On one hand; on the other ...

 

Trees. It isn't all about trees. Sometimes it's about natural justice and the rule of law.

Newcastle Wildlife are still squirrelling or beavering or badgering away bless them (him). I doubt they will succeed but I will cheer them (him) on.

Read more here:

Meanwhile, speaking of felling old mature woodlands for a golf course – another golf course, another exclusive golf course for the better sort of property speculator possibly, here is the latest on trees nationally:

Read more here:

Over to you, Newcastle City Council Planning Committee. Hark, is that chain saws I hear!

Green Belt R.I.P.

 Save Newcastle Wildlife, the independent pressure group shunned by Northumberland Wildlife Trust and all others, has a new post.

There is no chance whatsoever of halting this land grab supported as it is by Newcastle City Council and the studied dereliction of the authorities charged with looking after the nation's heritage, but it is important that there should be a protest so the actions of the rich and powerful and corrupted elites do not go by without being recorded.

Petition update

Where does transparency stand in local democracy?

Save Newcastle Wildlife

Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom

15 Apr 2016 — A Freedom of Information request was submitted to Newcastle City Council on 18th March regarding future plans for Woolsington Hall and grounds.

There is a 20-day time limit for compliance with FOI requests.

On 11th April – almost a month later - the planning officer in charge of the application advised the request was too vague and that the 20-day time limit will be reset until further clarification on the nature of the request is received.

Why the delay?

Newcastle City Council’s Information Governance team is currently reviewing this request.

In the meantime, the future of Woolsington Woods hangs in the balance.

Link to petition etc., here.

Degrees of Luxury plc

This from today's Guardian.

"Once upon a time, students lived in the cheapest and grottiest shared houses a city had to offer. First-year students had it even worse, traditionally confined to bog-standard, barrack-like halls of residence tucked away on the edge of campus."

Link to the article here.

Meanwhile, not to be left behind ...

Cripes!

Like buses, two come along at once. Hard on the heels of Will Self – hitting out at the spread of 'corporate occupation of public space' – comes this from Simon Jenkins. I rarely, if at all, agree with these two but Jenkins makes for my second revision of an opinion inside a month.

He sounds out against the idea that sprawl is the answer to the 'housing crisis', that ever popular shortage by design that keeps property prices and lending high.

Read more.

Meanwhile, all around Newcastle brownfield sites are shunned for the premium available to builders for bricking over the Green Belt. Unless they are whacking up flats for students. More are on the way and sites that were once thought unsuitable for social housing have had money thrown at them by ... yes, who exactly?

Making everything nice ... Part Two

Imagine what the world would look like if it were planned by a single mind. Milton Keynes would be my response. The greater part of the pleasure of being a stroller through a city is the constant contrast, the layered nature of buildings, sudden contradictions and complexity; what one might call 'experience'. None of this is apparent in Milton Keynes, a made to measure new town styled by people for whom living is a constant act of forgetting, like goldfish. But it would be senseless to maintain this absence of what makes city dwelling have some scope for imagination – or a range of responses at all – is not 'what people want'. Many apparently do like ersatz stonework, fake gardening, stainless steel 'street furniture', plate glass vistas and homely multinational corporation Disney-fied nice. Thankfully, some do not.

Previously I wrote that I had read some promising news about those who are resisting the wiping away of every inconvenience or non-corporate worthy (e.g. aged, cracked. eccentric, uncontrolled happenstance) urban space spectacle. I hope this becomes a proper movement, a sort of architectural and shared space version of 'Occupy'. It may happen. As Corporatism spreads, driven by the sense that money and power equals an unstoppable dictatorship endorsed by a lazy, discredited tax system, more of the informal spaces of our cities will drive out those features of urban culture on the fringes that cities have celebrated down the 19th & 20th centuries as effectively as rent increases.

What will be left? Take a glimpse at the future ... (off site link to slideshow)