Pave paradise, put up a parking lot.

[Workingman]

Jo, the Chase is just off the edge of the National Forest..... How bulldozing that ancient scrub land meets the aims of the Nat Forest defeats, but doesn't surprise, me.

Same with the Sutton building spree, Ossie. My journey to/from the Brum meet took me past loads of brownfield sites lying empty - same as in Leeds. The problem is that these sites are more valuable as investments for possible future development than green belt is. The speculators who hold them should use them or lose them.

[cromwell]

Just bumping this because today the Telegraph's lead story is that a report given to the government two years ago is recommending that two new cities be built in the south of England!
Trouble is, we have an economic system which believes that the bigger population we have, the better it is for "the economy".
As long as we have that attitude, we are going to have a housing crisis.

[Workingman]

It gets a small mention on the BBC. Nothing is mentioned about their size, but their locations are to be in Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire. Also whispered is the Labout alternative. Their scheme is to ramp up house building so that it reaches 200,000 year on year by 2020!

The only "real" story is about Total investing £millions in fracking. The British Geological Survey has produced its report on the areas most likely to produce the most gas - Westminster is not mentioned! The maps are an almost perfect overlay of the old coalfields: remember them? Within the area are five of the core city regions: Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Nottingham and Sheffield. Once fracking starts, as now looks inevitable, the wells will pockmark an area inhabited by about 10 million us. If the American experience is the reality then the wells will peak in the first few years of operating before they are re-fracked, or they will move to a new site adjacent to the old one and start again. Either way, huge pockets of deep rocks, at about 1,500 to 2,000 metres, will have been weakened by the operations and nobody is sure of the long-term outcomes.

It's all good for 'the economy' though.

[cromwell]

It's all good for 'the economy' though.

Sooner or later people might start asking questions about "the economy". Because it seems to me that what is "good for the economy" is very often bad for ordinary people.

[Kaz]

Good for the economy = Good for the banks