Saturday, Sep 18, 2010
Calls for more houses to be built in villages
BBC News: British village life 'dying out' after pub closures
Village life in Britain is "dying out" because rural pubs are closing at a record rate, a report from the National Housing Federation has said. The federation, which represents England's housing associations, said key services were disappearing "at an alarming rate" and that affordable local housing was the key to saving traditional village life. And it said the closures reflected a declining demand for services in villages where local families had been priced out of the area by wealthy commuters, pensioners and second-home owners. Another factor was that there were too few new homes, it added. "Unless we build more affordable homes for local people, they will continue to be priced out of rural areas and services they support will vanish with them."
11 Comments
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1. enuii said...
The mechanisation of agriculture, mass car ownership and the cult of owning horses as pets killed off the village pub (and shops) and made run of the mill rural housing too expensive for low paid locals to own or rent. Building low cost housing is just a sticking plaster on what is an economic problem that can only be solved by a return of more land to productive agricultural use. This may well happen and may be the plus side of climate change for this country especially if we have to make greater efforts to produce more food locally.
2. paul said...
At least they are being realistic about the causes of this blight - boomer NIMBYs and second-homeowners rather than simply dismissing it as another casualty of the credit crunch.
3. drewster said...
I'm not sure it would be sensible to promote village living anyway. Almost by definition, new entrants to villages will have to commute to bigger towns & cities for work (yes there will be one or two jobs running the village pub/postoffice, but everyone else will have to commute). Most commuters drive; and that means more congestion and more CO2 emissions. For that reason alone I think it would be better to build well-designed towns & suburbs where public transport can be cost-effective; rather than small villages where it isn't.
4. mark wadsworth said...
@ enui, UK farmers are incredibly productive because they are so mechanised, it is cheaper to use machines than human beings, but this comparison is distorted by the fact that machines don't cost income tax and national insurance. So if you want to increase farm output even more, what you need is less taxation of incomes and higher taxes on the land (i.e. negative agricultural subsidies). This will shift the balance from using a few humans on a huge farm (average farm land per farmer or agricultural worker = over 100 acres!) to more humans on smaller farms.
And what Drewster says. It is more environmentally friendly to live in suburbs or towns.
5. Lyme said...
but who wants to build affordable housing when they can build unaffordable housing and line their pockets with wads of cash????
6. titaniccaptain said...
Its cheaper and more environmental friendly to live IN the land.
As posted 112341324124 times before.
http://www.simondale.net/house/
Wadsworth....I hope there is a clause in your LVT that charges people per mile from their front door to their place of work.
One of the things that has really ruined the village pub is out home entertainment......Before Sky/Sky Plus, Mobile phones and Broadband people used to meet up in the pub and talk.....even if it was a cr@p with Evans the Postman about the weather.
And what was wrong with moaning about the weather?.....at least it meant we were somehow connected to our environment.
But now that conversation with Evans the Postman about nothing particularly important must compete with 6 episodes of Fringe on planner, more porn sites than you can shake a pr*ck at, some fantastic internet forum that feeds your specific interests or the pirate music stations.
I remember a power cut in my old village which lasted days......we used to have frequent power cuts years ago...and everyone came out to the pubs which were candle lit and we sat and played guitars, danced and sung until the sun came up.
Even though I thoroughly hate the Baby Boomer bashing and this NIMBY concept is a little too blunt a knife to carve our society with I will say this......There is a certain type of person who comes into the small village in Wales who usually owns a holiday home there and he/she is a middle class English (I am also English with no Welsh blood...but I have slept with enough of them to probably acquire a few Welsh genes and STDS) prat with a chip on the shoulder and fits into the community like a gas chamber into a synagogue.
These people are what you could call NIMBYs.
They move to Wales and act as though they own the area and locals that they look down upon when the reality is they have been forced to live their because England is dying and at least there is some reprieve from this disintegration of society in rural Wales.
They glare at you as you drive past them and many violent thoughts of dismemberment are not amiss when this happens.
Wadsworth there is another clause I would like to see added to your LVT and that is.....
If you do not become involved in the local community then you must also pay more Tax.
Any household found not entering the largest carrot competition or attending church on Sunday will be forced to move back over the border where they came from.
7. Crunchy said...
1. enuii
That wouldn't be Monsanto friendly.
Can't have people escaping the GM medication stronghold can we.
You'll be talking about strong communities clubbing together demanding hard proof of climate change next.
Terrorism in Ripley?
8. Crunchy said...
5. titaniccaptain
I couldn't agree more, apart from Sabbath, which falls on a Saturday... He rested on the 7th day.
Paganism is alive and well for the little devils who work at Tesco's.
9. str 2007 said...
Tc
Getting fined for not attending church - that'll be popular!
10. Caribbean Beauty said...
Loved Titanic Captain's "sensitive" but funny observations on incomers (which is what my family and I are in a rural Norfolk village). We got involved in local community life very quickly and it paid dividends although locals tell me I won't be truly accepted until I have done 25 years here.
But my observations re village life in these parts is that although pubs etc are suffering due to TC's eloquently summarised reasons, in fact more and more IT type workers or traders who rely on the web are moving in, with their young families (including us). Several locals tell me that there are more kids in the village now than for several decades, and this is also alongside record 2nd home ownership by weekenders and holiday let people (around half of housing stock). It is all down to Boradband, enabling people to work from home miles away from sink estates and muggers.
But the downside of IT users moving in is that although they bring kids and support local schools/scouts etc that way, they rarely shop much in local stores since they are experts at internet shopping and saving. We too are guilty of this so we make a point of spending at least 5-10 quid a week in the village shop as a small contribution to its survival. Times are changing - webwork is replacing agriculture as employment in these ere parts.
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