White cliff edges

To celebrate my recent birthday – my +39th, to be exact – Hubby drove me and a couple of friends, one of the canine variety, to Sunday lunch in a village pub. My (human) friend asked Hubby if he’d remembered to tell the pub we had a dog with us. He replied that they were more concerned about his request to accommodate two noisy right-wing ladies. We thought that was funny.

We passed through several villages to get to the pub. One after the other greeted us with roadside posters blaring: ‘Save our Wotsit’, ‘No to This That T’other’ and ‘Anywhere but Here’. You guessed it. It’s silly season in Bucks with the D(r)aft Local Development Plan having been published and comments invited from communities, which will be ignored.

A few years ago I might have joined one or other campaign against excessive development. I mean, who wants to see a pretty little village and environs lost to cramped rows of boring, ugly, uninspiring, polluting, generic Barrett boxes on what has been, for centuries, farmland or woodland or any interpretation of ‘green and pleasant’. I still don’t want to see such carnage but find it increasingly difficult to yell “save this pretty village”, when said settlement is actually butt-ugly and blighted by third-rate housing, busy roads, cramped parking, and flightpaths. And the ‘No No No’ signs throughout the villages don’t improve the aesthetics at all.

Maybe I could overlook such a comparatively minor (and facetious) concern for the sake of supporting my rural friends and neighbours – I’ve done that before – but too much of the current campaign literatures don’t hold water, which is ironic given that one of their platforms is a supposedly inadequate water supply. Neither can I, in all conscience, support communities that argue for brownfield sites to be developed rather than greenfield, when they’ve recently rebuffed development proposals on brownfields. 

Consistency exudes competency; inconsistency invites contempt.

Another example of inconsistency is people who support Labour and, by extension, their build-baby-build mantra, and then complain when a lot of that build heads their way. The Labour MPs around here support draconian revisions to the National Planning Policy Framework, and they’ve failed (never tried) to rein in Rayner-then-Reed-then-Rayner. It’s therefore a cheek to get uppity with (Tory) Bucks Council, who’ve tried to shoehorn their nationally mandated allocation into wherever they feel able. Bucks hasn’t got the distribution right between north and south of the county for – I will cynically venture – political reasons (the Tory power base is in the south of the county), but they certainly don’t have to cede any moral high ground to Labour, who are even more adept at sucking up to their voter base. Ironically, Bucks’ Tories didn’t have a majority on the council (from May 2025) until a new Reform councillor defected to them. Had she stayed where she was, she might have been able to head off some development up north in exchange for her support elsewhere. But her defection was greeted with celebrations by anti-Reformers – many now playing the unfairly called Nimby card – simply because it caused Nige and Co temporary embarrassment. Hope they enjoyed their glee while it lasted.

One Labour proposal I do support, which I have done (more or less) for a while, is building within easy access of railway stations. It would mean that a couple of targeted villages around here would still be fair game, but others would be spared; some development currently earmarked for the north would be reallocated to more appropriate villages down south. Why build or expand a community that doesn’t have a railway station and/or needs new/wider roads to make it sustainable, when there’s already communities with an under-capacity railway station or are served directly by a convenient road network that funnels traffic into one or more large towns, each with a railway station?

Talking of roads, shortly after my birthday I braved the rush-hour M1 up to Barnsley, in God’s own county, and checked in at my favourite Premier Inn. At least it used to be my favourite until I’d dragged my small-but-very-heavy suitcase to the elevator in the underground car park, to be met by a sign that read “Out of Service” (I suppose it makes a change from “Save our Village”). I had to navigate eight flights of stairs over four large floors to reception which, since my last visit, had been replaced by a self-service, digital check-in portal. Remember, I’m a technophobe so the first button I pressed was for assistance.

All done, I headed for the elevators. None came, so I tackled another two flights. Quick wash and brush-up, I headed to Barnsley hospital which is, of course, at the top end of town and the Premier Inn is at the bottom. The hospital elevators were also AWOL, so it was two more floors to climb – with a stop half way to grab some oxygen and seek out a defibrillator.

Later that evening, back at the Premier Inn, I devoured a very tasty plate of Mediterranean chicken and a surprisingly moreish glass of house white for my supper. The next day, anticipating a walk uphill into town to shop, a walk across town to run other errands, then a further uphill trek to the hospital, not to mention stairs, my breakfast was a calorie-load of eggs, black pudding and pain au chocolate. I still needed a coffee break in the hospital caff, where I read about black-clad stop-the-boats gentlemen protesting at Dover, causing delays to travellers. Their antics drew the ire of all and sundry, including me. I've never supported the inconveniencing of blameless members of the public trying to get to work, business trips, hospital appointments, caring duties or holidays in the name of promoting any cause, whatever it might be, from ‘Just Stop Oil’ to ‘Stop the Boats’. Despite my frustration at StB’s tactics – although to be fair they didn’t smash a policewoman’s spine or compromise national security by damaging MoD assets – I had to giggle that these guys were probably disrupting travel to no greater extent than EU immigration and customs rules (thanks to botched Brexit-negotiations), yet were attracting far more criticism for doing so. What was I saying about inconsistency?

While I’ve now fortuitously mentioned Stop the Boats, I might as well point out that if anyone is lambasting these particular protesters, thus liberally bleeding their hearts for the continuation of mass illegal migration, it’s only right that the resultant, unavoidable new housing ends up in the lambasters’ back yards. Don’t want the housing? Don’t advocate for population increase. It’s not rocket science. I expect the ‘immigration is not to blame for the housing shortage’ broken record to be thrown in my face any time now. Listen, you lot, it might have taken Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead 379 pages to prove that 1 + 1 = 2, but I doubt you'll ever disprove it, which is a polite way of saying ‘get real’.

The funny thing is, Bucks has been told to build an average of 4,332 new homes per annum up to 2045. Compare this with building-starts of only 1,250 in 2024, down from 1,540 the year before. It’s not only the above-mentioned bleeding hearts who need to get real. Rayner-Reed-Rayner should strategise for what is pragmatic, not for idealistic political sound-bites. I really can’t get excited about what is likely to turn out to be an empty threat.

I am, instead, curious to ascertain how many people, who are protesting against the Bucks' Local Plan because of the impact on the environment, wouldn’t dream of giving up their cheap holiday flights, even though aviation causes more damage to the climate, air quality and soundscape than a few thousand homes.

As I said, inconsistency invites contempt.