DEM not gonna CON dis NATION: Rolling UK politics in the short-lived Cleggeron era

From Private Eye last month:

May 2010: Coalition announces Labour government plans for new generation of nuclear power stations will go ahead

June 2010: Coalition cancels Labour government's £80mn loan to Sheffield company Forgemasters for new press enabling it to make parts for new nuclear power stations, meaning the parts will have to be bought from Japan instead.

http://editorial.jpress.co.uk/web/Upload/YPOS//TH1_227201056ppp70F0.jpg

Funnily enough, Forgemasters is the company involved in the Iraq 'Super Gun' scandal back in the 1990s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOBbqWM-T_Y

The 'Community Right to Build' will allow local people and communities across England to decide where to create new homes, shops business and facilities where they want them and where they are needed, not where local councils and central government think they should be and free from unnecessary red tape and bureaucracy.

Housing Minister Grant Shapps said:

"Far from the Nimbyism that often hits the headlines, up and down the country there are entire communities willing and eager to give the go-ahead for new developments in their area. The countryside must be a vibrant place to live, and cannot be allowed to become a museum. I want to give communities the power to preserve their villages, which are currently struggling to survive because of a shortage of affordable homes."

Community Right to Build has the backing of celebrity builder and TV presenter Tommy Walsh. He said:

"I've worked with people on community projects for many years, and in that time I've found that no one knows the needs of the community better than the people who live there.

"Whether it's building affordable housing to allow young people to remain in their village, housing for the elderly, new schools or even business developments to keep the community vibrant - if it's what the community wants, it should be made easier for them to do it. Any moves to cut red tape and help local people will certainly be welcomed by me."

New Community Right to Build homes pictured in the background:

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4142/4818116328_27c87a2cb6_z.jpg

This is basically so Tesco can bulldoze medieval village churches isn't it?

maybe I'm an appalling elitist who just doesn't get the brilliant thinking behind BIG SOCIETY, but as nice as all community all the time is, I think in a lot of cases I'd rather things were done by people who know what they're doing.

it sounds like an astroturfer's charter.

Q: Can property developers use the Community Right to Build?
A: We believe that only people who live in an area should be able to use the Community Right to Build. However, we envisage that communities should be free to use property developers, should they wish to do so.

Gonna table a proposal to build a huge wind farm in the middle of Clovelly or somewhere just for the lulz

The 'Community Right to Build' will allow local people and communities across England to decide where to create new homes, shops business and facilities where they want them and where they are needed, not where local councils and central government think they should be

oh dear christ this will be hilarious.

the local community will no doubt speak with one voice on every planning issue under this initiative, as they do at the moment against the evil planners.

This is actually unworkable and won't actually be implemented in the way they're saying. What will happen is:

- A load of council planning workers get laid off
- Schemes are presented as normal
- Random people get right of veto
- Poor people are housed as far away from the people making the decisions as possible

Yes - pretty much.

Gotta fight back against the undemocratic, unelected forces of, er, local councils and central govmint.

and their pesky long-term view

dammit i may be coming across dangerously leftie on this one i think i'll bow out

"Far from the Nimbyism that often hits the headlines, up and down the country there are entire communities willing and eager to give the go-ahead for new developments in their area.

Developers will be able to target communities more directly, and offer them a nice new community centre for yoga lessons in return for a new megastore in what were once green and pleasant fields - without the meddlesome involvement of council planners and other 'petty bureaucracy'.

Can't see scaling back the green belt playing that well with core Tory voters tbh.

Tory core voters will vote Tory whatever. Tory core funders on the other hand will be delighted that they can now bulldoze what's left of rural England with impunity.

Dunno, I can see nimbyism winning out here.

tbf I've worked with some planners who were Stalin except mad cuz he's stuck with a desk job.

yeah it wll be interesting to see how it pans out, but i really expect the 'BIG SOCIETY' to have some nasty little detail that makes nimbyism redundant- when it suits.

The 'Community Right to Build' will allow local people and communities across England to decide where to create new homes, shops business and facilities where they want them and where they are needed, not where local councils and central government think they should be

That actually doesn't talk about vetoing developments, when you look at it. It's a right to build rather than to nimby?

Stalin must've spent a fair bit of time at his desk tbf. Stamping death warrants and such.

nah he had someone like me for that kind of thing i reckon

A fair bit of time round at the shredder too xp

i don't get to work the shredder union issues. get a guy from the depot down to press the button.

Tory core voters will vote Tory whatever

^this, apart from the occasional frivolous flirtation with UKIP in Euro elections

But as well as donating £650,000 in cash to the Tories since 2005 and another £88,000 in flights, travel and sponsorship, it has also emerged that Mr Cook has supplied a private plane for Mr Cameron to make 23 journeys since 2007, sparking questions over whether the Prime Minister was aware of the correspondence.

The Prime Minister's spokesman insisted yesterday that the decision to scrap the loan was made purely on grounds of affordability, and sources said Mr Cook's status as a major donor had "no bearing" on the decision which led Forgemasters to shelve its plans to build a new forging press to manufacture parts for new nuclear power stations.

Getting a kind of Springfield Monorail scenario out of that 'community right to build' scheme.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/7908485/Coalition-U-turn-over-plan-to-ban-identification-of-rape-defendants.html

A new Tory MP has outraged constituents - by calling them "primitives who hold up their trousers with string".

Diplomat's son Rory Stewart, Eton-educated like David Cameron, caused further anger by making a tasteless "joke" about a tractor tragedy.

Mr Stewart, 37, MP for Penrith and the Border in Cumbria, said: "Some areas around here are pretty primitive, people holding up their trousers with bits of twine and that sort of thing."

The rising Tory star went on: "I have a constituency with 52,000 people and a million sheep. I was in one village where a local kid was run over by a tractor. They took him to Carlisle but they couldn't be bothered to wait at the hospital. So they put him in a darkened room for two weeks, then said he was fine. But I'm not so sure he was." Derek Daley, 76, whose son Noel died after his motorbike collided with a tractor, said: "I take great umbrage at what Mr Stewart has said. It is extremely distasteful."

w t f

Ah, this is the one who tutored yon princes and should really have stuck to...telly presenting.

looks more like a radio face tbh

That strikes me as the sort of joke that immediately has journalists scrabbling around looking for a parent whose child died in a tractor crash. Not sure Derek Daley would ever have heard it otherwise.

Obviously this dude will now be voted out at the next election which is lol in its own right, much funnier than the original joke.

This dude = big big rising Tory star

He's safe. He's got a big majority and most of the people who voted for him probably agree with him. What I don't understand is him threatening to go to the Press Complaints Commission, just let it be ffs. Reminds me of Goldsmith's outrage last week (or whenever it was), these people do understand that some of the press are going to be beastly to them sometimes, right? And lol for saying that what he was really trying to say was that his area needs more support from government.

Anyway, far more importantly, what happened to that film of his life that was in the pipeline, with Orlando Bloom in the role of him?

RIP UK Film Council

that's interesting in a directly-affects-me kind of way

UKFC was going to be merged with the BFI

What you have to understand is that most of these entitled assholes have had press officers and other intimidating minders negotiating their terms with editors/journalists (copy approval, Don't Ask That, etc) for years and now they are elected officials, they are slow to realise that uh political life is different. I find the worst and most flagrant offenders have owned publications or have been editors or writers themselves....

Kind of amazed with the speed at which the Mail as started bashing the government for not following its agenda 24/7.

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2010/07/puts-labour-poll-tories-mori

Blimey.

im not surprised. don't claim to move in a wide circle of society, but i just don't think the as-it-were positive aspects of the lib-con project are enthusing anyone (alternative voting? some weird school bullshit? some weird nhs bullshit? the big society? gertcha). and the reality of cuts is shitty for a large number of people.

I think if anything hit voter confidence hard it was the Michael Gove thing, cutting schools when you've said you won't let frontline services suffer = not the sort of thing that endears voters.

ken clarke's prisons policy is also a huge vote loser. not sure why they're doing that as they're never going to win over the left and everyone else will hate them for it.

Got to say I don't think I've ever anticipated a backlash as much in my life.

ken clarke's prisons policy is also a huge vote loser. not sure why they're doing that as they're never going to win over the left and everyone else will hate them for it.

I think probably because Ken Clarke believes it's the right thing to do, and he is a strong enough minister to push it through even if it isn't a vote winner.

+ it saves money/presumably intensifies privatization

Will getting rid of speed cameras and stopping the (non-existent) war on the motorist get them any votes?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-10762590

I'm doubtful, although it will no doubt please the DMail which I suppose it's keen to get back on side?

That probably is a vote winner, tbh