We need to get less precious about the ‘rights’ of rural communities.

It has been announced today that just 4 of 15 proposed eco-towns are to go ahead. In the face of very substantial local opposition a host of proposed developments have been scrapped. As anybody who lives in London will tell you, new developments are desperately needed. Our cities are crowded and our house prices – [...]

Judges lacking judgment

There was an interesting judgment relating to faith schools today. The Jewish Free School was told by three senior judges that its admissions procedures were illegal, as the test of ethnicity amounted to racial discrimination. Now, I’ll start by saying that I think all state-funded faith schools are a fucking terrible idea. There’s absolutely no [...]

The Brutalist Truth

It was quietly announced last week that the Minister for Culture, Andy Burnham MP, is to uphold English Heritage’s initial recommendation that the Robin Hood Gardens estate in Poplar, East London, should not be listed. Robin Hood Gardens means little to those who don’t live there and is, alas, held in even less regard by [...]

Citizens into Strangers? A Critique of Strangers into Citizens

“He thinks we’re all bloody bourgeois” scoffed Austen Ivereigh, as he puffed on his Montecristo in a trendy bar in King’s Cross, whilst reading aloud David Broder’s response to yesterday’s Strangers Into Citizens demonstration. “This looks like it was written thirty years ago,” he chortled to himself. Ivereigh is a founder of the Strangers into [...]