黑洞社区

As we know, one of officialdom鈥檚 favourite phrases is 鈥渓essons must be learned鈥�, but how many more lessons do they need regarding plonking houses down in the middle of nowhere after the new towns of the sixties?

Of course, planning law incorporates a series of checks and balances, doesn鈥檛 it? Not any more! Flood plains? Don鈥檛 worry about those! Jobs? The usual fantastical thinking about money spent equals jobs created. And worst of all, open farmland 鈥渕istakenly鈥� described as brownfield (well, it鈥檚 brown when it鈥檚 ploughed 鈥�)

People living near these proposed monster housing-only developments now have only six weeks to scramble together responses to deflect the efforts of 拢500,000 worth of top planning experts. How fair is that?

Thank goodness it doesn鈥檛 affect me personally, because, as we didn鈥檛 get an EU referendum, are in a war we didn鈥檛 want, and have a prime minister we didn鈥檛 vote for, I think we can safely predict that any reasonable objections will be steamrollered (or should that be JCB-ed?) out of the way 鈥�