[The Weeping Angel]

I could have posted this in the Greens or Your Party thread.

https://labourlist.org/2025/11/london-h ... een-nimby/

Which is why it matters who steps up and who stands in the way.

Too often, the Green Party and those affiliated with what is currently known as ‘Your Party’ act as a coordinated force of obstruction. They arrive at the end of long consultations, disrupt community engagement, amplify anxiety and then vanish before responsibility lands. They claim to speak for neighbourhoods they barely know. Their tactics, messages and outcomes are identical. Lewisham is simply their latest stop.

Their answer to the housing crisis is always the same – stop building and hope no one notices the consequences.

After years of engagement with residents about replacing a car park with social and affordable homes, Jeremy Corbyn arrived at the eleventh hour to oppose the Lewisham Shopping Centre redevelopment. And this week Zara Sultana fronts Your Party’s Question Time debut, talking about poverty while her party campaigns against the homes that lift families out of it. You cannot defend an empty car park and call it social justice.

[The Weeping Angel]

Luke Tryl of More in Common has thoughts on yimbys vs nimbys.

https://www.ft.com/content/f4563769-d56 ... pe=nongift

Ask Britons to describe their country in a word and the most common response is “broken”. Any optimism that accompanied the election of a new government last year has been replaced with, at best, weary cynicism, and at worst, boiling anger. But Labour’s decision to pick a fight with nature lovers, designed to show it is determined to get Britain building, may not be the best way to prove its mettle on delivering the longed-for, promised change.

In the immediate aftermath of the election, 54 per cent of Britons expected the new government to improve the lives of people like them; today, that figure is just 27 per cent. One of the key drivers of the “Britain is broken” sentiment is housing. An Englishman’s home was once his castle but with rents and house prices so high, the idea of a home as a source of sanctuary and security feels like a pipe dream for many.

To its credit, the government has both recognised the scale of the challenge and set itself the ambitious target of building 1.5mn homes to address it. The problem, however, is the aggressive rhetoric. Its determination to push the mantra “build, baby, build” — which, in crude terms, positions environmental protections as red tape to be cut, and nature as a blocker to building — risks doing more to damage the mission to address the housing crisis than enable it.

[Tubby Isaacs]

The "nature lovers" aren't always very honest. Organisations campaigning for nature were actually pretty positive initially about the nature fund, seeing that they're very aware that farmland can be very barren. They changed their tune after the grassroots got on their case. "Nature" to lots of people means not building houses there. So "money for new forests" became "developers pay to trash the countryside".

There's a reason that Cameron and Bozo both tried to build more and rowed back. Too many vested interests. I worry that if Starmer's replaced, this will get dropped by them too.

[Boiler]

Seeing this article this morning gave me an idea.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czrkr88pp6yo

From her home in Spaldington, East Yorkshire, Alison Taylor from VAST has spent the last two years fighting a proposal by Boom Power for a 3000-acre (1214-hectare) industrial solar farm near to her home.

The project was given planning approval by government in May 2025 and Ms Taylor said she was "dreading" what the future would bring.

"We are going to be surrounded. The panels are the height of double-decker buses and they will dominate this rural village. They reckon construction alone will take three years." she added.

Here's the idea. See what their reaction would be to "well, we've listened to your concerns and you'll be pleased to learn that we won't build this solar farm now. But we do need somewhere to house our growing population, irregular migrants and our prison population. So we'll replace it with 2,000 houses and a prison instead. Happier?"

There's a reason farmers are selling their land; it's because of rapacious supermarkets.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Or cancel it but tell the villagers that they'll have to pull up all the local roads they use because sauce for the goose...

VAST stands for Villagers Against the Solar Threat. That's hilarious. Are these panels going to rise up, like the Tripods?

[Tubby Isaacs]

I could have posted this in the Greens or Your Party thread.

https://labourlist.org/2025/11/london-h ... een-nimby/

Which is why it matters who steps up and who stands in the way.

Too often, the Green Party and those affiliated with what is currently known as ‘Your Party’ act as a coordinated force of obstruction. They arrive at the end of long consultations, disrupt community engagement, amplify anxiety and then vanish before responsibility lands. They claim to speak for neighbourhoods they barely know. Their tactics, messages and outcomes are identical. Lewisham is simply their latest stop.

Their answer to the housing crisis is always the same – stop building and hope no one notices the consequences.

After years of engagement with residents about replacing a car park with social and affordable homes, Jeremy Corbyn arrived at the eleventh hour to oppose the Lewisham Shopping Centre redevelopment. And this week Zara Sultana fronts Your Party’s Question Time debut, talking about poverty while her party campaigns against the homes that lift families out of it. You cannot defend an empty car park and call it social justice.

The Greens probably have a decent chance of winning Lewisham Council this year. Sounds like a good project, and I hope they can't muck it up. Maybe they'll work with the grain and add some social homes to it or something like that, which would be fair enough.

I'm not sure how far local government is part of the Polanski vision. Certainly, Greens have put a lot of effort into it in the past, with mixed results, not always bad. Perhaps though the route to real success is gobshite campaigning.

[The Weeping Angel]

Meanwhile, in Lincolnshire.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... 1774095926

As night descends on the grand offices of Lincolnshire county council, everything appears orderly and calm. Paintings of long-forgotten councillors and dignitaries stare out into an empty drawing room. The council chamber is silent and dark. Bored receptionists glance at their phones while a handful of admin staff hunch over glowing screens. But a rebellion is brewing in the office of the council leader, Sean Matthews, who took charge last May, when Reform replaced the Conservative old guard. The affable former royal protection officer is plotting an apparently radical campaign of civil disobedience against a series of giant solar farms planned for Lincolnshire.

Despite a quarter of a century in the Metropolitan police, Matthews is willing to break the law to stop solar developers. He is planning to lie down in front of the bulldozers. “They can arrest me – I’ve arrested plenty of people,” he says, leaning forward on a sofa. “It’s much bigger than me and my criminal record. For goodness sake, it’s the future of the county, it’s the future of our land. I am passionate about that and I will do what I can.”

He is not the only Lincolnshire cabinet member willing to spend a night or two in the cells. Natalie Oliver, a local business owner who became a Reform councillor last year, is also prepared to defy the police. “I would do anything for my residents … we are 100% committed,” says Oliver, sitting opposite Matthews. “Getting arrested would be a new experience for me, but if that’s what it takes, that’s what it takes.”

[Boiler]

Funnily enough TWA, there was some discussion about the solar farms in Lincolnshire and the resistance to them in the Guardian's BTL section, to wit;

Screenshot 2026-03-21 at 14-30-02.png (65.16 KiB) Viewed 12 times

Screenshot 2026-03-21 at 14-28-58.png (15.09 KiB) Viewed 12 times

(I must have imagined those ridges and hills as you leave Bourne and head out west then.)

Screenshot 2026-03-21 at 14-28-21.png (26.27 KiB) Viewed 12 times