2024 Election thread

If you want high density development you still need to provide plenty of green space to make a pleasant place to live. It was mainly in response to the comment about turning golf courses into concrete jungles. I also worked a development on a golf course and there was quite a lot of the site covered by protected trees. You’d probably keep a lot of the margins around each hole as that’s where the best biodiversity is likely to be so lots of smaller linear parks maybe.

You didn't pick up on my sarcasm then?

Keeps the 'concrete jungle' crowd quiet. 11 hectares is nearly 16 football pitches.

I guess some on here will find themselves pitted against City Hall who want to preserve green spaces wherever possible, for obvious reasons.

As I mentioned above, Lewisham turned the golf course near where I used to live into a green space for all, but didn't build houses on it. That said, it was municipal so it was accessible anyway as long as you watched out for the odd golf ball headed your way while crossing the fairways.

Could probably survive without one of the five private golf courses in this area:

As well as those, there's the Wimbledon Common one you can walk through, and the same with the Hampton Court Palace one just across the bridge.

Yes, enough for 300,000 homes while also maintaining sufficient green space for the existing and new housing. Around 1/5 of all land within Greater London is public green space. There really is a lot of it as Pross's calculation for one golf course showed.

And having that amount of green space makes it nicer for everyone who lives there, although we could argue for hours on what is 'sufficient'. (I have no skin in the London game any more as you know).

Imagine bragging that you'd closed down another 6 businesses this year.

What is sufficient is all set out in the London Plan. Contrary to what you would expect, the public green spaces in the outer suburbs are more spread out than the central 3 zones. The Victorians were good at planning their urban parks.

Needs a very clear statement of intent at minister level followed through with legislative action so that there's no ambiguity on the direction. Can only happen after the GE and needs a massive input of resources to the planning system as every local authority would need to revise their Local Plan. That process normally takes a couple of years with all the consultation and bureaucracy of debate and formal adoption.

An interesting article on Houchen's re-election.

Seen some stories today that centrist Tories are encouraging Andy Street to stand as an MP and suggests him as future party leader. If they are at all concerned about becoming a sensible party again, I would suggest this may be a good idea.

He was two term West Mids Mayor (he is popular, even amongst many traditional non Tory voters). Prior to that he was MD of John Lewis for years, Chair of the Birmingham LEP and a Non-exec Director at DCLG.

To be fair, I am not his target voter, but he has always come across as genuine and dilligent. He is certainly head and shoulders above the current crop of Tory MP's

I don't think they are talking leader straight off, but a few years as an MP and some Cabinet posts and I could definitely see it.

Sounds like the type that were purged out of the party in 2019. All the intelligent sensible ones.