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Bernard Ingham: Lies, damned lies and the resistible rise of the eco-towns
I have never heard a better example of working-class wit than from the striking miner at Rossington Colliery who, contemplating a journalist extricating himself from the dilapidated, battered, creaking office car, informed his fellow-pickets: "Hey up lads, 'ere cums t'capitalist press."
I am reminded of this tale from my journalistic youth by Rossington's designation, along with Gascoigne Wood, Burn Airfield, Church Fenton and Willow Green, all near Selby, as a potential site for one of the 10 so-called eco-towns Gordon Brown wants to inflict on the English countryside by 2020.
Eco-towns are defined as new communities of up to 20,000 houses and exemplars of high standard, sustainable, zero-carbon living.
When I find words and phrases such as zero carbon, sustainable, innovative green ideas and affordability – all used by the Government in "eco-towns" press releases – I feel impelled to warn the populace: "Hey up lads, 'ere cum t'environmental opportunists." They will also, more than likely, be urban cowboys.
I should, of course, explain that I have the utmost suspicion of people who call themselves Green or environmentalists. In my experience, they are very often neither. There is nothing green or environmental about industrialising our hills and countryside with virtually
useless and grossly expensive wind turbines.
Nor is there in abominating nuclear power when it is safe, cheap, reliable, and emits next to no greenhouse gases. It is also immensely economical of land compared with most renewable sources of energy, requiring only 10 soccer pitches for a nuclear power station, whereas a wind farm of equivalent capacity (when the wind is blowing) would need the whole of Dartmoor.
Sustainable is one of those words that sounds good but is often a plain lie. Renewable sources of energy depending on the wildly variable weather such as the wind and waves cannot sustain modern living that requires electricity constantly available at the flick of a switch. Nor can tidal power, given the five-hour slack between tides, nor solar power since it is not available at night.
As for micro-generation – which would make mini generating stations of every house – nothing could be less sustainable since the more houses that are connected to local distribution grids, the more impossible it would become to balance supply and demand, which is what the national grid does. There is nothing sustainable about an
electricity supply that keeps blowing a gasket.
I find the concept of zero-carbon living as risible as nuclear-free zones, as some towns still ignorantly designate themselves. Every breathing human being is a carbon dioxide (CO2) factory – and radioactive to boot. Radioactivity is an inescapable fact of nature.
More importantly, every new town will create a great deal of CO2 in laying down sewers, foundations and roads and building houses and supporting services. It would be much greener to make use of existing infrastructure in urban areas crying out for re-development.
And since eco-towns are supposed to be new and separate communities, their populations will inevitably generate more CO2 through travel between local "capitals" where there are better and more varied services, even if they themselves are largely car-free or vehicles are forced to crawl through them at 15mph.
But who will want to live in these car-free zones, especially if the public transport substitute turns out to be terrorised by the local yobbery? I ask because not far from where I live, retirement flats without car parking spaces have remained unsold for years. If this is one of those "innovative green ideas", they know where they can put them.
Not much further away, at Beddington in Surrey, supposedly green homes are just about the ugliest you could imagine – and the last I
heard were working anything but perfectly.
I would not be in the least surprised if this is what the Government is intent on imposing on the unsuspecting public.
After all, Housing Minister Caroline Flint's "high-powered" 12-person eco-towns advisory panel is jam-packed with the sort of archetypal eco-nut that makes a living – and wins awards – out of telling the
poor bloody infantry what is good for them.
And that is exactly what is going to happen. For Ministers have made it clear they want at least a third of the houses in eco-towns – round about 40,000 in total – to be "affordable", whatever that means. I take it to mean for the poor who conveniently can't afford cars.
In other words, the Government's devilish plan is to build new sink housing estates in the Conservative countryside camouflaged as "eco-towns". Hey up lads, 'ere cum t'con artistes.
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Weather for Yorkshire
Friday 25 May 2012
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