Here I heard MK Friends of the Earth spokesman, Andrew Lockley, ask what would happen if the panel found that the plans for Milton Keynes were unworkable, ' would they go back to the drawing board'' Certainly not, interposed the government offices man: ' The plans are government policy, you are here to help us make them work' he told the gathering of interested parties.
The meeting was bizarre, with Anglia Water asking why they had been invited to the Luton part of the inquiry while Thames had been invited to the Milton Keynes part, when in fact it should have been the other way around. Undue haste to roll the program through before tougher European rules on sustainabilty came into force was my conclusion. In a part of the world that gets less rainfall than Syria, and with South East County Council group leader Keith Mitchell going on record as saying that the region faces drying up if 500,000 new homes are built, getting water representation right should have been a priority. That is of course if the government's high handed decision had not been a forgone conclusion.
When Andrew Lockley asked the supplementary question at the second preliminary hearing: 'Does that mean the panel's mind is made up'' Chairman Alan Richardson said ' No one has told us what to think. We will make our report on the basis of what we find.' To this the government office man said, somewhat grandly, ' And we'll decide what to do with it.' Of course none of this discussion cropped up in the minutes, so it pays to take your own recorder when officialdom tries to deny such happenings.
And so to the report. On page 85, para 7.2 says: ' One view was that the original new town was substantially complete and should not be allowed to grow further. It was argued that the concept of the city, particularly its dependence on the motor vehicle, was outdated and further expansion was unsustainable.
Para 7.3 noted 'Questions were raised about the level of future housing provision that Milton Keynes could support and how this should be phased given the low rate of completions in recent years. As at the other growth locations, concerns were expressed about the provision of social infrastructure and key transport facilities and the relationship between jobs and housing growth. Issues particular to Milton Keynes included the unique nature of layout and green infrastructure of the town, the directions for growth indicated in the SRS and the proposed southern by pass.
Para 7.5 reminded all that : 'The SRS proposes that Milton Keynes should embrace its growth potential and continue to mature as a major and influential city, particularly through the substantial development of its central area, supported by a significantly enhanced public transport system to facilitate and support growth in major development areas.
A council source told me that MK already has the jobs, but needs the housing. The SRS envisages a shift to more knowledge based industry in a settlement seriously short on skills, high in illiteracy and dependent on warehousing, transport, retailing and a plethora of back street businesses. Crime is also not an inconsiderable problem. So where does this image of a major and influential city come from' Obviously from the plush MK Central area office developments. MK also still awaits true city status. Then there's the enhanced public transport, how's that going to come about. Well there's no doubt that the cabinet member responsible, Graham Mabbutt, is doing the best he can in difficult circumstances and is not short of ideas, but MK was never built with public transport in mind and I was told by MK Metro's manager, back in April 2000, that he lived in Wellingborough because MK was too expensive and bus drivers could not earn enough to pay MK's average mortgages.
The report puts all the blame for MK people not using public transport on the public. There's no interest in the way that the money grabbing rapaciousness of Maggie Thatcher's government ideologically destroyed the basis for developing public transport by flogging off and deregulating the national bus company which initially served MK through United Counties. This billionaire loving government has no ideas or strategy to put that back. In fact it has no transport policy beyond the reactionary, everything is too little too late and they don't give a damn about Milton Keynes or the south east. They just want quick fixes and votes. Prescott is the big man among them, so bloody big he thinks he can hide anything he wants. Unlike a good many long suffering Milton Keynesians, Prezza has lived on the fat of the land too long. The original city plan was ruined by old Labour expdeiency and vile Thatcherite penny pinching. Now it's New Labour's turn to mess it up- not that Bucks rural Tories put up much of a fight against expansion , the County Council sat firmly on the fence saying nothing and saying it very well. Many Newton Longville folk will no doubt see little harm in getting 2000 new homes and long term prospects of life under higher rates with MK council. They get little enough for what they pay out now to Vale and Bucks now. The village water supply is already third world. MKSM envisages demand management( turning it off more often and bumping up meter prices obviously ) to compensate for the fact that increased city water demands were not in Anglia's business plan, according to what they told the inquiry when confronted with the evidence that this part of England gets less rainfall per head than Syria. But this is all water of big Johnny Prescott's ample back.
Under Fatso's guidance this is the kind of non committal waffle we get from the Richardson report on the subject of buses: Para 7.47 ' For Milton Keynes, the transport strategy has begun to emerge more clearly than at most other growth towns in the SRS.' This is so obvious since the others have something resembling public transport and MK does not, but the report has to state the obvious in the absence of any ideas as to how to enable the expanded population to get about without gridlock. The original plan was for the size MK is now and better public transport was supposed to be a pr requisite to growth. With only 4% of local journeys being by bus this isn't surprising and the long term plan to quadruple it is rather modest, but even that goal is receding into the background, as the report cannot hide.
Para 7.47 continues: ' clearly the strategy ( transport ) is the result of much work at local level......The SRS appears to be not so much proposing the transport strategy as illustrating it with reference to growth proposals showing how the two relate in spatial terms. The basic objective of strengthening public transport and reducing car dependency by developing a high quality local network accompanied by intensification and development in locations served by it, is widely supported. There were, however, also arguments that significant changes in travel habits and modal shift would be hard to achieve. One of Milton Keynes advantages certainly from a business perspective is the ease of accessibility and movement by car, compared to other towns and cities. It is hard for a city designed for car use suddenly to convert to other modes which, while more sustainable, are still not fashionable.'
fourth
Clearly fashion is everything in the world's largest economy. New Labour love reminding us of that, because they never want the Tories to get them ever again on economic mismanagement. They want to out Thatcher the Thatcherites, that merry band descended from Svengali Sir Keith Joseph who thought popular socialism,( i.e bombarding folk with cheap useless goodies and gadgets of the 'must have' variety, made mainly by Chinese slaves, available on the kind of easy credit that makes the consumer a slave also ) was the best way to numb masses of minds while profiting the rich. Milton Keynes may not have a cathedral but it has become one, as I said in my new book 'More of Milton Keynes, Building on the Vision', Milton Keynes is a cathedral of consumerism. Blair is currently at war which compromises all the lip service he ever paid to the Moslem world to ensure he helps friend Bush get control of the oil so vital to keeping all the crap coming. Him and big boy want MK to be focus of his dung heap. That's why the green spaces are expendable, as we glean from Richardson: para 7.27 ' Many respondents, including residents...... drew attention to the unique environment of Milton Keynes. As we know....... The extensive areas of greenspace and water spaces, and the sheer number of trees along its major thoroughfares, make Milton Keynes totally unlike any other British town of comparable size. We also noted that many of the spaces are used as a cultural and recreational resource, and provide wildlife habitats within the urban area.............. This environment is clearly highly prized by its citizens but it is not without its critics. The extent of green water spaces is born of necessity to deal with issues of flooding and surface drainage. The open layout coupled with relatively low densities even in the centre and a generously planned road system may be seen as profligate use of land, making even local trips longer and more conducive to car use than in a more compact town.' This elegant sophistry is about using poor public transport as an excuse for packing more houses in, but how does it reduce journey times for people still living in the same place, it just means more spread all over an even bigger MK. How does it justify building luxury homes in Campbell Park, and if the original inquiry demonstrated that long term public transport was a necessity to expansion, what is all this talk about generous road system. There is a clear deficit of joined up thinking in a report which, clearly before it was written, was bound to justify the government scheme ( it should not be called a plan, except in terms of politics and social engineering )
Looking more closely at Richardson on transport, how is this for wishful thinking passing itself off as strategic guidance': para 7.48 states :' Clearly a high quality public transport system is essential . There may be limits, however, to how far it will go in reducing car use for many dispersed trips for which the grid system is so well suited. It may be that as the town evolves, further lateral thinking will suggest ways of capitalizing on the ease of movement it offers to make personal transport more sustainable. No doubt there have been many suggestions over the years for taxi systems, shared electric vehicles and the like and there are likely to be more. Such innovations could be more adept than the conventional bus for penetrating ( a euphemism for forthcoming cock ups no doubt ) the residential areas and serving diffuse trip patterns. One possibility is that they could in future, as part of the strategy, complement and reinforce the primary public transport system rather than undermining it, as continued motor car use would tend to do. Para 7.49 adds, whimsically, ' In the meantime we take the view that the basic strategy of immediately developing an upgraded city wide core bus network and then proceeding with an east- west and north- south mass transit corridor is sound.......' Well MK council are already doing their best with the buses and it shouldn't take massive housing increases for affluent newcomers- only 30% are to be so called affordable, a pathetic alternative to council housing- for government to offer some meagre financial support, but that would be old Labour styel and this is just another version of New Tory ( Thatcherism ).
It's all about the world's fourth largest economy, in which rising house prices and selling them plays such a part. Filthy hospitals - and MK's is far from OK in this respect-, dangerous roads, crap factory schools full of politically correct teaching that turns out record illiteracy, record crime, neglect of the old, record debt, record suicides, drunken yobs, slave labour, lies and deception, cultural fragmentation ( which is the reality of trendy multi culturalism ) and rubbish public transport are just a few of the things that we have to endure to live in such an industrious economy. Of course I should add, complete absence of real planning for the future under the rule of Big Boy and his friends. The fatsos of this world have never been so fat and and eager to sit on anything in their way
That is what would happen to anyone who became a serious nuisance to anything this government wants. The only thing that could stop the juggernaut of MK expansion is economic collapse and a shortage of the sort of cheap labour once again crucial to our construction industry. The report makes government views clear, between the lines. Para 7.9 notes ' the key issue for many is the role of ' sustainable urban extensions' in the growth strategy. For CPRE and a number of others they are unwelcome and unnecessary..... CPRE calls for the strategy to emphasise the need to maximize the development potential of the existing urban area .....the development industry tends to view the green field extensions as essential and calls for other locations to be considered and for a range of sites to be made available.' We can see where the inquiry's sympathies reside in Para 7.25 which includes the comment: ' Rejecting the idea of longer term growth, or leaving those decisions to be made at a later time, risks losing out on the strategic decisions to be made, for example about East- west Rail, and the leverage they bring for more sustainable development.' The railway is an odd example for to support the illusion that there is anything sustainable about the MKSM, the panel having heard and the report noting elsewhere that the line is by no means certain and of marginal importance anyway. The report also dismisses the need for five year set stages, presumably because they know it is such a gamble that it can't be defined in that way. So very captiously it passes of a vague notion of 30 years of expansion as something that can be associated with the words planning and strategy. I think it, like the rest of the country is facing disaster but as long as there is something to watch on the telly or a new computer game, who cares' This is the real spin city.
Robert Cook, August 19th 2004.
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