Monday 30 March 2015

Councils should be allowed to fund care rather than forced to pay for fussbucketry

****

The LGA has been asking MPs about social care funding. This is important because, even if we put an end to the myth of 'selling the family home' (it's usually one from which the family has long departed), social care budgets are the most pressured in local government. Mostly because we're unhelpfully living longer and because the NHS has decided that folk recover better if you get them out of hospital as swiftly as possible.

The boss of the LGA, Cllr David Sparks waves the shroud:

'Adult social care is in crisis. We need a care system that is fit for the 21st century. It's not enough for consecutive governments to keep papering over the cracks with short term fixes.

'We urgently need a longer-term solution that puts social care on a sustainable footing. Failure to do so will deprive our elderly of the care they deserve, create additional pressure on the NHS and push other local services over the edge.'

And the solution that the LGA proposes is to hypothecate - to 'ringfence' - social care budgets. Essentially to take away from councillors the ability to make choices about a very significant part of the council budget. This is because, we're told, there will be a £4.3 billion "black hole" needing to be filled by 2020.

Now firstly I don't see how ringfencing will make a jot of difference. It's not like the size of the pot miraculously gets bigger if you stop councillors from having a say in its determination. What's needed is for local councillors to be given more rather than less budgetary power - and this means removing the ringfence (imposed to appease the NHS) from public health budgets.

Currently over half of public health spending goes on what, for want of a better term, is essentially nannying fussbucketry. Nice to do if you've loads of cash sloshing around but since councils haven't it's pretty galling for there to be all this money spent on smoking cessation campaigns, free slimming classes and campaigns against booze, fizzy drinks and burger bars. Currently this amounts to somewhere between £1 and £2 billion per year across England - a pretty good start towards the far more useful task of looking after the old, sick and disabled.

I'd also scrap Public Health England with its responsibilities for immunisation programmes and response to health emergencies going back to the NHS and the remainder of its money - the fussbucketry funds sucked up by sockpuppets like Alcohol Concern and ASH - going to local councils without a ringfence.

This would do more for public health and for the care of people across England than the provision of stern lectures about our bad lifestyle choices or campaigns to ban, tax, regulate and control things the high-ups in Public Health don't approve of. We should be funding care not fussbucketry.

....

Sunday 29 March 2015

Taking us for mugs - Labour, immigration and a panic about kippers







Seeing this delightful mug I thought back through all my years of active involvement in politics - from smuggling Monday Club Tory, Sir Patrick Wall into a meeting of Hull students (in his own constituency) through any number of local and national elections all of which have featured at some point the implication, nay insinuation, that saying we need to 'control' immigration is tantamount to racism. Indeed that we didn't really mean 'control immigration' but rather that this was code for something worse, something nasty and sinister, something racist. Saying we needed less immigration was always portrayed by Labour as but a short step from 'send the blacks home' or some other similarly unpleasant and bigoted policy.

That was until UKIP arrived on the scene. Up to this point Labour had stuck to its guns on immigration - pointing out that, mostly and most of the time, it's good for the nation and good for the economy. Whatever we may have thought about the issue, Labour's approach and its policy while in government was very clear - even when confronted with popular concerns about too much immigration:


It is the duty of government to deal with the issues of both asylum and immigration. But they should not be exploited by a politics that, in desperation, seeks refuge in them.

There is a position around which this country can unify; that we continue to root out abuse of the asylum system, but give a place to genuine refugees; that we ensure immigration controls are effective so that the many who come, rightly and necessarily, for our economy, to work, study or visit here can do so; but that those who stay illegally are removed; but that we never use these issues as a political weapon, an instrument of division and discord.

This view - that people come here 'rightly and necessarily' - was widely supported across the country and especially welcomed by a business community struggling for skilled recruits. In simple terms Labour was pro-immigration but against the abuse of the system. Today this has changed - the Party's position (albeit a little vague) has shifted noticeably away from 'follow the rules, play by the system, and you're welcome' towards the point where control - for which we will always read reduce the numbers - outweighs and rational discussion of migration. Labour is in a panic about kippers.

Labour got things wrong on immigration in the past. But Ed Miliband has set out a new approach: controlling immigration and controlling its impacts on local communities. Britain needs immigration rules that are tough and fair.

The Tories have let people down on immigration. David Cameron promised to get immigration down to the tens of thousands, “no ifs, no buts”, but net migration is rising, not falling. It’s now at 260,000, higher than it was when David Cameron walked into Number Ten, and the Tories’ target is in tatters.

The position here is rather different - it is the Conservatives that have failed because of those (rather dumb) net migration targets and Labour will, by implication, stop the tide. But the real drive in the Labour Party for this dramatic shift in immigration policy hasn't been some sort of Damascene conversion - or maybe just a cynical one - but rather the threat perceived in some Labour heartlands from UKIP.

Ukip are not about to overturn dozens of Labour’s northern heartlands. But the result in Heywood is further evidence of the threat that Ukip poses Labour. It is one rooted in much more than the charisma of Mr Farage, but the disconnect between Labour (and all main parties) and the working-class. In 1979, there were 98 manual workers and 21 people who worked primarily in politics in Parliament. In 2010, 25 manual workers were elected to Westminster - and 90 people who had worked primarily in politics before becoming an MP. Average turnout was just 58 per cent in Labour’s 100 safest seats in 2010.

I say the threat is perceived because I see little prospect of UKIP winning any seats - they've an outside chance in Grimsby but it's a long shot - from Labour in May. But Labour activists feel the challenge - the local councillors in Bradford who saw their majorities in safe seats dwindle to a handful, the activists who get berated by ex-Labour UKIP supporters at the working man's club or the trade unionists reporting how many of their manual labour members are making UKIP sort of noises at work.

Last year in Rotherham UKIP won 10 seats in that classic Labour rotten borough of Rotherham. We know the reasons but we overlook the wider reality - across those rotten boroughs like Barnsley, Wakefield and Doncaster UKIP moved into second place and became the main challenger to Labour. And the traditional response to the "far right" (as Labour folk insist on calling nationalists) didn't work. People didn't think UKIP were racist - or at least no more racist than the Tories - and did think they had a point about immigrants, about political correctness and about local community.

The Labour people in these places had never been challenged. Or rather the challenge came from that nice bloke who owns a garage and always stands for the Conservatives. Now Labour felt threatened - branch meetings were dominated by people talking about what UKIP were doing. The poor quality (if shiny) leaflets from that party were give to councillors by folk with slightly shaking hands - "look, look - what are we going to do" exclaims the leaflet-finder. The MP is involved and, while reassuring local activists, heads off to London where he meets others with the same tales.

"We have to respond" these MPs say. "We can't be caught out on immigration. UKIP can win where the Tories never could". Party strategists (knowing full well that there's little or no chance of UKIP winning and that it's the Tories and SNP that Labour should worry about) sooth fretful MPs and dutifully inform higher-ups about their concerns. With the result that proper working-class policies are developed about 'controlling immigration' - local campaigners can point to the policy and persuade those disgruntled folk in Rawmarsh or Royton that they're best sticking with Labour.

Plus a mug. A mug that means people like me can point to Labour and say "you bunch of no good, low down hypocrites - after all those years of attacking Conservatives for wanting to control immigration, you come up with a policy important enough for you to emblazon it on a mug."

Or as someone called it - the racist mug.

The odd thing is that Labour know the numbers. They know they're not threatened by UKIP - indeed that in some places that Party's support holding up increases the chances of Labour winning. But because lots of ill-informed and panicky local councillors and activists are on about it, the Party has placed immigration controls at the heart of its election campaign. And of course on that mug.

....

Saturday 28 March 2015

Burgers, bookies, borrowing and the holiday tan - nannying fussbucketry reaches the High Street


A healthy high street - complete with 'unhealthy' sugar!

The 'Health on the High Street' report from the Royal Society of Public Health starts off well with a statement that, for once, actually has some connection to actual public health rather than the regular nannying fussbucketry we associated with the profession:

A healthy high street environment is one in which there is clean air, less noise, more connected neighbourhoods, things to see and do, and a place where people feel relaxed. The architecture of the high street would be such that it fosters active urban design principles including pavements, seating, shade and shelter. Above all the high street would provide a safe environment where the public don’t live in fear of crime,violence, harassment, or accidents. 

It's hard to take issue with this as an argument. Firstly it's absolutely about the public realm, the environment in which people go about our everyday tasks and in which we celebrate the good things of life. And this is the concern - if there is one - of public health. But just as importantly these things - less pollution, places to sit, low crime and a mix of indoor and outdoor - are what make for successful town centres.

Sadly though the Royal Society of Public Health doesn't stop with saying high streets should be clean, green and safe. Turn the page and that nannying fussbucketry hits you in the face. We are presented with yet another judgemental dismissal of things other people (mostly other people from lower social classes) enjoy.

The businesses on a healthy high street would not only enable basic needs, including access to affordable healthy food and affordable financial services to be met, but would actively promote healthy choices. There would be access to essential services whether that is health services, cultural amenities, places to be active, leisure centres or green spaces, for example. A healthy high street would also create opportunities to minimise harm whether that is ensuring that health is included as a condition for licensing and a consideration for planning consent. 

We have arrived at the crunch. The health high street isn't about a clean, green, safe space at all but is rather about public authorities - through licensing or planning controls - deciding what sort of business is fit to grace our town centres. To justify this particular branch of health fascism the Royal Society of Public Health has cooked up some of its own pseudo-science - what they call 'the Richter scale of health'. This scale (unlike the actual Richter Scale) is an entirely subjective, opinion-based scale. A business can score somewhere between -8 and +8 on the basis of researchers allocating a score from -2 to +2 against four 'areas of health': encourages healthy lifestyle choices; promotes social interaction; allows greater access to health care services and/or health advice; and promotes mental well-being.

Now you'll have noticed that most high street retailers will score zero (since this, our researchers tell us, is what is given where 'the category is not relevent to the outlet'). Your typical shoe shop, assuming we're not running a campaign on the health impact of high heels, is entirely neutral on matters relating to health. Mostly because it's a place where you go to buy shoes.  And the same goes for building societies, charity shops, clothing shops, hairdressers and hardware stores.

As a measure then this is worse than useless. Unless of course your objective is to use your status and authority (this is a 'Royal Society' after all) to promote a given political agenda around your intrusive and judgemental definition of public health. It will come as no surprise to discover that the 'research' identifies betting shops, tanning shops, payday lenders and fast food takeaways as the dark evil on the high street, the causes of unhealthy high streets. And the healthy stuff - leisure centres, health centres, pharmacists, health clubs, museums and pubs (the inclusion of which will be giving various in the Church of Public Health palpitations - in the authors defence they did manage to find a picture from inside a pub that didn't show anyone actually drinking*).

The authors then go on to set out in lurid detail the evils of gambling, burgers, fake tans and high interest borrowing before settling down to create a little ranking of the most and least 'healthy' high streets in England. Unsurprisingly the resulting ranking show that high streets in northern towns where people like a flutter and eat take-away kebabs are much more unhealthy than high streets in the nice, comfortable market towns where the researchers and their friends are likely to live. This time it's Preston that gets the devil's mark resulting in the usual slew of sneering broadsheet articles and this from the local paper:


OFFICIAL: Preston has unhealthiest city centre in the UK

Followed by people from Preston agreeing:

Coun John Swindells, deputy leader of Preston City Council, said: “The results of this survey mirror our own concerns. Indeed the Royal Society for Public Health is campaigning to allow local authorities greater planning powers to deal with this issue. It is something the council, along with 92 other local authorities, has and will continue to lobby the Government for."

This is the saddest thing about the report - not that a bunch of London-based nannying fussbuckets has produced 'research' designed to show the awfulness of northern cities and towns but that the leaders of those places fall over eachother to say just how much they're doing to make Preston more like Salisbury (as if that was either achievable or desirable). If places like Preston and Middlesbrough - number two in this particular ranking of evilness - are doing badly it's got more to do with the relative poverty of the place than it has to to with whether the council has powers to ban betting shops or fast food takeaways.

Finally the report goes into full 'something must be done' mode listing a veritable cornucopia of fussbucketry. This opens with planning and licensing controls including specific powers around health as a reason for refusing a licence (having been nice about pubs earlier in the report they include alcohol licensing in this demand) as well as a general power to stop 'clustering' - presumably that wouldn't apply to Bond Street or Saville Row.

We then get assorted nudges and bans (including the entirely stupid proposal for a ban on displays of vaping products) before the entirely predictable for differential business rates, mandatory health warnings and limits on stakes all while repeating the familiar litany of lies about these products and services ('crack cocaine of gambling'). All of this is deeply depressing and reminds us that too many - the leader of Preston City Council for one - are taken in by this New Puritan agenda of public health.

This research (truly awful and unscientific research) will be rolled out again and again - by the LGA, by the BBC, by assorted groups of fussbuckets - to support the argument for ever more restrictions on who can do what and where. It will be accompanied by the continuing sound of moaning as high streets continue to decline - with the sort of outlets derided here forming the last vestiges of a town centre economy. And rather than look for a completely different approach, we'll trog along behind the health fascists and control freaks as they nail the last few nails into what's left of our high streets.


*Although the eagle-eyed will note that it's a very old photograph as it contains images of smoking!

Thursday 26 March 2015

More media lies about sugar and processed food...



Some healthily presented sugar and fat



Writing in Spectator Health, Janna Lawrence continues the war on cheap, accessible and nutritious mass-produced food by claiming - entirely without evidence - that it is this stuff that is responsible for a range of health problems (you know the list - cancers, diabetes, obesity and so forth):

Regardless of whether you buy into the concept of food addiction, the results of eating unhealthy, high-energy foods are self-evident. A quarter of adults in England are obese. Admissions to hospital with a primary diagnosis of obesity increased nine-fold between 2003 and 2013. That’s an astonishing statistic. Obesity is reckoned to cost our economy £47 billion a year. But while selling cocaine is illegal, selling sugar and fat is fine, apparently.

Janna Lawrence has simply absorbed the latest example of egregious pseudo-science and wrapped it up in some scary statistics to suggest that somehow we are eating loads more sugar and fat but don't know it because it's secretly loaded into 'processed food'.

Let's deal with some of the facts. Firstly total calorie consumption per capita has fallen in the UK. And, alongside this, consumption of fats and especially saturated fats has fallen significantly. Plus, of course, our consumption of sugars - that's all sugars not just the white stuff in bags - has fallen too. This includes all Ms Lawrence's evil processed foods.

The DEFRA survey (conducted annually since the 1970s) also contains data on per capita consumption of different sources of calories...(and) shows a decline in the consumption of ‘total sugars’ of sixteen per cent since 1992 (and) a decline in saturated fat consumption of 41 per cent since 1974. Consumption of protein, cholesterol, sodium and carbohydrates (of which sugar is one) have all declined since 1974. 

So while we've been piling on the pounds and making new notches in our belts, our consumption of the things Janna thinks are responsible has been falling. It is quite simply a lie to say that the obesity problem and its associated health consequences is a result of increased consumption of sugars and fats.

Yet people persist in promoting the idea that our obesity problem is a consequence solely of diet when the evidence says strongly that it isn't - our ever more sedantary lifestyle is the real culprit. Moreover rates of obesity stopped rising sometime around 2004 - they've not fallen much but this is not, as some suggest, an accelerating problem but rather a stable one. Because so much has been invested by the public health industry in problematising overweight there's a reluctance to admit to this stabilising of obesity rates.  It's also true that the increase in obesity is overstated:

Overall, the research shows gradual increases in the average BMI over time, from 25.6kg/m2 to 27.5kg/m2 in men; and from 24.5kg/m2 to 26.5kg/m2 for women. Most of this increase occurred before 2001, after this there has been a much slower rate of increase.

This - over a thirty year period - represents a seven per cent increase in average male BMI and an eight per cent increase in average female BMI. As ever the problem isn't really a 'whole population' issue but rather that we have a segment of that total population who, for whatever reason, are unhealthily obese. This means that the ghastly health fascist solution proposed by Janna Lawrence is not only illiberal (she admits to that) but also completely unnecessary. Rather than introducing sugar taxes, banning advertising and paying benefits in food stamps only redeemable against produce approved by the likes of Ms Lawrence, we should instead target our resources towards the million or so people with a real weight-related health problem.

....

Wednesday 25 March 2015

So what makes a brilliant marketer?

****

Economist Tyler Cowen remarks on marketing:

The people who are really good at marketing in this new environment are typically not formal marketers, they are not called marketing agencies, they have (not) studied marketing.  They are people who know some areas very well and then they teach themselves a kind of marketing on the fly.  A good examples is Facebook.  Mark Zuckerberg is not in any formal sense a marketer, but he’s actually one of the most brilliant marketers that the world has seen in the past few decades.

Now I don't know enough about Zuckerberg to assess whether he is worthy of joining the pantheon of marketing gods but, as a text, Cowen's words are interesting. Especially to someone like me who was (perhaps still is in a sort of way) a marketing professional.

The first thing to understand here is that marketing agencies never did marketing. Oh we pretended that what we did was 'strategy' and so forth but what we were really doing was applying creativity to tactical aspects of the communications mix - advertising, PR, direct mail and sales promotions. As to studying marketing things may be different in the USA but I don't recall working with many people in the business who had a formal qualification in marketing - my boss and DM guru was an English graduate, my colleagues had (where they'd got a degree) qualifications in domestic science, philosophy, economic history, politics and - by far the most dominant - assorted variations on graphic design, technical drawing or art.

The thing with marketing is that it isn't about the flash stuff at all - indeed the arrival of the web has reinforced this - but rather about detailed tactical considerations. As my former colleague (and now mail order company chief executive) John Hinchcliffe put it 'marketing is 99 per cent boring routine'. Today this fact is buried deeply in grand talk of 'metrics', 'data mining' or 'SEO' when the reality is that the very best marketers eat, sleep and breathe the information that their business generates. Yet we think of the game as being about great ads rather than ace spreadsheets.

Moreover the successful marketer is focused - punches the bruise as that great marketing genius Peter Mandelson so aptly put it. The objective is clear and the emphasis is on banging away at that target again and again and again. There's a view out there that somewhere there's a marketing magic wand or advertising fairy dust that will transform your small little business into a world-beating global colossus. Indeed marketing consultants have traded on there being some sort of occult secret over available to a select band (and you if you pay us a couple of grand a day). Sorry to disappoint but there isn't.

However there are some important things you need to know.

1. Test and learn.
2. Advertising doesn't do what you think it does
3. If you don't ask people to do something they won't
4. Think like a consumer not a producer
5. Collect responses, comments and feedback
6. Analyse everything
7. If something works keep doing it until it doesn't

There may be lots of other things. Indeed there are whole bookshelves full of other things (if you want the best book though read 'The Solid Gold Mail Box'). But those seven things are a damn good start towards being a brilliant marketer. That and being prepared to slog through the boring routine.

Finally Cowen is wrong - the best marketers have never been formal marketers.

....


Monday 23 March 2015

Are we indulging students like grown up toddlers?

****

No this isn't for five-year-olds:

The room was equipped with cookies, coloring books, bubbles, Play-Doh, calming music, pillows, blankets and a video of frolicking puppies, as well as students and staff members trained to deal with trauma.

This was needed because two women were holding a debate about 'campus sexual assault' and one of them was going (or so the creators of that room feared) to question the validity of the term 'rape culture'.  Now I'm sure any discussion of rape and sexual assault is sensitive and I've no doubt that talking about the subject can be traumatic for victims but the reason given by one suggest a child-like attitude:

At one point she went to the lecture hall — it was packed — but after a while, she had to return to the safe space. “I was feeling bombarded by a lot of viewpoints that really go against my dearly and closely held beliefs,” Ms. Hall said.

It really is time we stopped pretending we can protect people from the fact that some people hold views that we don't agree with and don't like. Imagine if I ran away every time I heard a socialist idiot challenge 'my dearly and closely held beliefs'!

....

Sunday 22 March 2015

Meanwhile in Venezuela the left remind us of their weird priorities...

****

So Venezuelan people don't have food in the shops, they have to queue for loo paper and the government is taking over businesses right, left and centre just in case they might actually be trying to make a living. It is an object lesson in the stupidity of the left's obsessing with fixing prices.

But you'll be pleased to know that the Venezuelan government is on the case and sorting out the problem:

Last year, Venezuela became an urban laboratory for architects and urban designers who believe in the implementation of participatory processes and collaborative design techniques in order to change communities who live under threat.

The Venezuelan firm PICO Estudio in hand with the National Government of Venezuela organised Espacios de Paz (EDP) (Spaces of Peace); an urban journey where professionals, students, local residents and public entities worked together to benefit their cities and people. This initiative activated urban processes of physical and social transformation through architecture, using self-building techniques in public spaces located in conflictive urban contexts.

The result of the project is some pretty funky and brightly coloured community spaces and buildings - you'll be familiar with these because they feature that slightly manic style of design beloved by community action groups.

These 5 projects were conceived as spaces of encounter, where a local community can gather together, developing different activities, meetings and workshops under beautifully designed, colourful roofs. Projects included basketball courts located on a rooftop; shadowed spaces built for promoting dialogue among residents; spaces for learning and debating; and orchards, playgrounds, amphitheatres, viewpoints, and so on.

It's all terribly sweet and lovely - introducing us to a world of happy, smiling faces as communities work with 'agencies' and 'professionals' to put lipstick on the abject poverty their government's policies have created. It is the finest example of how the left's approach to community development is typified by going into these communities, giving them a great big hug and saying 'there, there, it'll all be OK'.

The truth is very different - as even Venezuelan government figures tell us:

According to this measure, the number of Venezuelans classified as poor shot up in the last year by 1.8 million people. Roughly 6 percent of all Venezuela’s 30 million people became poor in the last year alone. The situation is even direr when one looks at extreme poverty, i.e., the number of people whose income cannot even buy a representative basket of food and drink. In the last year alone, the number of extremely poor Venezuelans rose by 730,000. They now reach close to three million people, or roughly 10 percent of the population. 

And of course the happy professionals will return to their achingly trendy offices in places where you don't have to deal with the reality of living in Venezuela's slums. It's not just the lack of basics but increasing levels of violence - 25,000 homicides in 2013 (this compares to 15,000 in trigger-happy USA with ten times the population) including over 200 police officers.

Still I guess that creating "...social dynamics which invite new ways of living in communities, modifying categories that rule the daily life, transforming vacant plots into powerful spaces for their inhabitants..." is absolutely the way to make Venezuela's economy and society better!

....

Saturday 21 March 2015

The Adam Smith Institute should start with reading planning policy on Green Belt

****

I have some sympathy for the view that London's Green Belt needs an extensive and comprehensive review. And I know this is difficult - politically and practically - given the range of differing interests and the multitude of interested public bodies (starting with over 50 local councils). Indeed the scale of the requirement is such that, however much Londoner might whimper about localism, conducting a review would have to be under the direction of national government.

Various organisations are chuntering about the need for change and the Adam Smith Institute is at the forefront. The problem is that the ASI appears not to have done the basic first job of reading the actual reasons for having a 'Green Belt' in the first place:

The research done by bodies such as the Adam Smith Institute and London First contradicts the popular image of the Green Belt as green and pleasant land. Far from the daisy-strewn meadows and woods teeming with wildlife that the term suggests, much Green Belt land is farmland, with monoculture fields by no means friendly to wildlife or accessible to people.

The first step in re-evaluation might be to classify Green Belt land into the different types that comprise it. There is genuinely green land, the fields and woods that everyone likes. There is damaged or brownfield land, partly made up of abandoned buildings, gravel pits and the like. And there is farmland, much of which is not environmentally friendly.

It is very good of these people to do this research telling every planner and most local councillors exactly what they already knew - that the 'Green Belt' is not either all green or entirely worthy of protection on environmental grounds. But what we also know - which the ASI seems to have missed - is that prettiness (for want of a better word) is not the reason for having a 'Green Belt'.  The policy gives five reasons:


To check the unrestricted sprawl of large built-up areas;
To prevent neighbouring towns merging into one another;
To assist in safeguarding the countryside from encroachment;
To preserve the setting and special character of historic towns; and
To assist in urban regeneration, by encouraging the recycling of derelict and other urban land 

None of these reasons relate to the use of land in the 'Green Belt'. The fact of needing to achieve those five policy objectives is met by controlling the uses to restrict those that do harm to the 'Green Belt'. And that 'harm' isn't some form of torture but rather anything that runs counter to the five reasons set out in policy. In simple terms the primary issue is 'openness' not the aesthetic of that openness.

We have a 'Green Belt' primarily in order to control the development of urban areas. This isn't about protecting special places in the countryside - we have other designations from 'Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty' through to 'Regionally Important Geological and Geomorphological Sites' that are intended to protect places we think are beautiful, ecologically-important, historically significant or otherwise somewhat unusual or unique.

London has a problem with housing supply - we all know that. And reviewing the 'Green Belt' would be a good idea in helping to meet that problem (although I wish those charged with review well and hope they have very thick skins). But the ASI's approach is completely misplaced - the 'Green Belt' isn't about protecting woodland and flower meadows but about making sure we concentrate development within existing settlements rather than allowing those settlements to extend to the point they lose their identity and become just a part of the London built-up area.

....

Wednesday 18 March 2015

No Devolution devolution - the case of the Leeds City Region

****

I have a draft of the "Leeds City Region Agreement on Devolution". Those of you listening carefully to the Budget Speech today will have heard the Chancellor mention said 'deal'.

I am here, armed with a very large bucket of cold water, to explain the detail. But first we should note that, because the four Labour leaders in West Yorkshire don't want direct and democratic accountability there isn't any further devolution of powers.

Here are the headlines.

Joint commissioning of a "forward-looking FE system" and the devolution of the Apprenticeship Grant for Employers "working within the Government's reform agenda for apprenticeships in which funding will be routed directly to employers."

Consultation "about the possibility of joint commissioning for the next phase of the Work Programme beginning in 2017"

The Government "will work with LCR to develop a devolved approach to the delivery of business support from 2017 onwards, subject to the outcome of future spending reviews"

The Government will "explore options" on control of local transport schemes, tell Rail North and Network Rail to "align" with LCR's investment strategy, allow "improved liaison" with the Highways Agency on road investment, and actively engage with LCR on long-term rail planning

Changes to structures for the existing Joint Assets Board with Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) plus a new Joint Asset and Investment Plan

Promises of further talks about devolution with the observation that West Yorkshire Combined Authority will "consult of options for enhanced governance, decision-making and delivery arrangements that will be mutually agreed with Government

So many high level meetings. So much talk. Such a lot of shouting. And, because West Yorkshire's Labour leaders aren't prepared to consider some sort of directly-elected solution - either a mayor or an assembly - we haven't got any devolution. Just a deal for the sake of a deal.

....

On the futility of strategic town planning

****


Stanley Wardley presenting his Bradford masterplan

In our profession, a plan that everyone dislikes for different reasons is a success. A plan everyone dislikes for the same reason is a failure. And a plan that everyone likes for the same reason is an act of God. (Richard Carson, Planner)


In 'Parliament of Whores' P J O'Rourke wrote about (amongst other things) the US agricultural subsidy business. The great humorist wasn't impressed and concluded:

"I spent two and a half years examining the American political process. All that time I was looking for a straightforward issue. But everything I investigated - election campaigns, the budget, lawmaking, the court system, bureaucracy, social policy - turned out to be more complicated than I had thought. There were always angles I hadn't considered, aspects I hadn't weighed, complexities I'd never dreamed of. Until I got to agriculture. Here at last is a simple problem with a simple solution. Drag the omnibus farm bill behind the barn, and kill it with an ax."

I feel more-or-less the same about the UK's planning system. This system, spawned by the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act, has grown ever more burdensome and complicated as new features are added with each iteration of planning legislation. Anyone who has tried to engage with our process of plan making will quickly realise that it is almost entirely impossible to square the circle of housing need, environmental protection, sustainable communities and provision for transport or employment.

The system satisfies nobody. Local and national campaign groups complain about the presumption in favour of 'sustainable development' arguing that this is a licence for the developers to concrete over the last vestiges of England's green and pleasant land. Housing developers moan that the requirement for 'planning gain' is simply a tax on development meaning that fewer houses get built and some marginal places remain undeveloped even though everyone says they need developing. And local councils point out that the system is so prescriptive that they have very little room to make policy decisions on the basis of local need and expectation. I'm sure also that the planning inspectorate and Whitehall planning eggheads are equally frustrated that their sleek machine now has so many knobs, bells and whistles tacked onto it - it has become a veritable Heath Robinson of a system.

Even within development control (or development management as Council planning departments like to say these days) there are peculiar quirks and foibles of policy:

In contrast to the rendering plant – a stinking, noisy intrusion into the ‘green belt’ – this modest proposal (again despite my eloquence) was refused. One Councillor described the half complete building as an “abortion” while others clambered up onto high horses proclaiming the sanctity of the Council’s ‘green belt’ policies. A complete contrast to the discussion about the extension to the rendering plant where members – the same members – had fallen over each other to explain “more in sorrow than anger” how necessary a huge store for trucks was and that this justified a massive development in the ‘green belt’.

The modest proposal was to build a hay store for horses.  I've seen applications refused for noise reasons only to see an almost identical application granted permission. And decisions taken to protect the landscape or the environment in one location while allowing the very same development elsewhere in an equally protected locality.

I understand why people see the need for a planning system. Concerns about a development free-for-all are genuine and, given the nature of mainstream development, it's hard to question that concern. But we never ask why it is that we have a system that means the only housebuilding possible is that delivered either by mass housebuilders or by the government. Our system assumes that the best way to meet housing need is through 'strategic land releases', carefully designed 'urban extensions' and centrally-planned 'garden cities'. Yet when we look elsewhere this isn't the case - across much of Europe over half of housing is either self-build or built by small builders. This rises to over 80% in Austria.

Our system - as currently designed - simply doesn't allow for such an approach. Indeed, in places where the Community Infrastructure Levy (essentially a development tax) is high, a developer who sought to adopt the European model of parcelling up land for self-build would be seen as seeking to avoid that charge. The assumption in the UK is that large scale development allows for funding to development local infrastructure such as schools, health centres, railway stations and playgrounds. Indeed, we seem to believe that this is the only way in which such infrastructure will be provided. No mass housebuilding means no new schools.

The real picture is that using planning gain or a development tax to fund infrastructure is a very inefficient (and largely ineffective) way to provide those schools, roads and parks. The theory is that this 'community infrastructure' is contingent on that development - the new housing results in the need for new facilities. Yet at the same time, we are saying that the provision and distribution of new housing isn't based on where people want to live but on an 'objective assessed need' for that housing. This isn't housing for new people, it's housing for people we already have - or that's what the housing numbers folk are telling us.

Five years ago the current government set out to have a proper big tidy up of the planning system. This recognised that the accumulation of regulations, legal case history, legislation and guidance had reached the point where no person could begin to comprehend the system and how it worked. In its officious way the previous Labour government had passed its Planning & Compulsory Purchase Act in 2004 requiring that we have a 'regional spatial strategy' and that, based on this strategy, local councils develop a new 'local development framework'. These requirements were simply piled onto the top of existing development control practice making for an entirely unwieldy, sclerotic and ineffective system.

It sounded good to throw all this stuff out and start again with a simple, easy-read 'national planning policy framework'. Something that every informed layman could read and understand, a newly clear and effective planning framework. And this was (after a great deal of huffing and chuntering) delivered - you can read it:

The National Planning Policy Framework sets out the Government’s planning policies for England and how these are expected to be applied. It sets out the Government’s requirements for the planning system only to the extent that it is relevant, proportionate and necessary to do so. It provides a framework within which local people and their accountable councils can produce their own distinctive local and neighbourhood plans, which reflect the needs and priorities of their communities. 

All you needed was the NPPF - everything else is down to local councils and local communities. Except, as anyone attending an 'examination in public' (no more of those nasty public enquiries) for a 'local plan' will know, it's not that simple. Indeed the requirement for the local plan and the associated process wasn't provided for in the Localism Act 2011 but is essentially the system in the 2004 Act without the 'regional spatial strategy' and with things given different names. Moreover, those planning eggheads in Whitehall weren't content to leave it up to the judgement of local planners (let alone local councillors) and have produced a thing called 'Planning Practice Guidance' - thousands of pages of 'guidance' to local planners on making their plans and thereafter applying the policies in the plan to the management of development.

And as you all know, 'guidance' in Whitehall-speak doesn't mean 'here's some hints and tips on the best way to do this stuff'. It means 'unless you've a very good reason not to, this is the way you will do things, and in case you've forgotten every planning lawyer will be waving it at inspectors and judges as if Moses had brought it down from Mount Sinai'. Planning is a rules-based system and that guidance provides the rules.

The result of such a complicated system with such a big rule book is that there are glitches and loopholes. By way of illustration go and look at the rules for a classic board game like Cluedo (four pages) and contrast them with the rulebook for a big strategy wargame like War in the Pacific (56 pages plus a 12 page scenarios booklet and a 16 page book of charts and tables). There are almost no loopholes or glitches in Cluedo but War in the Pacific contains any number of said holes that the assiduous gamer with a love of reading the rule book can discover.

The more I look at the English planning system, the more I feel the need to fetch that axe and to put the overgrown thing out of its misery. Or rather to relieve the poor folk - builders, local residents, councillors - that the system forces to jump though hoops.  As I've observed before, every planning authority has a huge planning policy document few have read that is backed up by literally dozens of other studies, comments, papers and guidance notes. All so we can decide whether you can build on the paddock, if the family over the road can put in a dormer bedroom, and where the pub on the corner can put its extractor fan.

As I commented about habitat regulations, most of the constraints can and should be dealt with at the level of the individual application. You don't need a new set of policies merely describing the requirements set out in other legislation. If EU rules tell you that development isn't allowed somewhere that's it. And if those rules say the impact of development on wildlife must be mitigated there's no need to go through a long process to decide on the wording of a policy that, more-or-less, says that the impact of development on wildlife must be mitigated because those rules say so.

And the same goes for flooding and drainage, the protection of historic buildings and the preservation of landscapes. All of these things have specific protections and regulations pertaining to those protections - there's no need for a plan that simply repeats (sort of) what those other policies say. Yet hours of argument and discussion is undertaken and hundreds of pages of justification penned just to comply with a silly rule that says the plan has to reword policies written for another purpose in another place.

There is much wrong with planning - hence the system's need for mercy killing - but little that can be resolved by the preferred approach of tinkering around. We can change the spatial focus up and down from national to regional to sub-regional to local but still miss the point - it's not the grand plan but the detail that matters. And setting rules for the detail is hard, it verges on the impossible. To return to War in the Pacific - the bit of the game that slowed things up was the logistics rules so these were scrapped:

The rules have undergone significant change with greatly increased emphasis on detail in combat while removing the detailed logistics system that was the focus of the old game and replacing it with a command point system modeled after Victory Games' "Pacific War."

Playability trumps the desire for authenticity - conducting a war across millions of square miles of ocean was always about logistics rather than merely the crunch on actual battle.  But logistics are dull, complicated and hard to model. So it is with planning - the bit of the game planners like is the bit with big maps and coloured pencils, the making of sweeping decisions about new towns, new roads and new parks. But the bit of the game that matters is the detail, the regulations, the guidance, the policies. The 'national planning policy framework' was a valiant attempt to do to England's planning system what games designers did to War in the Pacific - make it playable.

The problem is that it's those details, the bureaucracy of planning, that are the planning system. Without them planning is pointless. But then maybe it is...

In complex situations, we may rely too heavily on planning and forecasting and underestimate the importance of random factors in the environment. That reliance can also lead to delusions of control. (Hillel Eindhorn, Behavioural Scientist)



....


Saturday 14 March 2015

Dignity and security in retirement can sod off for a start

****

We went to Harrogate. So far, so suitably middle-aged and dull. We had dinner in an Italian restaurant (pizza and red wine, one of the great combinations). And then we went to the blues bar to watch some rock and roll - inspired by Rory Gallagher read the blurb. It was load, fuelled by booze and great fun.

And the audience was almost entirely folk like me of a "certain age" - greying and bit paunchy, pretending to be a little younger than the reality but still fit, solvent and enjoying the music of our youth. A music that doesn't sound all that different (except for being much better) that the music produced for today's youth.

And people like this aren't interested in "dignity and security" - it sounds like the right retirement home with nurses who are ever so polite when they arrive for a bed bath or wipe your bottom. Understand this politicians - we are planning on having a bloody long period of retirement before we get to the point of needed our bottoms wiped and the drool mopped up. None of this planned retirement is about dignity or security - it's about fun, about party, about spending all that cash we've saved up on going places, seeing things and drinking loads of red wine.

When we retire, we intend to carry on buying unsuitable cars, wearing jeans that perhaps don't flatter our figures, talking loudly in public bars and listening to George Thorogood very loudly when the neighbours (who prefer folk rock) aren't too near. We're going to take cruises down the Rhine, sit on beaches in Spain and take grandchildren to Florida. We are going to be the least dignified and most carefree generation of retirees ever. And the last thing we want is political parties basing their campaigns for our votes on how we're going to wear beige, have chintz curtains and slightly tweedy sofas. Let alone live in the sort of 'retirement homes' that 30 year old housing people are planning for us.

This is a generation of retirees that went to Black Sabbath concerts, sat in muddy fields talking about peace and love or strutted its stuff on disco dance floors. And close behind us are a bunch of folk who wore safety pins, pogo-ed and spat at the Sex Pistols and Suzie Sioux.

You really need to know where you can stick your dignity and security. And it ain't pretty up there.

...

Friday 13 March 2015

Crime down, drinking down but more licenced premises. Hogan Howe is talking authoritarian rubbish.

****

The Hillsborough enquiry reveals how police called for dogs rather than ambulances and every new day reveals another example of the police failing to respond to cases of child sexual abuse - given this it would be a good idea if the leaders of the police showed a little humility and addressed themselves to the enormous lump of timber in their eye rather than mounting yet another illiberal assault on private businesses.

“We need to make sure there is good control of the supply of alcohol. This means licence numbers, density and licensee-regulation being a priority for local authorities, however much they would like to develop their local economies.

“We know that many injuries occur inside or outside licensed premises, and if we can close down repeat offenders, we will.

“But do we really need as many licensed premised chasing limited business. The system needs reform and we need to police it better.”

This from the same jumped up little fascist who called for CCTV in every home, wants water cannon to deal with disorder and who leads an unaccountable, dysfunctional paramilitary force.

The failings an inadequacies of police leadership and management are legion. It's not just the high profile cases - Hillsborough, the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes or child abuse in Rotherham - it's an every day in every community problem.

In answer to "Britain's Top Cop" as the tabloids would call him - no we don't need more control over the supply of alcohol. You already have all the powers you need to deal with drunks, to respond to badly managed pubs and to manage the effects of alcohol in our communities.

Britain has about 204,000 licensed premises a figure that has risen by some 3% over the last five years. And during that period our consumption of alcohol has continued to fall - it has dropped nearly 20% over the last decade. So it's no surprise that violent crime is now at its lowest level for over 30 years:

The CSEW covers a broad range of victim based crimes and includes crimes which do not come to the attention of the police. Decreases were evident for all major crime types compared with the previous year; violence saw a 23% fall, criminal damage fell by 20%, and theft offences decreased by 12%.
This represents a 16% decrease compared with the previous year’s survey, and is the lowest estimate since the survey began in 1981.

I for one am completely fed up with top police officers making out that there's a problem where there isn't while at the same time making excuses for the complete failure of the police to deal with a real problem such as child sexual exploitation.

....

The problem with boundaries...the case of London's 'Green Belt'

****

Fontanile was divided from the "capital" by just such a stream, and for twenty years no one had seen so much water in it. Night had fallen, but Don Camillo paced nervously up and down the road leading along the bank. His nervousness did not pass until he heard the brakes of a big car. The car was full of policemen, and with their arrival Don Camillo went back to the rectory and hung his shotgun on the wall. After supper Peppone came to see him, looking very glum.

"Did you call the police?" he asked Don Camillo.

"Of course I did, after you staged that diversion at Case Nuove in order to have a free hand for your other mischief, yes, and after you cut the telephone and telegraph wires, too."

Peppone looked at him scornfully.

"You're a traitor!" he said. "You asked for foreign aid. A man without a country, that's what you are!"

I am slightly obsessed with the idea of the boundary - the line where one place turns into another place. It is the reason, for me at least, why geography and the concepts of geography are so important. And what we know is that the boundary isn't either permanent or necessarily clearly defined. Yet in our world this lack of permanence and fuzziness has to be set aside as we seek to set down the lines of boundaries.  Here's planner Andrew Lainton talking about whether London needs a 'Green Belt' review:

We can imagine how fraught the ‘wider South East’ meeting would be next week as these authorities would either say we are having to conduct a Green Belt review so should you, or for those outside the Green Belt like Aylesbury Vale would say why should we take all of any overspill caused by London’s historic failure to plan for enough homes if you don't look at policy options as well.

The discussion here is about several different sets of non-coterminous boundaries - some of which can be easily spotted on maps and others that are more nebulous and undefined. For the purpose of this discussion it doesn't matter whether we think London's 'Green Belt' needs reviewing merely that we understand how difficult such a review is to conduct because of those boundaries. Andrew Lainton has couched the problem in terms of the self-interest we'd expect from various parties to any discussion about the need for review. So authorities (Lainton gives the examples of Epping Forest and Dartford) that are outside the boundaries of Greater London but inside the boundaries of the London 'Green Belt' will take the view that the purpose of that 'Green Belt' outweighs London's need to find land to ease its growing demand for housing.

Hence the problem in the quote above - the example here is Aylesbury Vale but could equally have been Medway or Swale in Kent or Adur in Sussex. If the authorities outside London but inside London's 'Green Belt' win their argument then the search for sites (strategic or otherwise) moves beyond the 'Green Belt'. And such things are, as we discovered in Rochester, potential political timebombs.

This isn't an argument for trying to get coterminous boundaries because that is an utterly futile exercise. Some boundaries - 'travel-to-work areas, for example - cannot be set by fiat but are determined by the choices people make their lives. Other boundaries are matters of judgement - an example here might be the impact of moorland special protection areas where the answer to the question being asked so as to determine the zone's boundaries is not really known (those pesky birds won't stop still).

The traditional remedy for such disputes has been to get everyone around a table to look at the problem. All the various boundaries (I encountered a new sort today - the 'buffer zone' for a World Heritage Site) are set out, the problem is described and solutions are discussed. Some sort of process is needed to secure resolution - ideally this is unanimity but we could look for some sort of majority verdict or else (and this is most usual) a rules based system with a court as final arbiter. In the case above this is all possible because we are pretty confident that Dartford's armed forces aren't about to assault Bexley - if you're talking about the boundaries of Palestinian territory in the West Bank that sort of resolution remains possible.

Where such processes aren't possible (or a party is able to ignore the need to co-operate) the result can be pretty dysfunctional. Take the example of San Francisco - or rather the wider Bay Area and what we call 'Silicon Valley':

Development phobia in some areas means that concerns about traffic usually win out over housing. Red tape is an issue in all area cities. Beyond those obstacles, cities have yet to define local implementation strategies for new housing plans like Plan Bay Area. Developers are also wary of new government fees and missing out on chances to develop larger, single-family homes in Silicon Valley suburbs.

A failure by politicians, developers and employers to follow a comprehensive plan for bolstering Silicon Valley's housing supply has negative implications. Frustrated locals will continue paying more for less housing and sitting in traffic. Outside talent may balk at taking a job here for fear of putting themselves in the same plight.

Put simply, politicians running the counties making up 'Silicon Valley' are reluctant to zone for significant increases in housing because of fears from residents of those counties about the influx of new folk (even very well-paid new folk working in tech industries). The result is that those new folk end up in San Francisco where they squeeze out local populations, especially ethnic minority populations:

The affordability crisis is so extreme that many of those who rode into the Mission District on the first wave of gentrification, during the dotcom boom in the 90s, are now crying foul. Even they can’t afford the 2-bedroom apartment on Valencia Street renting for $11,500/month.[ii] They find themselves priced out of their lofts and community networks, by a whole new wave of highly paid tech workers who ride in on the Google bus every evening, driving rents and home prices to dizzying new heights.

Now London has yet to reach such a scale of problem (although paying £750,000 for an Edwardian townhouse in Hackney suggests we're getting there) but the lesson is that without the active co-operation of authorities within London's 'Green Belt' there is every prospect of the City's affordability crisis becoming an affordability catastrophe. As we all know, the solution lies within the planning system not with rent controls or narrow housing market interventions. And those discussions about the 'Green Belt' are central to that solution making comments like this decidedly unhelpful:

“We do not need to do a green belt review, we do not need to go outside of London. We believe we can meet our needs within London”.

Unless a wider solution - not necessarily new towns (or even 'garden cities') in could be a scaled and structured set of urban expansions - it put in place we will find the situation worsening further.

While part of me likes this idea as it means the location decisions of people and businesses move away from London there's a more fundamental problem - London's continuing success is absolutely central to the UK's success. And some of those location decisions might not be Bristol or Birmingham but Barcelona or Baltimore. The resolution of this discussion about the different boundaries around London and especially whether (or maybe where) in the 'Green Belt' land should be released for housing. I wish all involved well in this but am a little glad it's not me making the choices!

....

Thursday 12 March 2015

...leaving early to avoid the rush





Thirty years ago someone - probably Chris Barlow - told me excitedly about a book called 'The Colour of Magic'. I bought it and read it. At one sitting.

Terry Pratchett who wrote that book was one of those writers who broke the mould - crossed over from the odd world of SF and fantasy into the strange bright lights of the wider literary and cultural place. He had the knack of making a serious point so lightly you'd laugh before you even realised the meaning of that laugh. And the ability to tell a story to engross a ten-year old or a hundred-and-ten year old. The sparkling narrative, the characters - good, bad and cynical - and the avalanche of jokes all worked to tell the tale.

But we could go on - as ever with Terry Pratchett he has provided us with his own good-bye.

.....

Wednesday 11 March 2015

Health fascism triumphant - liberty put into plain packs

****

So there we are walking through Hull - I forget quite where but it doesn't matter - and, as was are wont, we were smoking. Anyway a young lad walks up to John de Forte waving a slightly scrunched fag.

"Gotta light mate?"  John looks at the child, snatches the cigarette from him and screws it up before throwing it to the ground where he stamped on it.

"Disgusting. Disgusting." Exclaimed John as he reached for his jacket pocket from which he brought out a packet of Capstan Full Strength. "That's not a cigarette. This is a cigarette."

That kid is either coughing his guts out on some council estate in Hull or else hasn't toughed tobacco since - kill or cure as John put it at the time. And the truth is that that child hadn't opted to smoke because of the shiny gold and silver packets. He smoked because his mum did or because all his mates did or because he thought it made him look tough.

Still the government has taken another step towards introducing plain packs for cigarettes. This is mostly because those nasty Labour people said we wouldn't do it not because it's a policy that has loads of public support. In the end it probably doesn't matter a great deal - smokers will go on smoking, kids will carry on trying a cigarette they nicked off their mum or a drag from the old brother.

Nevertheless the legions of health fascism will be raising their glasses of filtered water (or whatever it is that puritan teetotal fussbuckets drink these days) to Jane Ellison the Minister for Public Health. And this utterly illiberal measure - the stealing of someone's intellectual property for a supposed health benefit that simply doesn't exist. Put bluntly, plain packaging (rather like advertising bans and banning smoking in pubs) will not make a jot of different to either the prevalence of smoking or the propensity of children to take up smoking. There is precisely zero evidence showing that the suppression of brand advertising reduces aggregate consumption - whether we're talking about fags, booze or butterscotch.

The very worst thing about this is that we now have open season - every fussbucket with a cause (usually a state-funded cause) to plug will be out there calling for plain packaging for their chosen demon. Plain packs for booze, plain packs for burgers, plain packs for sugar...for sweets, for chocolate, for fizzy drinks...there really is no end to the things those hideous puritan teetotal fussbuckets don't want us to see. And stupid politicians - the ones like Jane Ellison with no spines - will skip around the health fascists cooing and purring because they're good at getting headlines on the BBC or in the Daily Mail.

It is depressing, sad and pathetic.

....

Tuesday 10 March 2015

Lies, damned lies and housing numbers

****

I've spent today at the Examination in Public (EIP) of Bradford's Local Plan Core Strategy. It was a day of myth-making as we discussed how many new houses Bradford will need over the period from 2013 to 2030. I say myth-making because we saw the legal and professional teams assembled by the owners of possible housing land in Ilkley and Wharfedale (the least affordable and most desirable bit of the Bradford district) weeping well-remunerated crocodile tears over such matters as overcrowding, homelessness, the single room supplement and the vital need for affordable housing.

I also watched as the Council's planners patronised the hell out of local campaign groups and residents while quivering as a smug QC was allowed to interrupt and talk over in a manner not afforded to us mere mortals. It was a reminder that the planning system - the thing that the Town & Country Planning Association wants to "save" - is excluding and exclusive. And the people it excludes are the representatives - whether councillors or action groups - of local residents. Unless those groups are able to raise the cash to employ that smug QC themselves.

We're repeatedly told by planners and apologists for planners that we should engage with the system early before the important decisions about policies, strategies and allocations are made. So when - as we did today - those local representatives turn up, it is very clear that the priority and preference is for input from 'experts'. As if people like me speaking on behalf of twenty Conservative councillors representing a fifth of Bradford's population are of less consequence that a lawyer paid by a solitary landowner in Burley. Yet that is the truth of it - that one lawyer will have a more profound effect on the policies, strategies and land allocations of Bradford's Local Plan than all the arguments and representations of councillors and residents.

And the saddest thing is that the discussion today about housing numbers was an exercise with little grounding in reality. The 'objective assessment of housing need' and 'housing requirements' are essentially a board game played between council planners and developers with the Planning Inspector as a sort of scorekeeper. There's lots of talk about 'ambition'. 'economic development', 'new job creation' and 'affordable housing' - each with its own little evidence base. An evidence base that is only objective if you accept the premise that the game described.

So, for example, the approach arrives (using essentially a straight line demographic projection adjusted for some guesses about migration) at an 'objective assessment' of housing need. But this isn't the end of the matter because, in the world of setting housing numbers, there's an assumption that jobs growth is matched by growth in housing need. So that objective assessment of need must be adjusted upwards to reflect economic growth. And to arrive at this estimate the number in the objective assessment is plugged into an econometric model (in Bradford's case a thing called the Yorkshire and The Humber Regional Econometric Model or REM for short) that generates, in a roundabout sort of way, a new and bigger number.

It's important to note here that whether the REM is any good is not the issue. What matters is that all the various local planning authorities (LPAs) are using the same model. And I'll note here an interesting paradox of this uprating of housing numbers because of economic growth. The assumption here is that growth in jobs follows from economic growth and that this growth in jobs outstrips the natural growth in population (remember we've picked that up in our objective assessment based on Office of National Statistics data on population trends). Ergo we need more houses.

The paradox is that this growth requires positive net in-migration to the LPA area. For every single LPA using the model. We don't at any point ask where the place is that these people are moving from. If economic growth results in more housing demand in Bradford there must be a place elsewhere that has less housing demand. The problem is that the board game of housing numbers doesn't allow for such a conclusion (or the distinct possibility that Bradford, with its current net out-migration is, in fact, that place where housing need is falling rather than rising - at least in aggregate).

The game of upward adjustment (there is not scope for downward adjustment) isn't over. This is where the crocodile tears of planning consultants and lawyers kick in as they start arguing that high rates of overcrowding, homelessness and even the 'single room supplement' need to be considered as they all indicate housing pressures. There's a great show - a veritable care-a-thon - of discussing the importance of affordable housing. This is part of the game and not in any way reflecting of the caring nature of those lawyers and planning consultants or their housebuilder clients. Come the day when they submit plans for housing those same folk will turn up to argue why they can't build affordable homes, contribute to schools or improve road safety. But at the moment, before the Inspector, these 'market indicators' are used to try a get a 'uplift' to that housing number.

After five and a bit hours of this discussion it is hard to see any merit at all in our planning system. Indeed this is made worse by the process allowing the rest of us a litte bit of time to play the game. Not that anyone will take much notice of what we say but we get a little go - a bit like those games of kiddie five-a-side at half time in the big match. To illustrate this we can observe that today the inspector took and hour and a half questioning the Council, six developer representatives a further hour and a half and ten others (that's us residents, councillors and so on) took 40 minutes. The Council then responded to developer points for a hour leaving just fifteen minutes to address the concerns of residents before returning again to an exchange with the lawyers and planning consultants acting for developers.

At the end of all this I don't expect that there will be much change from the Council's housing number (42,100 if you're interested). It is a complete fiction bearing only the vaguest relationship to the real world. One speaker today kindly quoted a prediction I made when the Local Plan Core Strategy was debated at full council - that, regardless of the number we plump for, the chances are that we'll build somewhere around 25,000 houses in the sixteen-year plan period. And that the higher the number we go for the more of those houses will be built on green field and green belt sites. The nature of housing markets and the planning system as it operates on a day-to-day basis more or less guarantee this under-delivery.

Watching today's discussions, I was again struck by the idiocy of so-called 'strategic planning'.  Instead of making actual decisions about real housing need what we are doing is making essentially arbitrary decisions determined by economic and demographic models rather than being grounded in reality. Worse the government has decided that we're not allowed to be honest about our economic prospects - there is something delightfully Stakhanovite about the whole modelling approach - meaning that the final numbers have only the most tenuous connection with the actual real, live housing market.

In the end the loser in all this will be Bradford. We will have an inner city that continues to decline and where only vast lumps of public subsidy will allow the developer the margin to build. All so those landbanks in Wharfedale can be in the plan.

As my friend and full time housing guru Huw Jones put it - there are lies, damned lies and housing numbers.

....

Economic nationalism is always a bad idea - even when Will Hutton proposes it.

****

The other day Will Hutton wrote a piece for The Guardian (as he does) entitled "Selling off Britain is not a sign of strength, but profound weakness". In the main the purpose of the article was to plug Hutton's latest book and a spin off TV programme he has wangled from Channel 4 but the gist of our man's argument was that:

The average Briton will now work, drink, travel, eat, drive, and use energy from assets and services supplied by foreign owners more than ever before – and in a growing and escalating deficit. Globalisation obviously means increased inflows and outflows of capital. But overseas investors are buying a great many more British companies than we are buying abroad – a ratio of more than two to one. It is not just that the control of our economic destiny moves abroad with nobody turning a hair; the associated flows of income abroad are beginning to be alarming.

Now it's clear from this that, just as we see from the new left parties in Greece and Spain, the argument is essentially one of economic nationalism. The problem isn't capitalism or even the market economy but rather that these things result in foreigners coming over here and buying up our stuff - or in Hutton's terms those wicked neoliberals are 'selling off Britain'. On one level Hutton's argument encapsulates the problem with nationalism (we'll come to this later) but it is also a misrepresentation of those capital inflows.

Hutton portrays the foreign purchase of UK 'assets' as a loss arguing that the resulting loss of income is matched by a loss of economic control. Yet in another respect the excess of capital inflow over capital outflow represents a vote of confidence in the UK and a net increase in the capital available for the UK economy. Hutton also makes no reference to what is done with the receipts from those sales to foreigners - are the resulting wealthy Britons simply, in the manner of Scrooge McDuck, piling up their gold in a big vault so they can look at it? Some how I doubt this - the money from those sales will either be reinvested or consumed.

We can also deal with Hutton's argument about the loss of income - it's true that the increased foreign ownership results in more dividends and other income flowing out of the UK. Right now total corporate profits represent about 12% of UK GDP and we know that not all of this profit is paid in dividends to owners - some goes in tax, some is retained for reinvestment. So perhaps 6-7% of UK GDP is paid out in dividends. And, even with Hutton's scary (if anecdotally reported) argument about foreigners buying up our stuff, most of the UK is still owed by British folk. Relative to the whole economy outflows of income resultant on dividends from foreign ownership is a piffling amount.

Hutton is on better ground when he talks about the innate bias towards the home country or local neighbourhood for that matter in business decisions. After all, Adam Smith had something to say about this:

As every individual, therefore, endeavours as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value, every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.

Now aside from this being the only occasion when Adam Smith uses the term 'invisible hand' in Wealth of Nations', it does rather support Hutton's contention about ownership. Except that, as we know, those foreign owners buying up Britain have not endeavoured as much as they can to employ their capital domestically - they've chosen instead to invest it in Britain. And one assumes that this investment decision isn't on a whim but is a rational business decision that, the investor hopes, will lead to an acceptable return. Indeed Hutton shoots down his own argument when he explains away the success of BMW- and Tata-owned UK businesses by referring to their ownership model and business structure (he describes BMW as a family-owned business though which it manifestly isn't - an I'd note that 10% of it is British-owned too).

All this brings me back to the problem with nationalism - even a bien pensant socialism-light nationalism such as Will Hutton's. Firstly nationalism is pretty hard (as the Greeks are finding out) so long as you're a member of the European Union. Indeed ownership of British assets by French, German or Dutch firms would, one assumes, be expected in a successful union and vice versa (there's an issue here because to a degree French and German businesses don't always play to the same rules especially the state-owned ones).

Secondly economic nationalism isn't a great economic strategy - it's good news for the businesses who are protected and for the owners of those businesses (or so it seems at the time) but the real effect of protectionism is sclerotic industry and poorly served consumers. By constraining investment, Will Hutton would limit the ability of British firms to compete by making it more difficult and almost certainly more expensive for them to get the capital they need to grow.

Finally - whatever we think of Hutton's analysis - there is the matter of the message his argument sends out. He may be able to wrap his nationalism up in fine words, to say "oh no it's not protectionism" and to talk about how the "system is organised to favour transient, short-term shareholders who incentivise management teams to extract value from their companies" but the core of his message is that the government should act to prevent foreigners buying UK assets. A sort of capitalist version of "British Jobs for British Workers".

In the end we should be asking why it is that foreign cash is flooding into the UK. I doubt (however much my patriotic instinct tells me to believe) that it's because our economy is all tickety-boo. Rather it's because we're not doing so badly as a lot of other places which means the rich from places like Spain, Greece, Italy and assorted Middle East tragedies are piling their money into London - buying property, businesses, shares and sticking their money safely away in places where the great sucking sound of economic or social collapse can't be heard.

I take the view that patriotism - that preference for domestic industry Adam Smith described - is just fine but nationalism, by which I mean the structuring of policy to exclude foreign involvement, is always and everywhere a bad thing. At least Mussolini was honest with Italians over his economic nationalism - promising them that their sacrifice would mean their sons were rich (he was right about the sacrifice but probably wrong about the rich sons) - whereas Will Hutton pretends that his Guardianista national preference represents a better economic approach that will save us from doom and make us richer. Hutton is wrong.

....


Saturday 7 March 2015

Instead of choreographed leaders debates, let's just broadcast lots of local hustings...

****

More froth and bother has been expended over the matter of TV debates than on any number of things that actually matter in our lives. Partly this is because the big broadcasters dominate the agenda with newspapers and the hordes of spinners, PR men and political hangers on toddling along behind. The 'Westminster Bubble' some call this - a place where debate is conducted on the basis of triangulating political careers and pulling the wool over the electorate's eyes rather than with the intention of seeking solutions.

The voters are sitting there - in as much as they're paying any attention at all - looking bemusedly on as shouts of 'chicken' are interspersed with ever more complicated explanations as to whether this or that format for a TV debate is most appropriate and even more occult explanations about the reasons a particular date or location is wrong.

I think we need to move on from this sterile sideshow to real political decisions. A grand televised showpiece was always a bad idea (it was in 1966 when Harold Wilson refused a debate with Ted Heath and remained so in 2010 when Gordon, Dave and Nick graced our screens). Not only does it undermine the premise of our democracy - the election of representatives - but it trivialises debate. The format is set up to focus on presentation and style rather than content or the sharing of argument. Most people won't watch but rather will see a few carefully chosen soundbites on the evening news while listening to the so-called 'political reporter' analysing the leaders' hair, ties and body language. This is not debate but yet another example of politics as show-business, the triumph of gloss over substance.

In these days of the Internet, of easy live broadcasting and of social media interaction, we need to rethink what we want from debates. Do we want, over the period of the campaign, two or three grandstand events carefully orchestrated to shine nothing on the real issues of the campaign? Or do we want to sent the broadcasters - the big guys and the little guys, radio and TV - out into the UK's 350 constituencies where real debates might be taking place? Every constituency has a few local hustings - usually organised by a local church group or a voluntary organisation - that bring the candidates together to debate subjects raised by the local audience. Why don't we broadcast lots of these rather than a sterile and preening debates between a load of leaders who aren't on the ballot paper for most of us?

Instead of a debate moderated through carefully planned national events, we'd see a more untidy campaign where sometimes the 'wrong' thing gets said and sometimes candidates stray from the approved line. It would be invigorating and would perhaps involve more people in debating the issues rather than treating the election as a sort of beauty contest between leaders or manifesto slogans moderated by the broadcast media.

...

Drinking every day isn't the problem, drinking too much is the problem



And I'm not getting into the occult subject of what constitutes "too much". I would observe however that those who saw Top Gear demonstrate how far off  "safe braking distance" is from reality will understand just how much recommended levels of alcohol consumption 'err on the side of caution'.

Some research has been issued that shows how, for most people, drinking (and especially binge drinking - however defined) rises from adolescence to the mid-20s and then gradually declines as people get older. However, there's another change - as people age they drink less but they drink more regularly. Instead of going out on the lash with the mates on Friday and Saturday, men drink every day. And apparently this is a bad thing:


“I wasn't shocked to see that alcohol volume changes over the life course, but the high proportion of older men drinking daily is a bit alarming.

“It raises concerns that they are becoming dependent on alcohol and there are risks in this age group mixing alcohol with medications.” 

So says the person responsible for the study. There's also a hint (not referenced just baldly stated) of  "warnings that drinking every day can increase the risk of health problems associated with alcohol." Now while I'm happy to agree that consuming large amounts of booze every day - or even six days out of seven - isn't good for your health, I suspect that there's nothing to support the contention that the mere fact of drinking every day is bad for your health (the NHS helpfully puts the 'risk' at 3-4 units - less than two pints - for men and  2-3 units - a medium glass of wine - for women).

What we see here are two assumptions - firstly that not drinking is healthier than drinking (we know this isn't true) and secondly that these low levels of daily consumption are a risk (they're not). All of this fits with the temperance agenda that dominates thinking about alcohol and health. What we see is a study showing how alcohol consumption falls with age resulting in most people settling down to a comfortable and safe relationship with booze presented by a lazy journalist and a temperance-addicted researcher as something of a problem.

We really don't have a major problem with alcohol in the UK. Overwhelmingly - even using the temperance lobbies super safe recommended levels - the population doesn't abuse alcohol. What we do have is a group of people who have a problem with alcohol - not the scary "drinking at dangerous levels" of the press release from Alcohol Concern but genuinely with a problem. There are a lot of people with this problem - Alistair Campbell refers to 1.6 million in this article which is probably about right. This is 2-3% of the population - about one-in-thirty people - so merits our attention. But the solution is to focus on those people rather than run endless scare stories that merely act to further reduce the consumption of moderate drinkers rather than reduce the harm that comes from heavy drinking.

....

Thursday 5 March 2015

Counting birds - how we ask too much of our local plan system

Where the birds fly!

Out there in the world of ordinary people going about their ordinary lives, planning is a thing you sometimes need to deal with in order to get your conservatory, dormer or little extension. On occasion you might rant and rail - even organise and campaign - against proposals for a major development on your doorstep. But the details and intricacies of the planning system pass most of us by - we don't touch the occult world of housing need models, biodiversity assessments, health impact assessments and a host of other expensively procured reviews and studies intended to inform the plans our local government might make.

Yesterday marked the first day of the 'Examination in Public' for Bradford's Local Plan Core Strategy - the Council describes this as:

The Core Strategy is a key planning document for the Bradford District. It translates aspirations from the Council’s Community Strategy, key technical evidence and outcomes from previous consultations into an overarching and strategic planning framework for the District, guiding where development is to be permitted, how much we should have, what land should be protected from developed and how places should change up to 2030.

Colossal grammatical error aside, this document is the daddy of what will be a suite of linked plans and strategies that, in the end, will tell you whether you can put a garage in your garden, whether the local farmer can build a hay store for his sheep and where the big housing developers will be allowed to build their little boxes for future families.  And the reality is that most people don't know much about this 'Local Plan Core Strategy' and even if they'd all been presented with a copy and asked for comment the answers wouldn't tell us whether or not the Council has a plan that makes sense.

And worse than this, there's a whole library of documentation that most of us simply haven't the time to read and understand - they're listed here and list some seventeen separate studies, reviews and assessments. This, dear reader, is the "evidence base" and once we've written and decided on the plan it will be forgotten about (until it is poured over by some planning lawyers in the search for a loophole permitting their client to do the development he wants). On top of this library of documents there are other important background documents - most notably on housing - as well as a set of assessments relating to sustainability, health and habitat regulations.

And this is where the matter of counting birds comes into the discussion. In order to prepare a 'Habitat Regulations Assessment' (HRA) for Bradford's 'Special Areas of Conservation' (SACs) and 'Special Protection Areas' (SPAs) the council appointed consultants who, among other things, went out and counted birds. Not every bird but certain types of bird so as to arrive at an idea of how many of them are nesting on the protected moorland and where those birds are getting to in their daily wanderings for food and fun.

The HRA screening assessment identified a range of likely significant effects on the North and South Pennine Moorlands that could result from the Core Strategy for Bradford district. This list has been reviewed and rationalised, with new impact categories added as part of the Appropriate Assessment procedure.

Now if you own land within the protected area or (and this is more important) on the fringes of that protected area then the chances are that the birds nesting there will, at some point in their foraging, look for food on your land. So the regulations (courtesy of the wonderful and caring European Union) require the people drawing up the plans to find out where those birds are scratting for seeds, worms or (in the case of Merlins and Peregrines) swooping for larger and juicier prey. So some ornithologist sorts are sent out with binoculars and a clipboard to count the birds.

The problem is that there are different views as to how you count birds and, just as importantly, how you work out from how many birds you see how many birds there actually are. So the EU provides a convenient cop out:

If a preliminary scientific evaluation shows that there are reasonable grounds for concern that a particular activity might lead to damaging effects on the environment, or on human, animal or plant health, which would be inconsistent with the protection normally afforded to these within the European Community, the Precautionary Principle is triggered.

“Decision-makers then have to determine what action to take. They should take account of the potential consequences of taking no action, the uncertainties inherent in the scientific evaluation, and they should consult interested parties on the possible ways of managing the risk. Measures should be proportionate to the level of risk, and to the desired level of protection.

Helpful eh? It's clear to me (as a result of the entirely circular argument in the regulations) that we're quite simply asking the planning system to do something that the system cannot do. Or rather something that can't be done at the level of the strategic plan. At the level of the individual scheme it is possible to establish whether the damage from development can be mitigated (or better still prevented) - we saw this recently in Denholme where the quarrying development at Buck Park was designed in such as way as not to disturb a peregrine nesting site or in Cullingworth where an orchid site was relocated.

The Council is placed in something of a dilemma - after all the regulations require that the impact on SACs and SPAs is assessed and that this assessment will inform the decisions about future development in affected areas. The problem is that we cannot assess every possible development on every possible site - not just because it would be onerous but because it is, in effect, impossible. As a result the bird counters are sent out, they count birds and using this data an estimation is made about whether any development at all would result in that 'damaging effect'.

Clearly there's a long line from complete loss of habitat through to no change. The Council has to guess where on this line is the right point to set the degree of protection especially for sites that aren't within the actual boundary of the SAC or SPA. As ever with planning this judgement is much better done at the level of the individual application but unfortunately the love of grand strategy results in assessments that are, to all intents and purposes, meaningless. We commission expensive studies that can only tell us that there are protected species and a protected eco-system on the moors, that the birds concerned leave the moors to feed and that development might have a negative impact on their behaviour.

This is just one example of the problem with the local plan system - the same problems are repeated across the system. Matters that would be better left to the individual application are instead dealt with through complicated models and systems that don't get close to the true picture - not because the people creating the models and systems are stupid or wrong but because we're asking for something that can't really be appraised at the scale in question.

I am not a fan of strategic planning - we need a policy framework that is accessible locally but the process of second guessing the market or the development of the economy really doesn't work. This, of course doesn't stop planners wanting to try and square the circle - here's Andrew Lainton explaining why, in planning, black is white:

...more and better planning leads to more land for growth, and growth that benefits everyone rather than just the rentier elite that funds bodies like the Policy Exchange.  An elite that doesn’t want planning to succeed as its main income stream is through restricting access to land and charging everyone else for the privilege. 

Now Andrew is a planner so we might expect an argument for more planning. And that's an interesting debate. But planning is always and everywhere about control - about the "possibility of a planned and shaped market" as he puts it. This means that access to land is restricted to the uses determined in the plan - precisely the things that 'rentier' elite want. Andrew is right when he attacks the degree to which our economy is warped by property prices and accompanying speculation but this system is in large part a consequence of the very planning that he wants to promote.

There is an important debate going on here that isn't served by simply dismissing planning in its entirety or by saying that liberalisation is a bad route to allowing the "land for growth and growth that benefits everyone" to which Andrew alludes. Some want a strategic approach where the Whitehall planner's pen circles the places for expansion and a new generation of new towns - they'll call them "garden cities" of course - is born. Others want a more organic approach based on making it a little easier to develop on a small scale, to permit the negotiation of human scale extension to smaller communities and to use the value from those developments as capital for the re-use of now redundant land elsewhere.

The counting of birds tells us that the strategic planning approach doesn't work. We knew that, of course, as we saw the repeated failure of housing need assessments to recognise choice or the dynamics of human behaviour. But the little tale of Bradford's HRA reminds us again why the local plan system isn't fit for its purpose and why the result of strategic planning is a good living for planning consultants and a fine feast for lawyers. Nowhere in all of this are we really considering the birds or the humans who live in the same space as those birds.

....