The Green Belt is the name of a festival.
Sort of like (I think) a Christian Glastonbury with music and bands and seminars and discussion.
Google describes it as an arts, faith and Justice community.
But the word Greenbelt has a wider meaning. The Greenbelt was key to ensuring that urban sprawl was contained and a clear dividing line was drawn between Town and Country.
Growing up in inner city Manchester our family days out began when we crossed that clear dividing line.
When the motor bike and side car crossed the Mersey and we drove out into the Cheshire countryside we crossed, not just a philosophical, but an actual boundary.
In the post war planned economy the Greenbelt was seen as a way of protecting the countryside. But more importantly it defined the City.
The City grew upward not outward and as the slums were demolished they were replaced by the promised post war 'homes for Heroes'.
Now it is all to be torn up by Mr Pickles and Mr Osborne.
Apparently the Greenbelt is an obstacle to recovery, too much planning is a bad thing, and developers are being told that they can build where they choose.
This is social irresponsibility of a very high order.
Clearly we need development. Clearly as the demand for houses increases as family patterns change we need to build homes. To undertake this programme of house building with the associated infrastructure developments, will in its turn create jobs and wealth.
But if this development is not managed. If the affordable social housing is not built in the right locations. If the transport links are not in place. If the 'strip mining' of the Greenbelt is allowed to go ahead. Then Britain will soon start to resemble America, where the neon ribbon runs along the highway linking one urban centre, food outlet and shopping mall to another.
In most of Europe urban development happens without reference to City Hall. The result is the chaotic development that in some cases, literally disfigures otherwise beautiful locations.
The likely effect of the lifting of planning controls is that the developers will build poorer and poorer developments with higher and higher profit margins and then inevitably find cute ways of not paying the tax on their profits thereby benefiting no-one other than their profitability and share prices.
This attack on the Greenbelt is another example of why the long term consequences of this coalition Government is to be feared.
It seems obvious to me that the tragedy of the Blair/Brown conflict that undermined the previous Labour administration opened the door for the heirs and successors of Margaret Thatcher to take up where she left off.
We were promised that 'things were going to get better'. It has proved to be a hollow promise.
So this weekend take a trip out into the Greenbelt, you've missed the festival itself, that was two weeks ago, but if you want to sniff the fresh air, watch the salmon in the Rivers, see the Deer in the forest or the Red Squirrels in the Scots Pine, then move quickly because Mr Pickles will soon don his hard hat and drive his bulldozer through the regulations and build and build and build ........
Sort of like (I think) a Christian Glastonbury with music and bands and seminars and discussion.
Google describes it as an arts, faith and Justice community.
But the word Greenbelt has a wider meaning. The Greenbelt was key to ensuring that urban sprawl was contained and a clear dividing line was drawn between Town and Country.
Growing up in inner city Manchester our family days out began when we crossed that clear dividing line.
When the motor bike and side car crossed the Mersey and we drove out into the Cheshire countryside we crossed, not just a philosophical, but an actual boundary.
In the post war planned economy the Greenbelt was seen as a way of protecting the countryside. But more importantly it defined the City.
The City grew upward not outward and as the slums were demolished they were replaced by the promised post war 'homes for Heroes'.
Now it is all to be torn up by Mr Pickles and Mr Osborne.
Apparently the Greenbelt is an obstacle to recovery, too much planning is a bad thing, and developers are being told that they can build where they choose.
This is social irresponsibility of a very high order.
Clearly we need development. Clearly as the demand for houses increases as family patterns change we need to build homes. To undertake this programme of house building with the associated infrastructure developments, will in its turn create jobs and wealth.
But if this development is not managed. If the affordable social housing is not built in the right locations. If the transport links are not in place. If the 'strip mining' of the Greenbelt is allowed to go ahead. Then Britain will soon start to resemble America, where the neon ribbon runs along the highway linking one urban centre, food outlet and shopping mall to another.
In most of Europe urban development happens without reference to City Hall. The result is the chaotic development that in some cases, literally disfigures otherwise beautiful locations.
The likely effect of the lifting of planning controls is that the developers will build poorer and poorer developments with higher and higher profit margins and then inevitably find cute ways of not paying the tax on their profits thereby benefiting no-one other than their profitability and share prices.
This attack on the Greenbelt is another example of why the long term consequences of this coalition Government is to be feared.
It seems obvious to me that the tragedy of the Blair/Brown conflict that undermined the previous Labour administration opened the door for the heirs and successors of Margaret Thatcher to take up where she left off.
We were promised that 'things were going to get better'. It has proved to be a hollow promise.
So this weekend take a trip out into the Greenbelt, you've missed the festival itself, that was two weeks ago, but if you want to sniff the fresh air, watch the salmon in the Rivers, see the Deer in the forest or the Red Squirrels in the Scots Pine, then move quickly because Mr Pickles will soon don his hard hat and drive his bulldozer through the regulations and build and build and build ........
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