Two Sides of the Same Coin ?

I’m not a regular reader of The Daily Mail. However, I had access to a copy every day this week, and wanted to reflect upon my new reading experience.

In the first instance, there was some speculation about the sexuality – or lack of it – of the late Sir Edward Heath. For New Labour, the personal is political (although I’ve always doubted the wisdom of this myself) so I want to briefly compare the premierships of Edward Heath and Tony Blair.

The former is not regarded as a particularly successful prime minister : something which Blair clearly feels himself to be. However, I regard Blair’s period of office to be nothing short of a disaster for this country, even if, perhaps unlike Heath, his family life is a successful one.

Heath’s premiership may have been unspectacular, but his major foreign policy achievement was membership of the European Union : compare this with “Blair’s Wars” ! 

Moving on to domestic policy, which we are led to believe has been largely directed by Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown (who also regards himself to be a big success), there was some interesting comment from Richard Littlejohn today, part of which I’ll quote :

“One in five of all houses bought in Britain today are buy-to-let investments. People have piled into property because their pensions have gone belly-up.

…This has inevitably contributed to a shortage of homes on the market, and the insane increase in house prices..

…The man who stole your old age has now ensured that your children and grand children struggle to get on the housing ladder.

The only way some people can buy a home is taking a mortgage of more than 5 times their income…

Still, the good news for Gordon Brown is that when he retires, he can look forward to an index-linked of £100 000 a year…

That means he won’t have to rent out his second home – bought in a fire sale from the estate of Robert Maxwell, another notorious pension thief – to make ends meet.”

Now, I would suggest, Britain needs a Prime Minister whose politics, mode of governance, economic and foreign policy are straight, even if his (or her) personal life is a bit queer.

Tough on Quangos, Tough on the Causes of Quangos !

In response to the comment on “How Not to Plan (1)” (see below), I agree that the proliferation of quangos represents a real problem for local democracy in the West Midlands, but I’m not against the principle of regional government in some form. Moreover, although “The Quango Problem” has escalated under New Labour, the frontiers of the State were already being rolled forward under the previous Conservative Government. Indeed, returning to “The Planning Problem” facing the West Midlands, I would say that Conservative administrations, with some exceptions, have been just as slow, if not slower, than those of other parties to genuinely embrace the principle of sustainable development, and environmental sustainability, in particular. Birmingham’s City Council, for instance, was recently criticised by its own “Scrutiny Committee” on these grounds.

Quangos created under Labour and Conservative administrations have often been justified by their creators as the consequence of failings – perceived or real – in local and (in the case of the former Greater London Council) regional government. The irony is that the GLC’s successor, the Greater London Authority, has itself relied significantly on quangos, both those created before it came into being, like London First, and new ones like the the London Development Agency (the latter with close links to what could be described as “the mother of all area development quangos”, English Partnerships, and the “creature” of both the previous Conservative and now New Labour governments. So what’s at the root of “The Quango Problem” ? As a former client once said to me : “Ambitious people need jobs”. So let them find real ones, I say !

Incidentally, I find www.westmidlandsno.org.uk an interesting website. Thank you for informing me about the situation in Telford.

The West Midlands : How Not to Plan (1)

On rare occasions, I find myself drawn to watch a television programme called “What Not to Wear”, in which women of various ages and proportions are subjected to the “fashionista” treatment. Partly as a consequence of this, I’ve been tempted to put together a “treatment” for a TV series myself called “How Not to Plan” which would look at trends in urban and regional planning, and what, in particular, to avoid. I have to say that this potential project has been re-galvanised by my recent involvement in the West Midlands Regional Spatial Strategy (WMRSS) “Options Consultation”.

The “options” in question are supposedly spatial scenarios for the future development of the region.  However, the consultation exercise, by the Regional Assembly, has been rather disingenuous in primarily offering house-building quotas (at the behest of Central Government) rather than a genuine spatial strategy. Moreover, the underlying spatial strategy for the West Midlands, if one can be said to exist at all, is, in my view, regressive, harking back to the post-war policy of dispersing population and economic activity from the major conurbations to new towns and sub-regional centres. Indeed the West Midlands was the last region to relinquish such a policy, if it ever really did : this is an important question. The subsequent dispersal of people and employment, much helped by the construction of the motorway/strategic road network, and the “degeneration” of the regional railway system and public transport services, has created a region of exceptionally high car dependence. It should, therefore, come as no surprise that a recent (and highly effective) “campaign” against road pricing, which collected a record number of e-signatories, should have its origin in the West Midlands.

This situation poses a particular challenge for proponents – which supposedly include various levels of government and other statutory agencies – of sustainable development, and of environmental sustainability in particular. Indeed, if the West Midlands is to make a transition to more sustainable patterns of development, a veritable “tectonic shift” (to use a favoured expression of the current Deputy Prime Minister) in planning policy and public consciousness will be required. Yet the West Midlands Regional Assembly did in fact, not so long ago, set out to deliver such a “paradigm shift” (to use my preferred expression) through the mechanism of WMRSS. The focus of this spatial strategy was “Urban Renaissance”, or a strong preference for development to be directed toward the Major Urban Areas (MUAs). I prefer to call this “sustainable regeneration”. Incidentally, real sustainable regeneration in England would also require fundamental redress of the so-called “North-South Divide”. There being little prospect of this under “New Labour”, in recent years Central Government has produced housing forecasts, initially for the South East and East of England regions, and in 2006 for the West Midlands, which have effectively sidelined the sustainable regeneration “option” in favour of dispersal. One reason for this, which is particularly relevant to the West Midlands, is Central Government’s unwillingness to invest in the regeneration of the regional rail system, and public transport generally, to the level required for “Urban Renaissance” in areas like the Birmingham and the Black Country. However, returning to the current WMRSS (which is heavily influenced by the Government Office for the West Midlands or GOWM), there are also other factors (or forces) in operation which might usefully be classified as “managerial”, and which I shall endeavour to explore in future blogs.