Month: October 2022

High Street Multi-Storey Car Park

High Street Multi-Storey Car Park

This structure is the High Street Multi-Storey Car Park in Worthing. I would imagine, perhaps naively, that a car park would be built to serve something, built so that people could park before visiting that thing. A station car park would allow people to park before getting on the train. A sports centre car park would allow people to park whilst swimming or playing badminton.

The High Street Car Park in Worthing is so big that a large part of the High Street has been demolished to make way for it. So the very thing that the car park has been built to serve … has been demolished to accommodate the car park.

Just think about how absolutely crazy this is. Towns are about people. Towns and cities are where people live and work. Homes, shops, cafes, pubs, workshops, offices, schools, doctor’s surgeries, dentists and churches are the building blocks of a town. They are deliberately close together so that people can get their business done easily. That’s why towns grew up as they did and that’s why people live there. Because it’s easy.

Cars break all that. Large traffic volumes mean either horribly congested streets or the town remodelled to accommodate new roads. Think of quaint holiday villages jammed solid in the summer as people attempt to drive bulky cars down streets laid down for walkers and ponies. Think of towns where the heart has been ripped and replaced with a one-way system and brutalist concrete multi-stories, the occasional historic building cowering amidst the tarmac.

Planners now talk of walkable cities as if this were an astounding new concept, an architectural elixir of life. But all towns and cities started life as “walkable”. The occupants moved easily from their homes to the shops, to school, to church to their friends. Walkable is the default state of towns and cities.

It’s time to end the love affair with the car. They have their uses, but driving around towns isn’t one of them.

Go to an ancient urban area like Soho, Canterbury or Bury St Edmonds. Marvel at the intimacy and practicality of the streets, remember that these streets have worked like this for hundreds of years.

Tear down the concrete and tarmac and replace them with community. Rather than traffic fumes, the air will smell of cooking. Rather than the roar of traffic, you will be able to hear people laughing outside the pub. That’s better.

Not Like That

Not Like That

If you are a climate activist who has engaged in direct action, or you have supported people who have taken direct action, you will have been told that you are doing it wrong. Blocking traffic, glueing on, locking on, marching, staging a die-in, all of these are the wrong approach. Apparently.

It’s also the case that when you challenge a sceptic, you will be told that you should write to your MP. So let’s think about that.

Fracking is a particularly contentious aspect of oil and gas exploitation. It brings the oil business to nice rural parts of the UK that don’t want heavy lorries and drilling happening on their doorstep. Fracking is also associated with causing small earthquakes and threatening water supplies. So there was a huge sigh of relief in 2019 when the Conservative government placed a moratorium on further fracking activity. This policy formed part of their election manifesto and they won with a significant majority.

Since then, the founder of Quadrilla, the main company exploring fracking in the UK has publicly said that the geology of the UK was not suitable for fracking and it wouldn’t happen.

That should have been game over for fracking, but then a new Conservative government under Liz Truss entered office. This government is well and truly in the pocket of fossil fuel companies. Former oil company people in government, including the prime minister herself. Oil company donations were flowing in. Suddenly the government announced that they were looking again at fracking.

Naturally, there was outrage. Much of this came from Conservative backbenchers who had potential or dormant fracking sites in their constituencies. They had been elected on a pledge of no fracking and now the government was reversing that position.

Labour moved quickly and put down a motion demanding a permanent ban on fracking. Conservative MPs were put in an impossible situation. Voting as their constituents would want (for a fracking ban) would mean they would have to side with Labour. Voting against a fracking ban would be seen as reneging on their 2019 election commitments. Matters were made worse by the Conservative whips insisting that this motion was a de-facto confidence vote in the government.

The votes were cast and the Labour motion was defeated. But the vote was accompanied by chaotic and angry scenes. At the last moment, the Conservative climate change minister spoke in the house and said that the vote was not a confidence matter. This undermined the reasoning that many MPs were employing to decide how to vote. It was also deeply confusing and there were angry scenes in the lobbies as Conservative MPs openly argued amongst themselves.

Last night and this morning, many Conservative MPs are having to explain to their constituents why they continue to oppose fracking but refused to vote for a ban on it. Obviously, that is a wholly inconsistent position and can only be explained by these MPs preferring to put party allegiance before the country and constituents.

Last night’s events show why writing to your MP about something as critical to our future as oil and gas exploration is not an adequate response. Conservative MPs have shown quite clearly that they are willing to play political games with something as serious as the climate crisis.

They are not to be trusted, so why trust them?

Mass civil disobedience is the only tactic that has consistently delivered progressive social change. Waiting for politicians to get with the programme simply doesn’t work.

So ignore the naysayers, get out on the streets and show solidarity for those already there. This is what will make the difference.

Lets Change The Way We Shop

Let’s Change The Way We Shop

Yes, let’s change the way we shop.

Let’s stop talking about retail therapy. It’s not therapy because it doesn’t make us healthier.

Let’s stop buying things to make ourselves feel better and buy the things we actually need.

Let’s buy second-hand when we can and stop stuff from going to landfill.

Let’s buy from charity shops and help them to help other people.

Let’s buy locally and put money in the pockets of our neighbours.

Let’s conserve resources by not buying cheap things and throwing them away immediately.

Let’s not buy clothes from sweatshops.

Let’s avoid products that pollute the areas in which they are made.

Let’s not buy any more plastic because there is plenty already.

Let’s be clear that manufacturing is one of the biggest contributors to the climate crisis.

Let’s change the way we shop.

Bomb Ballistic Building

Bomb Ballistic Building

Orford Ness is a shingle spit just off the Suffolk coast. Despite being treeless and exposed, it is rich in wildlife. It is also a monument to some of mankind’s more destructive tendencies.

The area is now in the care of the National Trust. Birds, hares and otters thrive under the trust’s protection. A small boat takes visitors between the village of Orford and the Ness, trust volunteers are on hand to answer questions.

The last incumbent was less friendly to visitors and wildlife. For most of the 20th century, Orford Ness was used by the Ministry of Defence to develop and test ever more destructive weapon technologies. The Atomic Weapons Research Establishment used the site to create nuclear weapons in the post-Second World War period. The legacy of this occupation is a scattering of bizarre and foreboding buildings across the shingle.

The Bomb Ballistic Building is part of this legacy. The building is about 400 metres from the sea and was built to observe the path of bombs dropped from aircraft flying over the water. The data from these observations were used to improve the accuracy of bomb aiming, including atomic bombs.

I knew that Orford Ness was a strange place, a mixture of a nature reserve and a dark past. But as I walked across the Ness and around these buildings, I was reminded of how much effort and resources we humans put into killing each other. We have evolved from hitting one another with clubs to being able to deliver bombs from high in the sky with the ability to kill hundreds of thousands of people with one blast.

All this has been accomplished with unlimited budgets. Politicians have always quibbled about supporting the poor, but budgets for “defence” go unchallenged. Killing gets a blank cheque, helping each other is met with excuses and the bare minimum of cash.

The National Trust has sought to preserve Orford Ness as they found it. They encourage wildlife, preserve some of the more notable buildings and let others gradually deteriorate. They don’t clear up the man-made debris, they leave it as a testimony to this era of frenzied weapons development.

I agree with this decision. Visitors need to be struck by the horror of what this landscape was used for, as I was. And they need to know that nature can and will reclaim the land.