has finally won approval to form a new vehicular access, and, incidentally create yet a further habitation. Which side of the coin do you see? Persistence rewarded or sheer bloody mindedness, contrary to all local wishes, eventually winning out?

The background. The main road out of the village is narrow, only a car and half width, no verges, with hedges or low walls on either side. This section has a blind corner at either end of a some two hundred yard length of road. Towards the further end the road crosses a stream with stone parapets to either side. All typically Somerset. The local residents find this road difficult to drive and even more dangerous to walk or cycle. No forward visibility and nowhere to go to, or make room to pass. The initial application for two houses to one side of this narrow section of lane had many objectors, eventually it was approved on the basis that no vehicular access should be allowed off this narrow section of lane.

So after a further five applications and two appeals the Planners Officer recommends Approval to the forming of a new access off this same narrow section of lane, just before the bridge. Apparently car speed monitoring demonstrated low risk and visibility splay requirement were achievable. I have a smidgen of sympathy for the Planning Officer. If it was refused again and went to Appeal and if at the Appeal the Applicant could now show compliance with those same reasons used to refuse it last time, the Council could incur considerable costs for being unreasonable. All in all a bad decision and the thugs in our society, prepared to defy all to take what they particularly want, win. The initial decision, no road access of this stretch, was the right one.

Local democracy is a fragile thing. It is hard enough to marshal and focus opinion when freshly engaged to resist a bad application. But to have to return to the same subject time and time and time and time again when you thought you had won first time is beyond the possible. People do have lives and cannot keep going back over the same issues with fervent militancy. The trouble is that Planning decisions are not based on the degree of support or objection to any one proposal by the local residents but rely on the wording of obscure Planning Polices and detached objectives. More on that shortly.

If Planning was only just about what the local residents or even surrounding community thought, there would be no development. It would always be in someone's back garden, therefore to be objected to. You just cannot keep placing all developments, objected to by the vocal organised, near to the weak and ineffectual who are not able to organise a protest. Who would welcome a school, factory, fish and chip shop at the end of their garden? Sure there are bound to be lots of ideas where else they might be located so long as not there at the end of my garden. In the simple early days of Planning there were clear well understood objective principles that guided the application process. Certain areas were decreed suitable for certain type of development so long as specific criteria were met. Residents could object but would have to show that these criteria were breached in some way. A lumpen handed fairness to the community in general but not to the individual.

With time the process has become hugely complicated and complex. The vagaries that follow from this complexity allow a high degree of parochialism, with objective rationale being the loser. What we have now are a series of interrelated Policy Statements. Each Policy Statement being a huge cumbersome document, the result of a prolong and intense period of inspection, challenge, appeal, review and approval. Finally some years down the line, the plan is published and for those few weeks when everyone can remember what it was supposed to enshrine, it remains relevant and the working tool.

The District Council publish their Local Plans for each settlement based on the Structural Plans published by the County Council setting the framework for each of its areas and which in turn it to is based on the government's own published planning strategic objectives for the nation and the regions. From bottom up each is fully referential and compliant with the Policies of the next layer up. So well honed words severally checked for compliance with all relating Policies and stripped of vagueness and ambiguity to the point of course that they become meaningless generalities. Reading any Policy statement from one tier or another, there is no way you can see what is meant and intended when it comes to the specifics of planning in your own patch. Their sweep is too broad and general, stepping well aside from the specifics that might give a clue to the usual conflict of interest arising out of any patch of ground. What is worse we get sweeping aspirational design generalisations that apply totally inappropriately or to some nowhere place. Designs in our patch are to be based on guidelines set up for the Exmoor National Park! Chalk and cheese indeed. Now I like some of the chalk I have seen within the National Park but it is an irrelevance when sorting cheese from cheese in our patch.

Reflecting a view from a contrary stance to that expressed in my Brush with Democracy, we end up in the similar position. An over-blown, bloated planning system no longer responding or recognised by the communities on the ground on one hand. On the other intransigent individuals that are belligerently resist the common good when it compromises their own selfish aspirations find the chinks amongst those generalised words to drive in their wedge. As decisions have to founded on those same words, the Planner is left wrong footed and commonsense flies out of the window. A through spring clean is overdue. Get back to simple objectives with Planners working alongside with the community to help the community understand its planning problems and to achieve it's aspirations. Explaining any National or regional strategic requirments for their local patch and winning support. Not perfect, rough and ready, we may even have to wait before another airport, barrage, power station, motorway can be built. In the end only words can win and keep communities united.

Baffling silence

Just had our three major political parties annual conferences where they address the prevailing issues of the day. Not a mention of social inequality and the desperate need to reduce the gap. I confess I did not pay close attention, certainly did not read cover to cover all the various speeches. Yes I did pick up on one or two minor concessions that could be interpreted as paying a token lip-service to giving the underprivileged just a tad more. However the extremes between those that have and are getting more and those who do not have and are getting less, are so wide with the gap increasing at such a worrying rate.Nothing but a seismic shift in policy from any of three parties is going to even begin to change the present courses. That would have hit the headlines. Even I would have notice that. No, our political leaders attuned to the cares and worries of our Nation, are indifferent to the loss of self-respect, lack of hope and disassociation for the growing army that are having to give up more so that the few can enjoy. Those that have seek to isolate themselves from those that have not, ring fencing their privileged access to the key essentials of life, education, health and homes. A polarised society with a ghettoed rich isolated from the morass is a dangerous society, everyone is degraded by it, rich and poor alike.

The only word I hear is we must stay on course to ensure this slow recovery continues. All parties seem well content and satisfied in continuing to follow this Alice-In-Wonderland economic policy. A pyramid selling type of policy that is founded on creating money so we can spend more. That spending pays off the interest on past loans, so we must take out new loans to create the more money we need to spend to keep the wheels turning. If only we can increase our spending we can, we might, keep ahead of the spiralling debt interests that have to be paid. Just another pyramid selling scam but this one brokered by government.

Spending disproportionately of course, those with get even more while those with a little have to give up that little and those without have to do with even less. Never mind the rich spendings will trickle down as swill to feed the masses. Except that is not how it works. The rich are in a catch up race with the unseemly rich. The unseemly rich are grabbing ever more to show a gap and distance to those on their heels. Their spending is in the realm of the stratosphere, buying up banks that create money or controlling lead industries to set the prices that others must pay. You get the drift, the poor that have to give up are giving up even more to the outlets that the rich control and directly benefit from. Trickle down just does not trickle, another aspect of this crazed Alice-in-Wonderland economics. Economics based on principles where the real life consequences that fail to conform to theory are then assumed not to apply to the theory and can therefore be safely excluded. Told you Alice-in-Wonderland rules.

Institutional lunacy

I just dont get it, a massive loan is taken out to buy a company at some extortionate eye-watering price and then the costs of paying the interest of that massive loan is dumped on the company who struggle to pay it, or more often fail and go bankrupt. In the meantime all the fatcats along the way are creaming off their bonuses for putting together all the different components of all these massive deals. This is supposed to enrich us and make us a wealthier nation? This is not a one-off, this has now become a routine practice. A companies stock value is something to play with, to generate a higher stock valuation or manipulate a fall in value before a buyin. Welcome to the russian roulette of the stock market. Except the bullet ends up in all our heads. We are the losers, irrespective of whether the gamblers win or lose.

A companies stock should be there to help it grow and sustain itself for the long term, any stock value rise reflecting its successful strategy should be a bye reward. The stock market player and their institutional backers have stood this on its head. Today's stock market value is the only thing that counts and the consequences for the company, short term or long term, its survival, prosperity or it imminent bankruptcy are all of no consequence, other that how those situations can be best exploited to gain a stock market increase. It is sheer utter lunacy.

These massive loans that a company has to default on (its business just cannot not feed that amount of interest payment), get traded on, as if they are real assets, an illusory promise to pay is used to raise yet more money. Crazy, absurd but it is going on and no one is saying stop, this is plain stupid. The politicians are silent, we are on the road to recovery! The institutions are silent, so long as their investors see growth who gives a toss about a companies or a nation's future. The company, its employees and we are all helpless as our voice counts for nothing. The Stock Market is run, controlled, mediated by and serviced by the Institutions, who are answerable to zilch.

Yet interest payments are not wealth, increasing debts, good or bad, are not wealth. Wealth comes from producing goods or services that others want to buy. That takes the long game, time, care, commitment and a long term investment in renewing, updating and streamlining the provision in this increasingly competitive global market. The demands for this long game view could not be higher or more important. Instead we saddle companies with unnecessary debt loans that kill them off, the good with the bad. Their goes our future. We have to make it stop. Institutions have to be reigned in and their dominance of the Stock Market taken away. No Institution should be allow a shareholders voice. All decisions of a buy-out must have a majority of (non-institution) shareholders voting in agreement. Put people back in control. Invest in and support all those worthy companies who are working for our and our children's futures.

sovereignty

We like to think of ourselves as an island community, just nicely nestled off the coast of Europe, contained, masters of our own destiny and far from all the turmoil, strife and the argy-bargy of having to live up close with the neighbours next door on the continent. We are safe and secure in our island. Not anymore.
Though the pipes that link Europe up with the massive servers that feed the internet traffic pass through and across our shores, we are just as dependant on this other server farms for our continued internet access as is the rest of Europe. The USofA holds the world to ransom. Though it may well be not in their interest to terminate service any time soon, let us never lose sight of the fact, our internet, our means of living, is now dependant on the USofA continued goodwill. The best we could do to retaliate is to cut the pipes, damaging Europe but of course cutting ourselves off as well. No, we are well and truly beholdened to the USofA. So much for our sovereign independence.

Worse still, we have entered an age when our GPS location has become a central feature in arranging our lives. It has gone well beyond just SatNav's for car journeys. The GPS fix is becoming an essential element of all the wonderful Apps that let you move, explore and communicate with the world around you. GPS that is of course satellite dependant. How many GPS satellites does UKplc own. Zilch. How many have we contributed to and can rightfully claim part ownership. Zilch., Who do we totally rely on for access to all our GPS fixes, the USofA.  We are probably beyond the point when we can turn back and say we can live without the GPS. It is now integral, yet UKplc is totally dependant on others goodwill for a vital service. No backup plan, no partnership deals just the hope goodwill suffices. A supplicant nation.

I doubt whether we can even claim any degree of independence in the servicing of what is now vital Ecommunications. Though we do have UK front offices that offer Ecommunications I very much suspect that a peek behind the curtain would show that yet again we are totally dependant on the goodwill of USofA for any continuity. Europe would not be able to step in and offer a alternative route for connecting up with the rest of the world. One price we do have to pay for using the USofA as our gateway for all our Etraffic is to allow them to look at all our nations traffic. That is the deal. Come through us but only if you permit us to a look at anything at all we fancy taking a peek at, anything, no courtroom check, just on a whim or a fancy. Oh and inaddition to prove what good buddies we are, you must also show us (USofA) everything that you (UKplc) have been having a peeking at. Fair does, we are friends, we trust each other, right.

With the continuing and inevitable slide of USofA off the top dog spot there are a couple of emergent nations that are arm wrestling to grab this soon to be vacated top dog spot. In the resulting milieu of wheeling and dealing, relationships, even long term relationship are going to have to be renegotiated. Is this the time for a wake up call, we are no longer that independent island goings it own way? We are now totally dependant but also have become lazy about who are our real friends or need to be. Who do we need to cultivate to retain any degree of autonomy is this crazy mixed-up interdependent electronic world we emerging into.

the Bogeyman cometh

The recent serious loss of service experienced by many social network site, I include Google in this, could simply be due to the paranoia of nations states as they try to syphon off the ever increasing chatter, within their own country and equally that of friendly or foe states. The secret state surveillances that we know are taking place may be failing top keep up with the traffic growth. It is possible that their collective snooping has crashed the very sites they are so desperately keen to snoop on.

All for our own good and safety of course. If it was not for their constant vigilant monitoring we would be overwhelmed by all those terrorists out there for ever creating ever more sophisticated plots to overthrow us. On the scale of probabilities I am most likely to die in a car accident than encounter anything even peripheral to terrorist action. Set aside the probables in life and let us look at more extreme scenarios. I am much more likely to be raped or knifed in a street brawl than suffer even a minor graze resulting from a terrorist action. The collective paranoia and the accumulative hype about terrorism far exceeds the capacity of the terrorists to action. They do not have any super-powers, they do not have laboratories with highly skilled technicians dreaming up ever more complex devices, they do not have a highly organised and covert secret organisations able to baffle and confuse, no. They are relative simpletons, bumbling along making it up as they go along, limited to a few devotees and preying on the disaffected, disillusioned and despairing youth who are willing to commit suicide by strapping bombs to themselves. This is the true cost of the social inequality that is being so vigorously promoted, disaffected youth beyond hope.

We live with the awareness of unimaginable horrors, large numbers of people dying unexpectedly in dreadful circumstances, but we get on with life, we dont freeze up and cancel life. Not just natural disasters either, but man disasters. Planes do fall out of the sky, from time to time, we carry on flying, learn the lessons, but life carries on as normal. A few extreme acts of terrorism have been carried out, no one can forget the shock of 9/11, shocking but isolated, yes and in the scale of daily events exceptional. Sometimes through our own inefficiencies they get in their view, lucky. But terrorist acts are not the norm, they are not a constant in daily life. Despite what our security services would have us believe. This motley incompetent collection of the disaffected, that talk big, boast about their 'elaborate' plans but seldom have the nonce to succeed, are talked up by the security services. They promote them to arch enemy status and invest in them all the skills needed to justify the ever more elaborate defensive screens the security services think would be nice to employ. The Government, being the government, have to be seen to act, so can only support the only advice they can turn to, and up the security screen to the next level. There by confering on the bumbling terrorist the prize of being taken seriously and more credible than they are in reality.

The collective fear that has been talked up is just a later day version of the witch hunt. The Inquisition were on the hunt for witches, our Security Services are on the hunt for terrorists. The Inquisition were on the look out for covens, our Security surveillance seeks out terrorists cells. The Inquisition duck boarded witches to prove their innocence, we water-board our suspects to prove they are not terrorists. The Inquisition had to protect society from the evil spells cast by witches, the Security Services have to protect us from being radicalised. The Inquisition required everyman to denounce his neighbour, the Security Service listen in to all our gossip and speculations. The Inquisition looked for trademark features of witches, the Security Services check suspects against their radicalised muslim profile. The Inquisition and our Security Services justify their actions for the safety and peace of the State. We are degraded by their actions in our name. We are intimidated into giving up precious freedoms and rights for fear of the dire consequences that otherwise will arise, or so we are told. The terrorist wins the long game when we close down every day actions in anticipation, when we abandon cherished high ideals because of what they might do. When fear enters the mind and displaces rational thought, the terrorists have won.

Drawing a line

Eddie Shah's plea of foul sounds hollow, just because he was caught doing what a lot of others were doing at the time does not absolve him for being responsible for his own action. He is right of course there is a distinction to be made between the actual act of violating another person against their wishes and a technical definition of a act against a minor.

An adult of course has an overiding duty and a responsibility to protect the innocence of youth, to understand their immaturity, their gush of unchannelled surging hormone and rising desires with their lack of perception of the realities against the fantasises in their so vivid minds. That is why we have the technical definition of rape with a minor, consummated or not, to protect our not yet adult and mature young. Fine.


If an innocent and naive pubescent youth decides to strip off their clothes and gyrate infront of a adult male to draw their attention to them and that that adult male decides to consumate their sexual arousal, it is not an unexpected consequence. Maybe the youth had no comprehension of what consequences might follow but they had put themselves in a very vulnerable and highly sexually charged position, not the best spot for cool dispassionate reflection. Still not right. The adult being the adult should control their desires even when provoked by a 'willing' minor clearly lacking in modesty or inhibition. Not right , not defensible but understandable perhaps in the circumstances.


What we, our society, has to ask are the harder questions. Why is a minor so free of all restaint or guardianship as to be alone with a unknown adult, so free as to be able to shed their clothes? How come our minors consumption of sexually provocative images and behaviours are so common place that they think it right or natural for them too to act that way? Why do our youth reject the counsel of older and closer family members and instead become fixated with illusions of celebrity razzmatazz. Why are our teens so resentful of authority and so willing to flout any self-control, getting so blinded out of their minds as to be incapable of making any judgement of their exposure to risk. We have a youth mentoring problem. This cult of the youth, this rapacious selling to the youth market, this capitulation to a youth driven agenda has supplanted the norms of restraint and caution. 

So clearly Eddie Shah was wrong to take advantage of a minor, offering what a minor should never ever have been in a position to offer, but we too are to blame for allowing our minor's to get so beyond our reach that they feel no constraints on their actions. Our duty is to protect them in a safe enough environment until they have matured enough to make their own mistakes when they have some skills in realising the consequences. We, not just Eddie Shah, have failed them all.

Got a pram?

Not so long ago, maybe as little as ten years back, when a major significant government plan was announced, we gasped when the number of millions it would involve were revealed. Nowadays millions are ten a penny, still large but no longer significant or a rarity. How many home owners in the home counties now have a pad worth a million plus, can you still buy a property in London for less than a million? Today's currency is now billions, but large corporation toss around their billions will a devil may care attitude, a billion is coming to be small change for governments and our multinationals. The trillion is beginning to creep into our every day vocabulary.  

Look in your pocket, do you any longer bother to count the pennies? No. Their value has become worth so little they are just a nuisance loose change. It will not be long before the penny drops out of our currency and a ten pound coin is introduced. So what is going on. Quantitative easing, that is what is going on. Sounds so technical, so solid and so reassuring no need to inquire further what is quantitative easing. Just a fancy name for printing more money or as we used to call it, inflation. Lots of quasi professors of economics theories are strutting around telling the world about these wonder clothes that solve all the world problems, clothes called 'quantitative easing', invisible to all but those who cling on to hope that they are real. How they oooh and aaah about the beauty of these invisible clothes and how they smooth out all their problems. Just fantasy.

Cast your mind back to the Deutsch Mark pre-WWII, remember how we laughed at the germans having to wheel their pram loads of money to buy a loaf of bread only to find they now needed two prams of money for the same loaf when they got there. That is called inflation. That is the 'rescue' path we are now on. Print more money, keep on spending and the pains of excessive loans will just disappear. Fine if you are locked into the gravy train that shovels more money into your account for every new shed load of money printed. For the likes of you and I where our income is frozen, or more likely reducing, the ever escalating prices of all those goods we need to survive put our very survival into jeopardy. Got a pram anyone, I need to buy a loaf of bread?