Needle Point

I like much modern architecture; not all, just some. The news that a proposal to build an extremely tall tower in Carliol Square (sic) should not produce automatic cries of wonderment or outrage but dry eyed dispassionate conversation.

 

Carliol Tower (Chronicle Live)

I doubt it will receive any.

My own short reflection is that dramatic new buildings have a way of making one look at the rest. Since about 1900 Newcastle (as opposed to Gateshead) has not been well served architecturally. Added to which the Council down the decades has seen fit to allow the demolition of better and the building of worse. Carliol Tower, if it is ever built, would simply point up this unfortunate truth.

Brave or Short Sighted?

 When planners were king and the people ... well, they were just people.

 It could be anywhere, England Scotland or Wales, north or south. But this is Stevenage.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-37826783

Note to planners. Communities are not drawn up but evolve. What looks logical is so often tyranny. I could go on but the article says much. What it leaves out is the point.

Slow day

The weather this past month has been some of the sunniest of the year as I recall. It has had the effect of delaying autumn body clocks – mine anyway. I look at the calendar and blink. It is really November? Will it soon be Christmas? Yes to both.

Meanwhile a walk to the shops last week produced these efforts.

The Way of the World

Newcastle City Council planning committee have approved the application of Cameron Hall to destroy more of the Green Belt. The Grade II Woolsington Hall was put out of play by the simple action of burning it down. Job done.

Saving Newcastle Wildlife has not quite conceded defeat. It might be better if they did. That way a channel for protest and outcry would be opened.

Saving Newcastle Wildlife writes:

"Sadly, but not unexpectedly, Newcastle City Council voted 8-5 in favour of the applications, which will see the destruction of over 1,500 trees, many of them hundreds of years old, to make way for unnecessary millionaire houses in the green belt.

Although some members of the committee queried whether the financial information relating to the controversial enabling development could be made publicly available, we were asked to leave the room – for less than half an hour – while the committee considered the complex financial information on which the enabling argument hinged.

According to one committee member who had sight of the financial documents the appraisal was ‘all over the place’.

The only hope we have now is that the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Sajid Javid, will call in the applications."

Private Eye has commented in its Nooks and Corners column on this scandal. The North East is as far as scandals go, Teflon® coated. Has been for decades.

Save Newcastle Wildlife are honourable and dedicated people who believe in the framework of law and legislation. I never felt in the few contacts I had with them that they really understood the forces they were up against.