N.I.M.B.Y. watch
Unsurprisingly enough, the power plant was rejected at the planning stage.
Spotlight interviewed many of those at the meeting, they were nearly all elderly.
Personally I think they should all have their power cut off.
The main objection they had was that the plant was too big.
23mw is not big enough as far as I'm concerned. A local who spoke in favour of the plant pointed out that it was almost enough to supply the whole of the Torridge region of Devon with electricity. The local in question was a from a minority background (i.e. he was a young person).
I bet these locals do all their shopping at a supermarket. My brother lives next to an enormous supermarket distribution centre that has hundreds of artic lorries coming and going each day (one on average every 5 minutes). He lives on a brand new housing estate that was completed before construction began on the RDC. No roads have been built or expanded to improve the local infrastructure. Why is that allowed but a carbon neutral power station is not?
On a similar note, my mother-in-law informed me that a school has closed in an upmarket area of Plymouth where she lives but that developers had been refused planning permission to build housing. The area in question is a purely residential area.
In the USA you have planning zones. If you have a plot within a residential zone and you wish to build a house then you will definately get permission. If you wanted to build a factory however, you would not as you would be required to have land in the industrial zone.
I'm all in favour of preserving the countryside but in doing so you have to be able to build everywhere else instead.
Whatsmore if green energy projects keep getting rejected for purely cosmetic reasons, there will soon be an energy shortfall and the only solution will be to build nuclear power stations.
These HAVE to be built in a location near water (e.g. on the coast or by an estuary) so they will almost certainly ruin areas of outstanding natural beauty - the only ugly estuaries I know of are the ones that are populated (Mersey, Thames, Severn etc.). There is no way a nuclear power station will be built near any substantial settlement so it'll end up somewhere pretty by default.
I (like many in my age group) am aware that there is no 'perfect' energy solution but if I want to continue using electrical equipment then I must accept that sacrifices have to be made. Why are others, especially the elderly so short-sighted? (I'm not talking about eye-sight).
How many people objected to Gaswork towers? Coal fired power stations? Coal mines? Motor cars? The first motorways? Supermarkets?
It seems somewhat ironic that the generation that created most of the mess is the same one that won't let us clean it all up.
posted by Phill @ 6:56 pm
3 comments
3 Comments:
Errr, not strictly accurate Phill, the planning permission for the housing estate and the distribution hub were granted at the same time, and the developers of the hub paid for the new roads. There were certain misrepresentations made about the size and capacity of the hub, but everyone knew it was coming in some shape or form.
And it's actually one every two minutes on average. That sounds like a lot, but it's fairly insignificant compared with the 'ambient traffic'. To be perfectly honest, the reality is far more palatable than the expectation, and the noise is actually LOWER than when there was nothing between us and the M25.
I stand corrected, but the main point I was trying to make is that our planning system is a farce.
In a well thought out system (which Britain lacks), there is no way that you would have an enormous RDC built next to a housing estate as you would not be allowed to put housing in an industrial zone or a warehouse in a residential zone.
What's next, putting primary schools next to nuclear power stations? (Sarah says I'm being a bit extreme)
The whole planning system needs a rewrite. Local officials should have less say in planning decisions as they are often biased or worse still corrupt - bribary is rife but unmonitored in small provinces.
The green belt system needs to be scrapped as well, it is out-dated and is often bypassed (sometimes literally) when it gets in the way of a big government project.
I work next to green belt land, it is surrounded by housing - that isn't a belt, it's a blob.
Surely it is better to develop an area close to or in the middle of a built up area than to start afresh in the middle of the countryside and create further road congestion as everyone travels from the new housing area to where they work in the city?
It's a shame to hear that the planning laws suck as much in the U.S. as they do here in blighty.
I had hoped they were as I'd said since we tend to follow whatever you guys tend to do, regardless of whether it's worth doing or not.
The neighbourhood commitees you speak of sound very similar to the parish councils that many of our rural regions have. My aunt actually got elected on to one of them and managed to stick it out for about a year before the same kind of self-rightous conservative busy bodies you speak of managed to completely grind her down.
Personally I would like to see the government agency I work for (The Land Registry) take over all planning decisions.
By having a national standard, all decisions would be made on their merits. Plus developers wouldn't know who to bribe until after the decision was made. Public consultation would still happen, but it would be about the validity of the opposition rather than its size or voting preference.
Opponents to my suggestion would argue that there would be less accountability for decisions but there's sod all accountability as it is.
On a different note, I'm glad to see that my readership has doubled.
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