August 30, 2011 at 10:33 am (Environment/Planning, Religion/Spirituality)
The Sermon on the Pylon, delivered on BBC Radio 4′s “Thought for Today” slot this morning by a female Anglican vicar who rejoices in the National Grid’s plans to build a new power transmission network, made me suspect that the Church of England is seeking commercial sponsorship.
I’d much rather have heard the Archbishop of Canterbury on the subject of Sobornost, or spiritual connectivity.
August 18, 2011 at 1:55 pm (Environment/Planning, Government/Politics, Regeneration/Economy, Transport/Road Safety)
The opening of Paul Devereux’s “The New Ley Hunter”, now out of print but the first chapter from which the following quote is taken is available on Gothic Image’s website, has a special resonance for me:
“Most inhabitants of modern society cannot help but view the world in terms of urban perspectives, for that is the nature of the present culture. Great cities sprawl into the countryside, forming conurbations that breed their own consciousness: automobiles hurtle along motorways that are merely urban arms stretching across the landscape between towns; passengers sleep, read or eat as the countryside flashes past their train windows at 100 mph – a countryside which is viewed culturally as an inner-city zone where farming for urban needs is carried out under the dictate of an international, urban economy.
Even those who live and work in the countryside have their rural sensibility subtly eroded by radio, television and other media which usually engender urban goals and concerns. There are no mental city limits.
Beneath this complex of urban consciousness the landscape still broods, the elemental cycles of the planet still function. The difficulty encountered by people in becoming aware of this primordial backdrop, against which the actions of the modern world take place, characterizes the cultural isolationism of our times. It is an isolationism which leads inevitably to ecological insensitivity, and a complementary decay in understanding the subtle needs and realities relating to the mind and spirit…..”
There are few places which better summon up Paul Devereux’s “brooding landscape” and “primordial backdrop” than Bredon Hill, an outlier of the Cotswolds on the border between Worcestershire and Gloucestershire, shown above from the Vale of Evesham. Desirous of a re-connection with something of those “elemental cycles of the planet”, on the 6th August I took a solitary walk up the hill, encountering no other persons until my arrival at the summit where a group of ramblers had gathered.
Later that day, as it happened, rioting broke out in an “inner-city zone” of North London, near my Gloucester Road home of twenty-six years earlier, itself a stone’s throw from the modernist Broadwater Farm housing estate where a riot had also occurred in the late Summer of 1985. This came after a spate of rioting across England’s inner cities in the early 1980s, and extreme unrest of a similar, but also different, kind followed the outbreak of street violence, arson, and looting in Tottenham earlier this month.
”There are no mental city limits” – much less so now than when “The New Ley Hunter” was published in 1979 – and few in rural as well as urban England will not have registered the violent social unrest which spread like heath fires through London and other cities, including Gloucester, last week. The government and politicians of all parties should reflect deeply on the causes, and also bear in mind that whilst modernity may have eroded our consciousness of the countryside this may still exert a force upon those wishing to conserve it from the ever-growing threat of sprawling development.
June 15, 2011 at 1:19 pm (Animal Kingdom, Culture/Literature, Environment/Planning, Government/Politics, New Paradigm/Health, Pantomime/Satire, Regeneration/Economy)
Having very much enjoyed “The Lair of the White Worm” by Dracula author Bram Stoker, I’m contemplating a Summer project by way of tribute. My story would transplant “the worm” – an ancient serpent inhabiting the clay beds of Staffordshire – to the salt spa of Droitwich. This creature of the brine lagoon, “the green worm”, might then assist those campaigning against inappropriate development in South Worcestershire.
In the meantime, I strongly recommend a visit to the Droitwich Lido (shown below), saved from re-development for housing several years ago. This is an absolutely fantastic facility, whose restoration was brought about through the excellent work of the SALT (Save A Lido Today) Action Group.
June 6, 2011 at 2:32 pm (Environment/Planning, Government/Politics, Transport/Road Safety)
The following information is taken from the “Planning News” section of Wychavon District Council’s website and the item entitled “Worcester Bosch Move”:
“The proposals were considered by the Councils Development Committee on Thursday 9th December 2010 where, whilst during the debate the applicants withdrew the Landscaping Reserved Matter from consideration. After careful consideration Members resolved to approve the application subject to the signing of a legal agreement which commits the applicants to achieving a modal shift in private car usage as well as providing 1.5h of off site woodland and financial contributions to public transport. The legal agreement is still subject to negotiation. The Secretary of State decided not to call the application in and has left it to Wychavon District Council to determine the application.”
Whilst I have complained elsewhere about the tendency for planning inquiries be held in football stadia, my concern here is that Secretary of State Pickles did not call this one in, although had he done so the ensuring inquiry might well have taken place at Worcester Rugby Club.
However, at least many of the new football stadia have been built near railway stations, thereby enabling supporters and those attending planning inquiries to travel by public transport, although development promoters almost always use private cars.
With regard to the proposed “Worcester Technology Park”, which includes not only the development identified in the current application, but also a subsequent phase, the likelihood of this “achieving a modal shift in car usage” is remote, given the inaccessibility of the site.
This is almost certainly one of the reasons why the Secretary of State did not want to have the proposals scrutinised at a public inquiry, which would also have thrown up a number of other difficult issues, including the level of public funding required to make the development viable. Let’s hope the due diligence process to be used for projects, like the proposed Worcester Technology Park, which have provisionally secured round 1 money (to the tune of £17 million in this case) from the Government’s new Regional Growth Fund has more substance to it than Wychavon Council’s decision-making, not least because the proposals do not yet have full planning permission.
June 4, 2011 at 2:44 pm (Environment/Planning, Government/Politics, Transport/Road Safety)
As I was endeavoring to cross Worcester’s Southern By-pass this morning in the company of a woman with two young children we were all nearly mown down by a motorist – there being no crossing facility – who seemed to feel the need to accelerate on seeing a group of pedestrians.
For an instant, I was overtaken by a vision of what can only be described as “The Sustainable Transport Summer”, a sort of earthly paradise in which those driving dangerously or too fast, most transport planners, their political masters and other instruments of motorised state oppression are banned forever from taking up the wheel.
The vision passed just as the aforementioned motorist managed to slow down so my fellow pedestrians and I could cross the road. A small step for we women, and perhaps the prospect of a rather larger one for humankind.
Grateful for both vision and slowing motorist, I also remembered to give thanks today for the removal of Councillor Derek Prodger as Cabinet member for transport at Worcestershire County Council.
Indeed there seem to be many people who share the feelings of a respondent to the Worcester News story that Councillor Prodger had been “booted out of the Cabinet”…..”There will be more street parties after this news than because of the Royal Wedding” !
May 31, 2011 at 2:40 pm (Government/Politics, Pantomime/Satire)
Listening to BBC Radio 4′s “File on 4″ the other day, I was interested to hear the expression “Deep State” used with reference to Turkey. The notion of a “deep state” – a state within a state, wheels within wheels etc – which is partly or wholly independent of democratic accountability, however, is not limited to a particular regime, and some would argue that “The Deep State” manifests itself in various ways here in this country. Conversely, the idea of a “Deep Democracy”, also arguably a fundamental part of the British political psyche, is similarly not state specific. Indeed some definitions of deep democracy go beyond the human to include the concept of a “council of all beings” extending into the natural world.
I very much like the ideal of “Deep Democracy” and in adopting the office of “The Witch of Worcester” (or OWOW) have naturally consulted beyond the humdrum human world and sought out powers which some might regard as supernatural. I mention this because in my everyday self – please check me out @ http://janetmackinnon.blogspot.com/ or see below – “The Deep State” does seem to be pushing forward, rather than rolling back, its frontiers, notwithstanding the current language of localism in English local government. Indeed, the affinity of this deep state for persons and organisations with supposed deep pockets, when in reality these are not-so-deep, never fails to surprise me.
Those with a taste for satire might also check out http://janetrocco.blogspot.com
May 3, 2011 at 9:01 am (Animal Kingdom, Culture/Literature, Pantomime/Satire, Religion/Spirituality)
May 1st is celebrated as the festival of Beltane and International Workers’ Day. The Witch is joined here by her old friend Boris the Cat.
April 23, 2011 at 2:11 pm (Environment/Planning, Religion/Spirituality, Uncategorized)
Discovered Good Friday at Crookbarrow Farm, near M5 Junction 7. Crookbarrow Hill, which gives the farm its name, used to be the focus of local celebrations at Easter and Whitsuntide. Yesterday was also Earth Day.
April 20, 2011 at 11:04 am (Animal Kingdom, New Paradigm/Health)
I have to confess some skepticism for the scientific and technocratic professions, and a cautionary tale told to me yesterday has re-inforced this.
A kindly lady of my acquaintance took in a stray cat during the winter cold spell, and decided the animal could do with a check-up at her local vets. The vet told her that the cat was a female between ten and twelve months old and advised her to have it spayed. However, when “opened up” the vet discovered that the animal had already “been done”, and then informed the lady that the cat was more likely to be ten to twelve years old.
I do wonder whether some vets – and indeed other medical practitioners – can tell one end of an animal from another, never mind profess healing abilities !
It may, therefore, be wise to take some “CRAFT” – charm, amulet, fetish, talisman or other apotropaic* device - with you when dealing with the scientific and technocratic professions, to help determine whether what they propose to do is likely to be beneficial or necessary at all.
*capable of averting evil: a very interesting presentation on this subject is available on Worcestershire County Council’s website - www.worcestershire.gov.uk/…/Dayschool%202010%20Averting%20Evil.pdf
April 18, 2011 at 11:01 am (Animal Kingdom, Culture/Literature, Environment/Planning, New Paradigm/Health, Regeneration/Economy, Transport/Road Safety)
Having lightened up for the weekend, it’s time to visit the darker side of life again today and return to the theme of transport planning, as well as the subject of “Chiroptera” or bats.
The fantastic images of bats shown above are taken from “Art Forms of Nature” by the German biologist Ernst Haeckel: for more details please go to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunstformen_der_Natur
In a post of March 2009, I drew attention to the following quotation from a 1972 transport plan for the West Midlands conurbation, centred on Birmingham :
“2.3 Highest car usage in Britain
No conurbation in Britain has as high a proportion of commuters who travel to work by car as the West Midlands. The combination of the M5 and M6 motorways provides a local as well as long-distance motorway system. Thus the area provides the nearest British approach to the car dominance reached in, say, Los Angeles….” !
In fairness, planners in Birmingham and the West Midlands conurbation, and indeed those of Los Angeles, have made some effort to reverse the disastrous planning of the second part of the twentieth century with investment in rail-based public transport.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of Worcestershire where the County Council’s approach to transport planning seems to have by-passed the more sustainable practice adopted by progressive authorities, as evidenced in proposals for a new Worcester technology park near M5 Junction 6 (of which more in my next post – yes, I will finally get there !).
I would, therefore, like to draw the attention of the Council’s Motorway Men to an article in the science section of the Weekend Financial Times magazine entitled: “Traffic pollution may cause brain damage”.
According to research conducted in the Los Angeles area prolonged exposure to traffic pollution caused” “significant damage” in “learning and memory” function, whilst “the brain showed signs of inflammation associated with premature aging and Alzheimer’s disease…”.
Thus my recommendation is that the proposed Worcester technology park should look for another site in order that further sub-regional brain retardation, along with regressive transport planning, may be avoided.
Finally, to return to the subject of “Chiroptera”, the proposed Tibberton Lane site is also an important bat habitat. Now bats, according to the same FT magazine science section, “perform services worth $23 billion a year to US agriculture”, so I would suggest that Worcestershire’s M5 corridor – shown below as it happens – is best left to genuinely sustainable development.
