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The NI Planning Bill 2013: A goldmine for lawyers, a field day for objectors and a mess for the rest of us?
Tweet Planning law isn’t something that usually excites a lot of people, but hidden away in the Planning Bill, published on Monday 14th January is something that should arouse even the most flaccid of neo-liberals. Taken for granted by most of us, the planning system should act on behalf of all of us to ensure [...] more »
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GwenK9 has commented 1 times (0 in the last month).
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Books
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Lessons in Cute Hoorism: “Graft was accepted, for you were taking from the British…”
Tweet I’ve been catching up on some reading, recently. Most pleasantly surprised by John Drennan’s latest opus from Gill and Macmillan, Cute Hoors and Pious Protestors… It’s early days yet, but I was struck by this paragraph, part of a dissection of Fianna Fail near the beginning: One of the more fatal consequences of our [...] read our review »
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Help me with the West Wing: Essential viewing or Party Political Broadcast?
Tweet Having somehow managed to avoid watching a single episode of the widely praised West Wing TV series I was delighted to discover the entire Box set in my Christmas stocking – and with enough spare time over the holidays to give it a good lash. But with 10 episodes of the first series under [...] read our review »
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Against Remembrance – Seminar & Book by David Rieff
Tweet Is the best way to overcome the legacy of conflict simply to forget about it? Author and journalist David Rieff spoke on this subject last week in a seminar at the Institute for International Integration Studies (IIIS) at Trinity College Dublin. Rieff has recently written a book titled, Against Remembrance (published in Ireland by [...] read our review »
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Comment on Countdown to revelations about planning practices
on 31 August 2011 at 10:17 pm
The problem with Cynic, as with many other people in NI, is that they think that development – any development – is a good thing. Somehow they’ve fallen for this notion that the more development we have the richer we get. WRONG! Many forms of development can actually leave this place economically weaker and less resilient for the future. The big supermarkets that we welcomed as a sign of normality as the Troubles ebbed away themselves result in leaking huge amounts of money out of the region in terms of profits and money to forgien suppliers, in return for a few low paid jobs. There are so many other examples of this – the urban sprawl that has been so badly planned that now thousands of us spend increasing proportions of our dwindling income on petrol to get to places of work… the homes not connected onto the main sewer system that leak into the watefrcourses and cost us thousands in clean up very year…. there are plenty of other really bad examples, and yes probably a few good ones too. The future state of our settlements and countryside, the fabric of our society, should be central to the very notion of politics – but somehow it isn’t, is it? That’s because many people have fallen for the development dream, just like Cynic. The dominant debate on planning here is less than shallow, ranging from NIMBY to NeoCon. Every civilised society needs a strong NGO community to ask the questions that developers and the politicans (that they fund) are shy of asking. I say well done to FoE for starting this debate; they’ve given us a chance to say what we think of planning, so let’s see what the survey says, but I bet it won’t be pretty reading. If it is a thumbs down for planning it can be added to the “official” condemnation of the planning system by the NI Select Affairs Committee, the NI Planning Commission and the NI Audit Office. How bad can it get before we claim our towns, cities and villages as our own?
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