Artist impression of Ford Eco Town leaked

Thanks to John at monochrome museum

Private Eye - right on target!

I loved this - from the current edition of Private Eye!!

"LABOUR UNVEILS PLANS FOR 750 ECO TOWNS

By our Environmental Staff - Patty O'Heater

The whole of Southern England is to be turned into a series of interlocking 'eco-towns', each housing 700,000 people living in a totally carbon free environment.

HOMES

- Each home will be fitted with:
- underfloor solar heating
- lighting powered by recycled compost
- windmill-powered trouser presses in every bedroom

TRANSPORT

Cars will be banned and residents will travel everywhere by one of the following options:
- sail-powered waterbuses using a canal system
- hop-on hop-off hot air balloons
- StarTrek style 'transporter rooms' (not invented yet)

SERVICES

To minimise carbon footprint, energy-intensive schools and hospitals will be decentralised to neighbouring towns.

Huge Brazilian-style rainforests will be planted in every garden to soak up unwanted carbon and provide natural habitat for endangered species such as the chaffinch, the white rhino, the Van Diemen's Land Seahorse and the Giant Burmese Tree Frog.

ENERGY

To be supplied by coal-fired nuclear power plants (when available)"

Queen and Charles join race to build government-sponsored ecotowns

The Queen and the Prince of Wales have joined the race to be part of the government's controversial ecotown scheme, with the crown estate acting as partner in a consortium that hopes to built a town of 5,000 houses near Nottingham. Click for more...

Redrow lay off 40% of its workforce

http://uk.reuters.com/article/rbssFinancialServicesAndRealEstateNews/idUKL0916246820080709

As an HR Manager I know the grief that this kind of announcement can bring - so I am truly sorry for those people affected by the downturn in the business of Redrow.

We can only hope that it makes their management think a little about creating a truly sustainable business, instead of spending millions of pounds on PR nonsense puffing up schemes such as Ford against all sense, against the views of the community and against the best interests of this country.

Ford seems to be in the in the National press every day now

I remember making that placard about midnight the night before our march in June!

Great to see how photogenic they are finding our lovely countryside too. Click here for more...

Yet more ridiculous rubbish from the FAVG

Although I could not make head nor tail of it, the “graphic” of the FAVG’s “eco” town (left - click for bigger), looked such fun that I thought I would like to do a “graphic” of my own. My “graphic” is of the Portsmouth to Arundel canal (or rather what is left of it), the canal that the FAVG suggest they could restore for their “eco” town.

The FAVG state that part of the canal will be restored “with adjoining water linkages to create a centre-piece for ‘greenways’ and a counterpoint to a new wetland area adjacent to the River Arun”. What on earth does this gobbledygook mean? If the canal is going to be workable and navigable (what would be the point of restoring it otherwise?) and the “Eco” people are going to sail into Chichester to do their shopping, then unfortunately, rather a lot of streets, houses and shops are going to have to be knocked down, as at present the old canal route runs underneath them. It doesn’t seem very fair, even by “Eco” standards, that the people of Canal Road, The Pines, Yapton Road, Burndell Road, Downview Road, Goodhew Crescent and Warmere Court should have their houses knocked down just because half the “Eco” people aren’t allowed cars! And that’s just Yapton! Gosh, in the other direction, even the Industrial Estate would have to go!

However, if the restored canal is going to be merely decorative, well, that’s not very eco is it? Neither is the fact that thousands of bricks and tons of concrete will have to be made and many trees will have to be felled to restore it. To prevent the stretch just becoming stagnant water, chemicals would have to be used (oops) but if, God forbid, the FAVG plan to link it up to the River Arun, several locks will have to be built otherwise the “eco” boaters and “eco” bathers might find themselves sucked out to sea on certain tides. In fact it could all turn out quite dangerous, given climate change and an area very prone to flooding.

Perhaps on reflection, it would be more eco-friendly to leave the remains of the canal how they are and build the “eco” town a boating lake instead.

On the FAVG’s “graphic” there is a splodge of green which I think might represent the “woodland”. But, even in “Eco” Never Never land, woodland does not spring up overnight and neither does it come in flat packs from Ikea. It will be 50 or so years before it is “woodland” and until that time, “what will the robin do then, poor thing?”

What the FAVG fail to grasp is that there are actually two kinds of green – their man-made artificial “Hyde Park and football pitch” type of green and the shade where gnarled trees and ancient countryside have grown up naturally over the centuries, put in place in a beautiful “unmanaged” way by Mother Nature herself. I can assure FAVG that people with the countryside in their soul (and that’s the people of this area) want none of the FAVG shade of “green”.

Actually, I think the FAVG are up to their old tricks again – throwing in a “green” idea to pretend that their huge ordinary housing estate is an “eco” town! Certainly John Tarvit saying that the Ford development would be “the greenest community in the UK, if not Europe” must be another of their little jokes. After all, we all know that there will be 5,000-20,000 houses (not carbon zero after all, we are told), 40,000 people, 30,000 cars and hundreds of hgv’s bringing rubbish (including plastic) from all over the south of England to burn in their nasty waste-burning thing. And all this horror taking place on what is now one of the greenest, unpolluted and most beautiful, food-producing areas in England!

However, come October, when the FAVG’s rosy dreams of getting even richer are puffed away in a cloud of green eco smoke, we won’t shed a tear. “Dreamworks” and “Pixar Animation” would fall over themselves to sign up that FAVG to avail themselves of their amazing talent for invention of fantasy and nonsense. And (the FAVG will be delighted to learn) I hear they pay very well.

Tricia

More Gloom...

UK housebuilder Persimmon says it has shed about 1,100 jobs since the start of the year as it tries to deal with the downturn in the housing market.

Completions of house sales in the first six months of the year were down by 31% it said, during the "most challenging period in our recent history" Read more here...