IN PRAISE OF NIMBYISM.

Not in my back yard: your backyard and my backyard are actually all our backyards. Nimbyism has an image of middle-class people objecting to a development that will affect their comfort or devalue their properties. In fact, if it is going to affect middle class people that way it is going to affect everyone else just the same. Let us look at all these developments that blight our lives and first of all ask, do we really need them in the first place? The answer is usually no.

 One ofthe biggest blights at the moment is HS2 and all those unfortunate people who are on the route and are already being affected by it. Never mind the mind-boggling cost, which will almost certainly increase even further once work starts, which I hope it never will. We are a small country we can already travel by rail between London and Manchester in just over two hours. Is there really much point in spending billions to shave half an hour off that and then only for the people who can afford to pay even more for their fare than the already extortionate cost. Surely it would make more sense to spend those billions on re-nationalising and improving the existing rail network, reducing fares to encourage more people to use the railways and at the same time reduce the burden on theroad network.

Which brings me to what maybe the next biggest cause of blight, new roads. If we encouraged more people to go by rail and introduced tolls on motorways, we wouldn’t need any new roads. Again, let us improve the existing ones and make them more efficient and safer. Many people, myself included, will travel by car because it is more comfortable and cheaper, even for one, and even given the state of our roads, than using our overcrowded, expensive and often uncomfortable trains. Just about every other country, many not as wealthy as we are supposed to be can do it, why can’t we? They have much better trains than us; of course, they are usually state owned, and all the fare money goes to improving the service, not to be creamed off to make Richard Branson even richer, massive salaries for “top” management and profits for shareholders. One particular journey stands out in my memory; having come from somewhere, can’t remember where, in the Far East, where the trains are superb and the airports even better, fast monorails every few minutes whisk you from terminal to terminal. I arrived at Heathrow and waited, for half an hour, standing, with a lot of angry, tired and sweaty people for a BUS to take us from terminal one to the NEW terminal five for the flight to Manchester. Fortunately, British Airways lost my luggage at Heathrow, because when I finally got on the AIRPORT TRAIN at Manchester, which rattled, smelled unsavoury and was absolutely packed with commuters there was nowhere to put luggage.

Of course, as usual the main problem is overpopulation. If left to their own devices the populations in most European countries would be slowly reducing, that is what we need, and reproduction rates tend to reduce when there is a good standard of living. We could let the rest of the world breed themselves into extinction, if they choose, but the problem is they don’t stay put, they try to come here. Most of the so-called refugees are actually economic migrants, the genuine refugees can’t afford to pay the gangsters. They are usually unskilled and with a bad attitude to women. They come to Europe but are no use to us and we are no use to them. The problem is that our economic system depends on continual growth to work, but it is physically impossible to have continued growth of the economy and the population in a finite world. Am I the only one who can see this? We need a radical new economic model and we need to reduce even skilled immigration and our indigenous population.

 Which brings me to housing. We can’t keep oncovering the country in concrete, especially when we should be looking tobecome self-sufficient in food production and not by factory farming, hugechemical fertilized, weed killed crop prairies and GM crops and animals. Weneed wild undeveloped parts for ourselves and for wildlife habitats and we needmore small organic farms and all people growing their own. Modern farming canbe a blight in itself, I am not talking about cows in fields, but how abouthuge stinking barns full of hens, or pigs, stinking even worse, all crammedinto a small space, you wouldn’t want them at the bottom of your garden, Iwouldn’t want them full stop. We managed to feed ourselves in WW2 so let’s startreducing the population to what it was then. I am not saying don’t import foodbut be able to manage without it if necessary. Along with more houses comes theneed for more schools, hospitals, fire stations etc. If the population isrising these are necessary, even though they are not being built. One thing we certainlydon’t need is the proliferation of phone masts; they try to fool us that theseare necessary for business to have state of the art communications, bollox.They are there so that the usual suspects can make big profits and they are mostlyused by people putting pictures of their dinner on social media while on themove. Wind farms are in the same category, they are all about making profits mostly from government subsidies, paid for by us as usual, not sustainable energy. Why despoil our lovely landscapes for something that can only make aminute contribution to our energy needs and only when the wind is blowing. Again, reduce the demand for energy. While I am on the subject, we are seeingan increase in electric cars, these may reduce pollution at the point of use,but still have to be charged with electricity that causes pollution when it is generated and much of what goes into the National Grid is wasted in the distribution network.

Then we come to fracking, whole areas in the UShave been made uninhabitable because the water table has been poisoned byfracking. Obviously, that would have a much bigger impact here we don’t havethat much land. We need to be concentrating more on effective renewable energysources, other than wind, and reducing demand, by definition non-renewablesources will run out someday. Fracking might buy a bit more time but is a bit like taking out a payday loan, it might postpone the inevitable bankruptcy but will make it much worse when it happens. Why destroy our environment for thesake of non-renewable energy, there is only one reason, the usual suspects aremaking profits from it.

 Now I will get to the point, I always have to go a bit off piste first. There is something traditionally British about nimbyism. People from all walks of life gathering in draughty church halls tofight a common enemy. The farm labourer sits next to the retired surveyor and they are all prepared to freely contribute their various skills to preventwhatever it is they are trying to prevent. Usually some awful, entirely inappropriate and unnecessary project thought up by the man to make a profit for the usual minority at the expense of all those affected by it. So, nimbyism is justified, has good intentions, helps to prevent the destruction of England’s green and pleasant land, and Wales and Scotland of course. It brings people together to voluntarily help each other, nothing but good there.

 Often, those affected find they are in limbo for years by not being able to sell their properties, and then have to fight to get compensation. The law is nearly always on the side of “The Man”, at least initially. Anyone who suffers any kind of loss should be automatically compensated preferably in advance to whatever they have lost plus 50%, paid by whoever has caused the damage. Unfortunately, an Englishman’s home is no longer his castle. If we can’t rely on the law to protect us we need to resort to sabotage, and I will deal with that and vigilantes in my next post.

PAREIDOLIA

This could equally have been called “The Ginger Man”. I bought this guy because I felt sorry for him, he looks a bit downtrodden. Now it seems a pity to cut him up into chunks and freeze him.

ILLEGITIMI NON CARBORUNDUM: (DON’T LET THE BASTARDS GRIND YOU DOWN).

First of all apologies to my friend, who is a Latin scholar, for using bastardised Latin.

The time has come to tell you about my latest battle with “The Man”. But before that a bit of biog. I have had a good life, it is still pretty good actually and I fully expect it to continue for quite a while yet. I have always been healthy, never had to work that hard, unless it was for myself, not to make others rich, and my life has been very interesting. It’s all in the book which is now finished and being edited by my very dear and long-standing friend. Over the years I have had a few run-ins with “The Man”, which I have always won. I even cost the MOD millions when I worked for them and they privatised me in the Thatcher years, there is a post about that on this site, sorry it is a bit rambling I never got round to editing it. Subsequently, I met my soul mate and have had a quieter but good life in the Lakes. During this period, I have been a weekend family man, having been a weekend hippie in the 1970’s. Much as I love children, I couldn’t eat a whole one. It was nice to have a taste though, without the cost and responsibility of doing it full time, and for a man without issue, as they say, I now have a lovely and supportive family.

I was to be brought down to earth with a bang in 2018 by three events, by far the worst of course was the sudden death of my soul mate Carol just short of our 30^th anniversary. Prior to that, in late 2017, a routine screening had shown up a small tumour in my large intestine, I actually saw it in full colour on a huge monitor when I subsequently had my colonoscope. Having never had my money’s worth from the NHS, a situation I was very happy with, I was whipped into hospital and had a length cut out of my large intestine. The NHS were brilliant, and I have made a full recovery. I feel like a bit of fake as a cancer sufferer, they obviously got it very early on and I didn’t have to have chemo and all that stuff. Perhaps I am also a weekend cancer sufferer. It did make me realise though just how lucky we are in this country to have the NHS. But I digress, I will now come to the third event, which actually started first.

Carol and I, without particularly intending to, had accumulated three houses, two of which we let out as holiday cottages. They were adjoining the house where we lived, so we didn’t want to sell them and lose control of them. Then we got the opportunity to create a new build across the road, we were going to move into that, sell the other three, then look for the final resting place and trouser a bit of cash in the process. The new build is about 90% finished. Adjacent to it is an electricity sub-station owned by Electricity North West Limited (ENWL). It is not a pretty collection of buildings, but all the power cables are under-ground and I would prefer to have that there rather than a busy road or an estate. We got on quite well with the manager who was responsible for it, he would always listen and respond to any complaints, he got us compensation once when noisy building work led to complaints from our holiday punters, and he paid half the cost when I built a gate/fence to screen the sub-station, we reciprocated by cooperating with him as far as possible. Unfortunately, he retired and was replaced by (having been threatened with legal action some of this has been removed)

Then we decided to sell the furthest away cottage. The first viewing led to an offer then the buyer came back to us and said, “what’s this about the mast?” it was the first we had heard of it. ENWL had applied for and been granted a lawful development certificate for a 15m high communications mast almost touching the new build. They were assisted in this endeavour by a company that call themselves surveyors but their stock in trade is getting planning permissions for utilities companies, that they probably shouldn’t get, and then fighting the claims for compensation from the poor buggers who are injuriously affected by it. I am now one of those poor buggers, but they will have a hell of fight on their hands with me. They have already threatened to sue me, I am still waiting.

Thus, began my latest battle with “The Man”.  I won’t bore you with too much detail now but there are several ways I think I might be able to stop them, and I am trying to get the certificate revoked. It shouldn’t have been granted in the first place as, in my opinion, the proposed development doesn’t meet the requirements for a lawful development certificate. Had they had to apply for planning permission they wouldn’t have stood a cat in hells chance. (some of this has been removed as I have been threatened with legal action) and the application contained several items of false information. If the mast does go up, I will of course be claiming huge compensation but as my previous experience has shown it would probably take a couple of years. Fortunately, my neighbours and I are in a position to make life very difficult for ENWL as the access is along a narrow private road with houses all along. When they get to the top there is nowhere near enough parking space and if they put a mast there, there would be even less. I own all the land to the South and West to the East is a cliff face and to the North is protected limestone and woodland. I will of course be going out of my way to (some of this has been removed as I have been threatened with legal action)

The problem is that when you are dealing with “The Man”, if you are against one of them you are against all of them even the ones who should be on your side. “All in it together”, unfortunately we aren’t but they are. Cue a picture of me standing alone my fist raised in a defiant power salute facing an enormous grey corporate monolith. That is how it feels when you take them on, fortunately I have found a few chinks in their armour and managers in big corporations are box tickers and not the sharpest tools in the box. They have shot themselves in the foot several times, usually by underestimating me. It is of course a David and Goliath situation and a gift for the media. The image I will be presenting will be of an old man with a stick being bullied and crushed by the might of a corporate juggernaut. Another thing in my favour is that they are in the process of trying to find buyers for the company, so they will not want bad publicity. At the moment they are owned by J P Morgan an American bank. I think they are worried that a future Labour government will re-nationalise the utilities, right on, and they want to (removed)By the time I have made it known to potential buyers (removed), I sincerely hope that it will knock a few million off the value, I only need to plant a seed, and maybe even when the way they have treated me comes out it will threaten some of their OBE’s.

The main problem is that the presence of the certificate on the Planning Register is blighting my sales and this is costing me about £1500 a month. I took out mortgages on the two holiday cottages to get more funds to do the new build, and I could more or less pay them off if I could sell even one of the cottages. I have had about eight formal offers but they have all dropped out when they found out about the mast. The latest one I offered to give them back £30,000 if the mast goes up and stays up, they agreed to that but then they dropped out last week. As I said I am pretty sure I can stop the mast anyway but in my experience these things take about two years to get resolved so I am in limbo at the moment. If the Council would just revoke the certificate it would solve the problem overnight. If you or I submitted an application with false information it would be revoked immediately, and we would probably be prosecuted as it is an offence to knowingly provide false information, but this is what happens when you are up against “The Man” they close ranks. However, the Chief Planning Officer who seemed to be going out of his way to represent the interests of ENWL rather that the ratepayers who pay his salary has gone now, make of that what you will. I have been threatening to claim compensation from the council for wrongly granting the certificate and then refusing to revoke it. If I could sell three of the houses I would be well off, fortunately although I would prefer to sell I can more than cover the cost of the loans by continuing to do the holiday letting.  

Incidentally, I am not bleating about how I am badly done by or looking for pity. I just seek to motivate people by showing that “The Man” can be taken on and in future posts I will go into more detail and show how it can be done. I am lucky to be strong and there are plenty in a worse position than me, most people, actually. Even in the worst-case scenario where the mast goes up and I don’t get any compensation, I will still be well off, just not as well off as I should be. What I am asking you do for me though is to press the button on the bottom of this post to share on Facebook. I want to get as many people following my blog as possible which will then lead on to me forming an organisation to help people to help themselves and try to generate a bit of solidarity. I am absolutely appalled at the way some people, usually the less well off, get treated in this country. The bastards do try to grind you down and they are succeeding. We don’t have to put up with it if we can just show enough solidarity and fight back hard. My generation managed to do it and if enough of us just say,” no we’ve had enough”, we can do it again.

On an almost final note the mast if erected will be spectacularly vulnerable to sabotage, of course I wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing myself, but I know a man who will. He has a shotgun and sociopathic tendencies. I am always very polite to him and never disagree with what he says. Any one walking past the mast with a shotgun could casually loose off both barrels and blow the antenna right off the mast. Result, and as I have said in a previous post probably the most effective way of ridding ourselves of the curse of the masts, let’s hope it catches on. If we destroyed enough masts it might even reduce the curse of the mobile phone. Another less radical strategy I have come up with but not tested yet, is just to block the signal with the silver coated helium filled party balloons, every time they take them away put another one there, what can they do?( As I have been threatened with legal action let me again stress that I wouldn’t dream of doing any of this myself or encouraging others to do so)

They must be concerned, I even had the CEO of ENWL come to see me on site a few weeks ago, don’t know what that was all about,they still came back and said they were going to put the mast there anyway. This week I had the new Chief Planning Officer and two “Executives” from the Council to meet me on site. I had been threatening to claim from them for granting the certificate and then not getting it revoked. However, I promised them that I was not going to claim from them, unless I have to take my complaint on to the Local Government Ombudsman, and now they are on my side. My MP has also asked to be kept in the loop and he has been very successful in coordinating local campaigns in the past. I told the Council people that I was about to go into battle with all guns blazing to destroy their reputation. They asked me to delay while they take a more conciliatory approach, I don’t really do conciliatory at this stage in the proceedings, but I have agreed to give them a chance. I don’t really care how this is sorted out so long as it is sorted out. Watch this space.

A SIMPLE TWIST OF FATE.

They say that what goes around comes around. In the 1800’s Britain fought two wars with China to force them to continue importing opium produced by the East India company in India. The Chinese had tried to ban opium imports as it was turning their population into a nation of zombies. A couple of hundred years later our town and city centers and prisons are seeing a plague of zombies as people are turning to spice (synthetic cannabis) as an escape from their shitty lives. Ironically, the chemicals illegally imported by gangs to manufacture spice are mostly coming from China.

So why do we have spice in the first place? Natural cannabis, a more or less harmless, indeed beneficial substance that brings pleasure to billions worldwide, is illegal in the UK. So underground chemists experimented and produced a synthetic version, these manufactured drugs were slightly different in composition from the genuine product and as such were not illegal. They were known as legal highs, now of course they have been found to be so harmful they have themselves been made illegal.

There are parallels with the pharmaceutical industry, if there is a natural substance that is clinically beneficial, they try to produce a synthetic version that can be patented. If they are successful, the synthetic product is invariably less effective and has worse side effects than the original. If they are not successful, all the research is buried and they go out of their way to sideline anything natural. In the US there is good and bad, cannabis is more or less legal now in most of the US. However, synthetic opioids are killing about 1000 people per week.

When will our government realise that they are never going to stop people taking illegal drugs. If they were to legalise all drugs and make them available at a reasonable price the tax revenue would probably pay for the NHS and the armed forces. Even better it would deprive the criminal community of most of their income and remove most of the associated prostitution and burglary. Our drug laws are based on prejudice and unfounded fears not logic. Make a start by legalising cannabis. You know it makes sense.

ANOTHER BLOODY DISGRACE FROM THE TORIES.

I see there is a plan afoot to increase the probate fee from £215 to anything up to £6000. A tax on dying! The bloody Tories have screwed everything they can get from the poor, even they haven’t yet worked out how to get blood out of a stone, so now they are going after those in the middle. You may not be aware, but probate is something that the executors of a deceased persons will have obtain before they can dispose of the estate. I have done it twice, it is bad enough having to pay inheritance tax, but this is a back-door tax and legally should have been discussed and voted on in Parliament.

One already has enough to do when someone dies and at a time you don’t feel like doing it. Many people are asset rich and cash poor, having bought a property when they were comparatively cheap, like almost anyone who owns a property, especially in London, bought a few decades ago. So many people of relatively modest means may own a £1million plus property. I can see a “catch 22” situation arising here; you cannot sell the property until you have been granted probate and you may need to sell the property in order to pay the probate fee which has to be paid upfront. Many would have to get a loan, if they were able! And properties can take years to sell.

Not only is this backdoor tax wrong but it is likely to disproportionately affect Tory voters. So not only are the Tories incompetent they are stupid as well. JC, not Jesus the other one, inches another notch closer to no 10, I am beginning to wonder if it would such a bad thing. What a pity there is no viable alternative.  

NO DEAL BREXIT: NO BIG DEAL.

It is looking increasingly likely that we will be leaving the EU without a deal. Good, this is much better than being half in and half out, if we have to compromise we might as well stay in. Let us look upon it as an opportunity to put the Great back in Great Britain. I don’t say this as a little Englander, but we have been shafted over the years by our own governments aided and abetted by our complacency, and we have lost most of that which was so worthwhile in our past. There are many more important and pressing issues than leaving the EU, such as overpopulation, increasing at 200,000 every day and the destruction of the environment, closely associated with the former. But, first of all, we need to get our own house in order.

All our assets and infrastructure have been sold off at bargain basement prices to multi-national companies and the first thing we should do is re-nationalize them all without compensation. Those companies have made enough in profits already and haven’t fulfilled the promises they made in the first place. We used to have industrial supremacy and national self-confidence, just about everything we used or saw in the street, the sky or the sea was British and made by a British owned company. What do we have now? Financial fucking services. Whatever you think about nuclear power, we had an enormous scientific advantage in the early days of the nuclear industry and yet now all seven of our nuclear power stations are owned by EDF, a French company. In 1948 we made half of the world’s tonnage of ships, nearly all the former shipbuilding towns and cities are now deprived areas. I am in a battle myself with Electricity North West who own the electricity distribution network throughout the North West, the company is owned by J P Morgan, an American bank. Just about everything that is worth having in our country’s infrastructure, energy supply, transport, etc. is owned by private often foreign companies. An early pre-EU scam that was to destroy our fishing industry, was when Edward Heath accepted the common fisheries policy as condition of being allowed to join the Common Market. We can have our fisheries back for a start in the event of a no deal Brexit. A few decades ago we had lots of small engineering firms making parts for the bigger industries, and small farmers producing real food. The engineering workshops have all but gone now and the farmers replaced by more “efficient” crop growing prairies and factory farms.

In the days when all our infrastructure was still owned by us, it might not have been very efficient, but surely it would have made more sense to try and make it more efficient rather than sell it off to companies whose only concern is taking out maximum profit and the balance sheet. Quite frankly it might all have been legal, but it was corruption. Is it any more efficient now? Of course not, and I would like to have seen somebody say that it was to all the people with me on Lancaster station last night after midnight, freezing our butts off because the trains no longer run on time. Needless to say, we had been turfed out of the waiting room onto the platform at midnight because they had to close it. I don’t know what time they closed the loos but that was even earlier, not a good idea for the last train when people have had had a few.

Then we have housing, arguably the most important part of our infrastructure. There used to be plenty of houses that were affordable to most people, for those who didn’t want to buy there were council houses. Then along came Margaret Thatcher who encouraged people to buy their council houses for a third of the value. By the way come the next election don’t forget which party made you a property owner. Houses became investments and a few decades later a whole generation can’t afford to buy property anywhere, so they are forced to rent, but now there are no council houses so they get ripped off by private landlords.

However, it is not looking good now for the rest of Europe: they will be losing our £350 million a week contribution and hopefully, the £39 billion divorce bill money, if we come out without a deal. There is a rise in far-right parties throughout Europe, who threaten the status quo, and the comfortable life of the eurocrats, not all bad then. The financial crisis in Italy threatens to engulf the whole of the Eurozone. We may yet find we have escaped a sinking ship; but still our own government is humiliating us by going cap in hand to the EU and allowing them to dictate to us. Come on guys have some pride and you never know we might rise back above them yet. They have shafted Greece and forced them to sell all their infrastructure to their pals in multi-national companies. In our case having been shafted by our own elected governments and we have already sold ours without even being forced. Time to take them all back. Germany since the war has gained nearly as much as we have lost but have signed their own death warrant with their immigration policies.

People here are panicking, we won’t have enough food we won’t have enough medicine, both of those situations are probably beneficial; we are grossly over-medicated and we all eat far too much. We managed perfectly well during WW2, in fact most people were healthier, and in many cases even happier. A bit of hardship will do us good and for the less well off it will be business as usual. We should at least have plenty of fish!

If I was in charge I would say to the EU, “you’re taking the piss, when you’re ready to talk sensibly come back to the table. As far as we are concerned we can just carry on as usual, if you want to make life difficult that is up to you. Irish border: we don’t want a hard border, Ireland don’t want a hard border, your problem”. Yes, there is going to be chaos for a while, but we are still in a much better position than most of the world and most of Europe. We can spin it to our advantage and I am sure there will be those who will rise to the occasion. Our so-called leaders may be wet lettuces but let the people show a bit of spunk, I won’t be holding my breath, the only spunk that most of them show is in their hand because they are wankers.