Open reply to Green taxes letter, Wakefield Express.

David Speight presents some good argument for scrapping green taxes.
l don’t own a car but see, like everyone else, the shoddy state of public transport - often overcrowded, too hot, bumpy ride and poor shelter when waiting all weathers. At 42 yrs old this presents little problem. Others not so - the elderly or those with kids in tow and shopping plus, love ‘em or hate ‘em, our blessed schoolkids. All cramped up in poorly designed buses and an inefficient network. Somehow we daily manage our way through this mayhem with muted protest. True, some are darn right disrespectful in their protests but can you really blame them? There are better ways to register complaint with our lot.

Doesn’t all the transport system need upgrading for public and private use? Many of us prefer the freedoms associated with our individual means of transport, car or otherwise. For instance in these days of DIY we couldn’t manage repeat trips to suppliers for our materials by bus. Plus of course the freedom to roam - on a whim and for pleasure.

Britain has masses of countryside and a wealth of offerings in other villages, towns and cities. Yet investment in roads is pitiful if not generally anti-motorist.
There’s a duality here in that our Townmasters seek to encourage visitors for revenue yet limit the mobilities of inhabitants (low wages, high house prices, taxes, fines and traffic schemes.) lnstead we are offered a sense of ‘place’. An identity chaperoned by selective nostalgia.

As for London’s transport system being up to the job then Mr Speight is very much mistaken. London has all the benefits and pitfalls as anywhere else but in concentrated form. Too much haphazard design and based on similar faulty logic of minimizing our footprint and sticking with an imaginary past.

It’s not just cars. All consumption is up for consideration - clothes, activities, food, socialising, holidays, energy; our daily lives and wastes.
We put so much effort into saving by products that are worthless that the whole exercise becomes one of going backwards. This stuff comes from the ground and could easily compress and go back there. Or what of machine processed separation or clean burn incineration as a power source? If there’s a case to be made for our rubbish being useful then surely it lies on the larger scale and not at the level of the individual householder.

Which ever way it is looked at retail is to feature heavily as everywhere ‘regenerates’. Yet we are set to be guilt tripped and green taxed by some pretty naive and disingenuous thinking. This from people who have often benefited the most from society’s abundance.

There is a good argument for redesign of homes as they are generally built today guided by a lack of forward thinking - nostalgia and environmentalism. There are some fantastic looking developments on the Leeds waterfront and Wakefield also making an offering. But too much crowded in. This may suit hard working, hard living city types all well and good but not so those with families or wishing peace and quiet or different lifestyle.

This overcrowding is happening everywhere. Wakefield, as well as anywhere else, is experiencing a building boom. More of a whimper given low build rates and the state of housing stock old and new.

Plots of land are being taken up and high rise and compacted dwellings abound. People are offered relatively huge sums of money to sell off their gardens for new housing. Tales abound in these parts of offers in the region of £50 - 70,000. Houses are expensive due to the cost of land, not materials or labour. High profits are generated by the demand for limited stock and our desire for a place of our own.

Good plots of land are hard to come by because of artificial restraints. Supposedly overcrowded Britain is just 10% built, 75% farming that is held back by environmentalist sentiment and 13% ‘other’.

So whilst we are constantly upgrading and patching up the old, living increasingly cheek by jowl in expensive and inefficient housing and getting taxed for the benefit of maintaining this we could actually be looking at pastures new - our out moded, subsidised and romanticised countryside.

Britain is in crying need of regeneration. Regeneration writ large and not this small scale, anal retentive stuff.

Great efficiencies and improvements in housing and living will only happen on the larger scale - at the level of town and country planning and a consideration of our place in that.
There are fantastic, easily built house types looming on the horizon and new materials and techniques that offer more. All held back by petty, contradictory convention and regulation.
These design types will make the best efficiency savings rather than small scale and expensive energy generation. Energy absorbent materials are constantly being developed and certainly have a part to play though still reliant upon the weather and thus requiring back up. Retrofitting is expensive and offers diminishing returns for intermittent power.

Why kid ourselves? A developing economy needs masses of cheap, reliable and clean energy.That can only mass generation and nuclear power. We need to ditch our aversion to the ‘big monster’ and embrace our capacity to improve all situations. l’m pretty sure that if something as inefficient as a windmill can be made elegant then something as useful as a nuclear power station can be made a thing of beauty.

This could well set the alarm bells ringing ringing with some who would believe that the country will become one big housing plot. Not really so. Better living standards seem to lead to a decrease in the size of families. This coupled with the marvelous news that we live longer (despite all our bad habits) is leading to the requirement for immigrant labour - and we all came from somewhere.

Regardless, Britain’s glory days of empire and assumed superiority are long over. We may still be an island but that is purely in geographical terms. Despite the protests of Greens and Little Englanders our destiny will always be reliant on interacting with the outside world. How can it be otherwise?

Despite maintaining something of a bargaining chip by looking both ways, the UK is part of Europe and rightly so. As well as the benefits of increased immigration to this country - new culture, outlook and determination to progress there is also opportunity abroad. Europe is a two way thing and many opportunities await the willing. Many take advantage of cheap travel and low costs abroad to set up there and why not?

Even our good friends at the BNP say (somewhere) that there should be no problem with migrant workers developing skills to take back home with them to rebuild their country. We can discern their reasons for saying so but perhaps something a bit more progressive than our green chums?
Our eastern european chums are taking full advantage of opportunities offered whilst the predominant outlook, particularly in the UK, is an entrenched one. People from developing cultures have little of the self loathing impressed upon us and are keen to develop.

We should be pleased that many choose to come to the UK out of choice. Perhaps they were attracted by our sense of tolerance and fairplay, or that Britain once stood for something to be proud of - the cradle of the industrial revolution, scientific endeavour and ingenuity. All sadly things that are out of fashion at present as the west looks backwards at its peril.