Sir Keir Starmer has set out his plans for house building for Inside Housing magazine – a paper I used to write for. But I can’t help feeling that if I’d written such a confused and contradictory piece, I’d have been in real trouble with the editor. After a routine complaint about the difficulties young people have in buying a […]

General election campaigns are strange affairs, and occasionally politicians reveal more than they mean to. Labour’s current lead is so strong that few doubt the party will emerge without some kind of Commons majority, possibly an enormous one, and Sir Keir Starmer and his colleagues will be in charge of law-making. But given the way Sir Keir is already laying […]

When Smart Growth UK was set up, a key objective of the organisations that created it was to get integrated action across a range of planning, transport and regeneration issues. And that’s what we set out to do. Today, 17 years later, the need to integrate policy across these – and wider – policy areas is stronger than ever. Environmental […]

With the forthcoming general election still Labour’s to lose, there’s no shortage of advice for the party on what to spend its energy on if and when it wins power. Leading the pack, of course, is the Yimby Lobby, keen as ever to get planning abolished or, at least, reduced to nothing. Now it’s extending its attack to building control […]

A popular technique among propagandists is to take a single example of something, distort it, and then present it to those they wish to persuade as a disgraceful but typical example of something or somebody they wish to attack. It’s cheap, easy and mendacious. Commercial promoters have also long used the technique to big up the product or service they […]