Category: Geography

House prices are up by 14.2% in rural areas and less than 7% in urban areas.

Firstly the demography – Cabinet Ministers might need to look the word up! – over the next couple of decades the number of people retiring each year will have increased by about 100000; the number of children will have decreased by about the same. Whilst life expectancy is fairly constant it is in the high 70’s. So does this have implications for housing requirements? I am not atypical, I am divorced with 3 children and 4 grandchildren. I continue to live in a 3 bedroom bungalow, alone, whilst my ex lives in a 3 bedroomed house, alone, (I think!). So that’s 4 unused bedrooms. However I can vaguely justify this. But it is an inefficiency.

The main inefficiency is down to capitalism, which theoretically, is efficient. At the moment many people, and by this I would guess at hundreds of thousands or more, have invested in second properties. Either as second homes or AirB&B in popular rural areas. Here it would seem to be false economics (well all economics is illusionary and hypothetical), to fail to put a financial tax on this. At present young people are being forced out by high property prices or the lack of long term rentable premises. The government loses out on tax revenue, local shops have to survive winter months with low population densities in the area, services like NHS and police have to cope with wildly different monthly populations,

I have benefited from house price increases that have gone from my first terraced house in Newhaven at £20000 to a property possibly worth £320000 (and my ex property value of £180000 – well she keeps moving!). But 20 grand to half a million in under a half decade, ridiculous and wrong on so many levels; socially, economically, morally, and environmentally.

So the environmental cost is the destruction of our diminishing countryside. We are told that we need more housing – a government minister said that all houses should have gardens and a garage. Well first off – garages are sheds for rubbish and unused utensils, gardens are age specific in general (or as a generalisation). As a young home occupier I was not interested in much of a garden – a communal space would have been amble, with young children a space for them to explore would be nice, but not too big as parents are too busy, then the quandary of middle age and later – I now have a garden and am quite proud of my greenhouse and mint collection!, but it is subjective.

I think – OH NO – that we have too many stereotypes in house building. Places like Polperro in Cornwall have (possibly had – if the local houses have now been sold) vibrant local communities with houses that had little more than a back yard. The pub and the water front was the focus of the community. When was the last time houses were built with consideration for the community? Or for that matter the environment – platitudes are common, but no solar panels on new houses round here, do they all have water butts, have the developers put in a communal bbq area, children play area, any social area at all?

If stupid dickwit Johnson wants new planning laws he should totally ignore developers and talk to ordinary people, not focus groups, or ….. actually ordinary people with young children and busy lives would be better off not speaking to the egoistical t*at.

There are estimated to be about 600.000 second homes in the UK, most popular tourist areas like Cornwall. With careful planning these ‘homes’ pay no council tax and contribute little to the local economy. In Cornwall last month 10.000 properties were listed for Airbnb, whilst just 62 offered for rent, and possibly 500 people homeless in Newquay alone.

Inequality like this is staggering, and in the past year there has been an increase of 258.000 millionaires in the UK (5.1 million increase worldwide). And also an increase in the number of poor. Inequality on this scale is not sustainable morally, or economically (the poor need to have enough wealth to buy products to increase the wealth of the rich. Although a thought – with high rents are we returning to a type of mortgage feudalism? Especially since the Buildings Societies have become listed companies.

John Bercow joining Labour says a lot for how both major parties have shifted right. I leave it there.

Eton college is selling off 500 acres of farmland for a new town development. Conservationists are angry at the damage to a trout river. Personally I think that people are beginning to care less about national politics and the associated fiscal policies, and more about their local environments. The recent by-election probably mirrors this. I would guess that if you ask most people what concerns them most (after Covid) is issues related to new housing, traffic, pollution.

With Brexit we will see rising prices, labour shortages on farms, dodgy deals being done on agricultural imports; Northern Ireland will increasingly become radicalised. In fact the lies about Brexit will come home to roost. Why was Cameron so pathetic in his negotiations with. the EU. Leaving will be seen as the biggest economic and social disaster of the last 70 years. Obviously the EU has many flaws, but from the inside we could have helped solve them, or some of them. No one would call our government faultless, or particularly democratic – the Brexit vote was a marginal one, but the views of those who voted against, or abstained, are totally ignored.

You can paint a zebra blue, but it is still a zebra! Those who voted for the nasty party in the north will soon find out that ‘levelling up’ is vacuous nonsense when it comes to government policies. We are already seeing plans to undo EU restrictions on steel imports relaxed in the name of free trade. 75000 jobs are at risk as the government pursues an ideologically driven agenda. Again a logical intervention would be to ensure that all UK Infrastructure Projects have to prioritise British Steel. I say prioritise, rather than a more forceful word, as it is highly probable that the government would hand out contracts without due process!

Anti-tax campaigners have 25000 followers on YouTube, so take it down? Will the police monitor these people? Their photos are available after recent demonstrations. If they are peddling racist and anti-Semitic, etc. Nonsense, arrest them. It is not difficult, unless the police and armed forces support them? A thought, as our armed forces are diminished in size, will it become easier for infiltration by radical groups? I am being elitist when I say that many of the recruits to the armed forces are doing so because they are not the cleverest in the class (Obviously not true of all armed forces personnel), and yes, I do appreciate what they have sacrificed over the past years (even if under misguided Governments from Thatcher onwards). Also why doesn’t the wage and numbers of top knobs decease as the numbers decrease? But a positive note, I have not seen any examples of anything other than perfect policing at the recent G7 in Cornwall.

Daniel Morgan cover up. This is extremely worrying about the Metropolitan Police. Why has the government not acted decisively (Oh because it does not want to). Cressida Dick might be a nice person but covering up police malpractice is not her job. She should resign immediately for not supporting further investigations. Oh the Home Office is very quiet on this. It seems obvious that the police were corrupt – it was common knowledge and not a big deal to me as a teenager – just one of those things, like Thatcher destroying the Trade Unions. I did not like it, but it was what it was. No organisation of size and importance likes being examined for corruption. But if it is necessary, it needs to be done, and quickly (in initiation) and impartially. Patel continues to spout government lies about “good progress in UK law enforcement to preset corruption”.

Afghanistan – Ethiopia – Myanmir All need separate analysis. Oh and then China, Russia, USA.

In Sandford, Winscombe and Churchill we have seen hundreds of new houses – all snapped up quickly. But new jobs in the area zero, increase in community space minimal, increase in facilities zero, the secondary school has been saved from almost bankruptcy by the incomers but the primary is at capacity. As for affordable housing, by that I guess they mean small and terraced, and not that cheap or affordable. Interesting term affordable – not council housing, or whatever it is called nowadays; affordable by whom?

To lose a 16000 majority, bad, but to have the LibDem majority of over 8000 is worse. Labour cannot be happy with 622 votes either. LibDems are traditionally good in bye-elections. Personally I am surprised that 13489 people still voted for the nasty party.

So analysis – Nasty Party will ignore it as a blip, but are we seeing a shift win the geography of politics in the UK. The so-called red wall of labour voting working class northerners has fallen. Now is it the turn of the blue middle class south to show that they cannot be taken for granted. HS2 may have been a major factor, but this swing is just 4 weeks after the local election went solid tory. Maybe the basic philosophy of the people is still conservative with a small c, whilst they are dismayed at the incompetence and cronyism at Westminster. Toughing out criticism of mistakes wears thin when it becomes a habit.

As for Labour – embarrassment of the highest order. Johnson seems to have managed to convince the electorate that Starmer is just a whinger with no policies. Which is probably near the truth. Whist there has been much to whinge about it has been to long with no agenda. I believe the electorate was winnable with Corbyn’s policies, it was just that he could project himself as the person to deliver them. Starmer offers nothing.

The LibDems obviously did a lot of things right. Now they have the challenge, like Labour, of coming up with a coherent policy that the electorate in full will get behind. I am not sure they have the best leader (Sir Ed Davey is it? If you had asked me yesterday I could not have named him). I just read (Saturday) that the LD’s put a lot of emphasis on the Governments planning policy changes – basically I think the people of South-East England may have become disenchanted with the number of houses being built in the countryside.

Greens should also be disappointed – 1480 votes is a bit pathetic for a party with intentions of influencing nationally.

Well done to whoever is going for government tw@t of the week. A trade deal with a country just about as far away as possible – Can we introduce a green tax on unnecessary journeys. 13500 miles between Sydney and London (approx) – seems like a huge carbon imprint on our commitment to reduce CO2 emissions. The government have repeatedly stated that they will not reduce environmental and animal husbandry levels for imports. So can someone tell me how an animal in Australia grown for slaughter can be cheaper than a similar animal in the UK. I fully understand how Scandinavian countries developed style and quality to compete in the world market. So will Australia be coming up with innovative new products, or just undercutting the British market. I heard some twat say that the deal would be good for the UK consumer. We know that economics is not a science but an art subject where the rules can be changed if you do not like them. So cheaper might mean more global warming, greater animal suffering, impacts on rural communities across the UK, and all for the vanity of two desperately needy politicians (Johnson and Morrison). Be honest – unless you want a genuine boomerang there is not much that we need from down under. OK – minerals which I think are not included in the deal (the industrial giants are bigger than the governments?.

Having spouted lies throughout I guess they thought they could just write the rules themselves. Sign the best deal, and then expect it to be altered at their whim and fancy.

Unfortunately they do not suffer like the people of Northern Ireland who are being driven back into the chasm. G7 is not designed to make decisions, just to develop friendships and lines of comnunication. Biden is therefore going be followed by Johnson like a bad smell! My friends in Europe want nothing to do with the duplicitous twerp, and Trudeau will not want to upset Biden.

Could be interesting. Biden does not seem to want to hang about – so Northern Ireland will possibly be explosive. Diplomats like to prevaricate, but Biden seems to want some action. Trade deals are imperative for the Johnson crew, so threats to that could make interesting reading. Johnson seems to want to keep tax issues as distant as possible whilst Biden has said he wants to increase them (Bezos, Buffet, Musk and 22 other very rich, paid just 3.4% tax over the last 5 years). I am not sure Israel will come up for discussion – but again could be interesting. Will the USA exert a greater influence over proceedings now that Trumps shadow is receding.

Lots of potentially huge stories. Cabinet Office found guilty of concealing the work of one of its elements in obstruction Freedom of Information requests. NHS is to delay sharing patient data. Huge outage affects internet yesterday.

Covid remains dominant in the news, cases up, hospitalisation and death down. Now, more than ever we need clear and firm leadership. To the lay person like myself, it would seem that there is no real reason to carry on with restrictions. However even I can see some warning signs. Cases in North Somerset have doubled in the last week. One jab is only 50% effective. Some restrictions would seem sensible – social distancing where ever possible, mask wearing in crowded indoor areas. Vaccine passports are being used at Wembley for the Croatia game.

Meanwhile the NHS is 35000 nurses short and is recruiting poorly qualified people. And in Cornwall the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro is clearing wards in preparation for the influx of tens of thousands for the G7 conference. People have also even been warned to avoid calling 999.

Cicada – this year is the cycle of the 17 year cicada. Millions will come out, mate and die leaving their 500 eggs to hatch and then burrow into the ground for a 17 year wait.

Siri says it might rain this afternoon. I hope so – the water butts need filling!

My “Pardon the weeds – we’re feeding the bees” sign is on its way! I hope the pots follow soon, as I have at least 12 mints and herbs to repot.