TESCOGRAD RETREAT MAKES CHANCELLOR WEEP

The Witch is Not Dead! She has, however, been journeying in metaphysical realms during recent months, visiting snowy wastelands – think Narnia – far colder than Britain in the grip of the “Big Chill”. Long-term readers of The Witch of Worcester’s blog will know that she is engaged in a struggle encompassing Middle Earth and Middle England to prevent despoliation of  town and country by the advance of Tescograd. Although such urban sprawl partly takes its name from a well-known supermarket chain, the phenomenon should reallly be thought of as a hybrid spatial planning system (or political land economy even) which combines the worst of free market capitalism with a soviet-style administrative apparatus at both central and local government levels. The system is also heavily spun by both Whitehall politicians and bureaucrats, and their local equivalents, using the Kremlin technique of “Dezinformatsiya” (or Disinformation) to camouflage policies and generally dumb down the planning process. That one of the prime movers in its creation should now be in retreat, an announcement co-coinciding with the funeral yesterday of a former British prime minister, is, therefore, a blow to the powers that be and reason, along with mourning the passing of The Iron Lady, why Chancellor Osborne was seen weeping in St Pauls.