Apologies, I thought this was a reference to conspiracies:

Fly a plane into another tower? Found “evidence” that Luigi is a pedophile? distract us with a war with china?

It seemed to suggest various ‘false flag’ type ideas, which are a hallmark of conspiracy theorising.

Convert the castles into affordable homes, perhaps?

The things that don’t seem to get built (despite promises)

But this is flatly untrue. There are laws requiring local authorities to take this into account and they can compel developers to contribute either financially or in-kind. What causes the problems with doctor’s surgeries is not new developments, but austerity, which is why it’s a problem everywhere.

But even aside from austerity, nimbyism significantly contributes to the problems you’ve identified, at the local level both directly and indirectly. E.g., here’s an example of NIMBYs trying to prevent a school building a garden (a direct example). But, it also happens indirectly:

• NIMBYs oppose housing, infrastructure and business development
• Prices rise
• No one can afford housing in the area
• People leave for jobs/houses elsewhere
• Businesses can attract neither investment nor customers, because no one lives there any more, so they shut down, so there are even fewer jobs and more people leave
• The economic case for maintaining existing schools, hospitals and other infrastructure in the area collapses, so they close
• NIMBYS complain that their infrastructure has been shut down and that their high street is terrible

This is the reason that, e.g., many rural schools have shut down. There was a particularly good example within the last year or so of a councillor celebrating preventing a housing development and then, mere weeks later, the very same councillor complaining that the DfE had ordered the local school to be shut down because there weren’t enough children in the village!

EDIT: A further indirect consequence of NIMBYs causing the kinds of problems they claim to oppose is that you simply cannot have economic growth without development. When so much development is blocked and delayed, it leads to less growth, which means government revenue falls, which means less money for development… etc.

The ship flying out of the rift reminds me of the XCV-330 Enteprise from the 22nd Century, first seen as part of the Enterprise lineage of ships in a painting in TMP. The ring structure might be a coleopteric warp drive which the XCV-330 used, also used by Vulcan starships.

I think a similar ring design was also an early concept for the Enterprise, before they settled on the familiar saucer + nacelles look.

There’s no need to indulge in conspiratorial thinking, here. Whatever you think of Mangione’s motives, it seems overwhelmingly likely that he did it and, if so, he will almost certainly be in jail for the rest of his life. There’s no need for them to do anything else to him. It seems as though he acted alone, so a broader anti-terrorist crackdown is possible but unlikely, and even less likely to be effective.

As for the CEOs, I imagine a lot more money is going to be spent on security and they’ll probably demand the businesses they work for pay for that, which actually seems fair, as far as it goes.

While I don’t have any sympathy for the Republicans, they didn’t seem to even consider more gun control even after Trump was actually hit by a would-be assassin’s bullet, so I doubt they will now. They might pass a law against 3D gun printing, but it’s not even slightly enforceable; I believe owning such a weapon is already illegal but, as Mangione has demonstrated, there’s not much to stop someone making or using one.

“I think my experience of 18 years of being an independent parish councillor and a district councillor has demonstrated that the system has utterly failed and government is absolutely incompetent for trying to deliver infrastructure services to local people.”

A typically coherent NIMBY comment, here. ‘The government is terrible at delivering infrastructure. That’s why I’m opposed to the government delivering infrastructure.’

Also notable that 14 of those 18 years were under a Conservative government dedicated to cutting government services and infrastructure.

Historically, ‘libertarian’ was a leftwing ideology. It’s only a fairly recent and, even then, a fairly American development that it was co-opted by Ayn Rand types. Then there are people like Noam Chomsky, who calls himself a ‘libertarian socialist’. Presumably some such people would have expressed a favourable view of both libertarianism and socialism given this survey.

People feel like there are a lot of these, because they’re conspicuous, but there really just isn’t enough building going on.

Part of the issue with the low-quality housing is that it’s often in the middle of nowhere, with no connections - because nimbyism has made it impossible to build housing where it’s needed or to build the infrastructure that would improve the quality. So there’s a vicious cycle of: good housing is blocked > low-quality housing is built > people point to low-quality housing as a reason to block more developments > good housing is blocked…

But you still have to either build it or convert existing non-residential building into residential building. Existing planning law makes it much too easy for nimbys to block either, hence the need for reform. Fact is, we need to build, convert, and add more council housing, but we need new planning law, first, to make any of those three possible.

I’m never 100% behind anything, but I think that in a crisis - and this is a crisis - you need to be radical and take risks. Caution is not going to cut it.

This is exactly why the government is right to reform planning law and allow more building, even if that on its own won’t be sufficient to deal with the scope of the crisis.

The government is taking biodiversity seriously by banning bee-killing pesticides, encouraging a shift to regenerative farming and through their commitment to green energy generally. They’ve also promised to make considerations around biodiversity part of the new planning policy.

What they have to stop is the use of biodiversity as a mere excuse for nimbyism. And, yes, this will entail building on some ‘green’ land. However, just because there’s a bit of grass on something doesn’t necessarily make it particularly biodiverse. We’ll do far more for biodiversity by making protected green land truly biodiverse (rather than vast areas of near-dead monocultures, which is what all too much ‘green space’ in the UK actually is) while building good homes on some of the low-quality green space - which is the plan.

Genuinely, the reason I’ve never gone into politics is that I absolutely do not want to have the job of solving political problems. Like, when the problem is ‘not enough houses’, I just want to go ‘So build some houses’, not the thing you actually have to do which is ‘Balance the interests of a whole host of people, many of whom will be furiously ungrateful even when you do things in their interest’.

Don’t think there’s much chance of PR passing, unfortunately. I’d vote Labour under pretty much any system, but I’d be much happier with PR than FPTP.

Very much so! That’s why their slogan at the GE was literally just the word ‘CHANGE’.

Of course, now they have to deliver change, but only change people are happy with. In fact, only change that people who might vote for them and live in winnable seats are happy with. This is the complicated bit.

What’s the five-year failure rate for start-ups, again?

See, this reads very reasonably, but I think people were a bit put off by your original reference to a ‘final solution’, which has some… overtones.

I agree with this. And all your mooted solutions require changes to planning policy, first, so this is a good start by the government!

For me, what would really fix the problem is banning right to buy, but I’m quite sure that will never happen.

We can all keep throwing around the word ‘democracy’ while the housing crisis gets worse, or the government can exercise its democratic (see?) mandate to change planning regulations in order to fix the housing crisis. For me, this change prevents councillors going rogue against the democratically (there it is again!) agreed local plans - there’s no ‘overruling’ by the government because it’s not a centrally made decision to overrule them, they simply won’t be able to poleaxe their own plans.

So, it’s democratic twice over: the government exercises its mandate to allow councils to exercise their mandate to build.

We end up building on floodplains because NIMBYs block building everywhere else. These reforms will help us get more homes built where they’re needed. And they don’t overrule local democracy, they’ll take away the outsized influence of the blockers. Democracy requires a level playing field.