The death of the British countryside

[Dappy777]

I have lived in north Essex since 1998. When we moved here, this was a small village on the outskirts of a quiet market town. In the last ten years, it has been ruined. My local woods have been hacked down to make way for two huge new estates, and at the other end of the village a second giant housing estate has been built. Now we've been told the fields in the centre of the village are going to be built on as well. The traffic is so bad that the country lanes, which were meant to take the odd tractor and a few cars, now have the sort of congestion you'd expect on the M25. The main road into town is also having 500 new houses built along it. That road is choked with traffic now, so what the hell is it going to be like when 500 extra cars are added?

This beautiful weather has really brought it home to me. My sister lives in a village 30 miles from here, and it's exactly the same where she is. In fact, it's worse. Everywhere I go they are jamming more and more disgusting rabbit hutch 'houses' on top of one another. Instead of bird song, all you hear is the drone of cars and the screeching and backfiring of idiot boy racers. I think we really are living through the death of the British countryside. There will still be fields and trees, of course, but the countryside as I knew it will soon be gone forever.

What sickens me is that I know the left get a kick out of all this. They seem to think that everyone in the countryside is a rich, fox-hunting 'Tory' in a big mansion. In reality, the vast majority of so-called 'nimbys' are just ordinary people who've worked hard and desperately want a bit of peace and quiet. My sister has devoted 30 years to the NHS, as has her husband. They've slogged their guts out to buy a little semi-detached house in a village. Now that village is being destroyed around them.

Is it just here in the south east? Or is this happening in other parts of these islands?

No, net migration has and will increase population massively

The UK is 48th on the population density table. I think it’s the distribution that is the problem. Plus the scant attention paid to providing and protecting homes for wildlife amongst the new housing-it’s not hard! An interesting side of Covid restrictions was witnessing just how fast wildlife will take over given a chance. My main issue is with decking and artificial lawns…just plant a good mixed hedge or a native tree and watch the wildlife move in.

https://apple.news/A_yV_4IOMSvK9vdcpgbQpvQ

James Robards, ONS head of population and household projections, said: “The UK population is projected to grow by almost 5 million over the next decade. The driver of this growth is migration, with natural change – the difference between births and deaths – projected to be around zero.

Demented! We had no such agreement, it's part of the reason people voted for Brexit. The EU let people get to the borders of the UK and nobody gave a shit because they became our problem.

You say it in your first line "When we moved here, this was a small village on the outskirts of a quiet market town"

Why do you think you are the only people who should be allowed to move to the country?

You're not wrong. It's what happens when successive governments actively promote excessive immigration. We need fewer people, not more concreting over the countryside.

She lost me there too. What derangement

Moved a few years ago from an area with only a few houses.

Googled it recently and from a relatively short single track road with a dozen houses interspersed with fields they have plans to build on a section of fields over 800 houses

Given the traffic during school term times (multiple private schools) I just can’t understand why they are even entertaining this. It is a maze of single track roads that gets clogged. I can’t imaging an extra 800-1600 cars

It will be that many because there is sod all shops or public transport for miles and 1 car per household isn’t an option

The issue is that 800 houses aren’t really going to be built. The roads aren’t sustainable for that many cars. Instead they will build 25 Mac mansions or 50 x 5 bed detached houses with the timbered exterior walls in the hope they look countrified enough to pretend they have always been there

A - Definitely not like this in my village or any around here and we are classed as a commuter area. We are literally surrounded by fields.

B- WTF is this 'left' shit?! Do you realise that many Labour voters live in rural areas?

I absolutely agree, I live in SE in a (so called) village. 10 years ago it was rolling fields & sheep calls now it’s housing estates, traffic & chavs

This! The excessive building in the South East is due to demand. So your property has probably increased a lot in value.

I live in a suburb on the edge of a city. It has lots of lights.

We see owls and bats all the time. Dd reckons a bat lives near her window. He’s always around. See badgers, squirrels and foxes. Ds tripped over a badger coming home from the pub. There’s hedgehogs too, and l hear cuckoo’s. We had frogs and newts in our pond.Can clearly see the stars all the time.

Lots of neighbours have cameras in their gardens to capture the night animals. And this is all in a suburb where most people have outdoor lights and there’s loads of streetlights. And there’s a regular bus service and traffic.

Which villagr is it op?

What sickens me is that I know the left get a kick out of all this.

In the last ten years, it has been ruined.

I think you need to apply some critical thinking skills here...

Yes, indeed.

@Dappy777, I only know your name from book threads, but it sounds as if your politics is as conservative as your taste in reading. Do think, rather than delegate your thinking,

There's too many humans.
I feel like I can't escape the sound and smell of traffic. Or wakes me up every morning.
Factor in people flagging their entire gardens with horrible grey flags, as well.
Even when I go to the countryside, I have this keen awareness that I can only go so far in any direction before it ends.

New homes aren't necessarily a disaster IF homeowners are forced to ensure their gardens and homes are as green as possible. No plastic "grass", hedgehog highways in gardens, small tree and shrubs and mini ponds (where safe), a wildlife patch and wildlife flowers etc.

We've just had an updated Google earth of our town and the number of skanky people who have stuck down plastic grass in the last four years has sent my blood pressure through the roof. I hope they roast in a heatwave and have to pay more for their food as they've helped decimate the bee population.

Country people - "any building is an affornt and RUINS my lovely village". Also country peope "waaa! It's no fair that we have no jobs or facilities locally, no public transport and the mobile signal is shit"

Also "disgusting rabbit hutch houses"? Who the hell are you - lady muck? How snobbish and rude.

Me too, I thought we had a crisis of "the elderly dying are not being replaced by young taxpayers"; and idiots like Stanley Johnson talk wistfully about "population control" when they think nobody is listening.

We’re only a small country.
i don’t have to go far before I can barely see any houses in any direction.
There is still plenty of green natural space around

Same where I live OP. 40,000 houses going up on prime green belt and farmland ( tenant farmers evicted) in just one development. There are other large housing developments in other areas around here. Expensive homes too, in areas with no supporting infrastructure or transport. Won’t do anything to deal with the affordable housing crisis to keep building luxury expensive homes.

these new homes have teeny, tiny gardens. Useless for wildlife and children ( helping the obesity epidemic by keeping children inactive through lack of space).
These new housing estates are not the wildlife havens gardens were in the houses of the 70s and prior. They are just mass built on areas.

The report is damningly clear about the impact of modern agricultural practices on wildlife.

We're now at a point where people's back gardens are considered to be more of a haven for wildlife than surrounding fields.

Is it snobbish to want things to be nice? Isn’t that just having basic standards? Would you want to live in a poorly constructed house with tiny rooms, crammed in with no garden?

The trouble is that we get the poor quality housing which does ruin the village but it is not accompanied by anything which would make it work: public transport, more school places, parks etc. There are ‘villages’ near me which are just estate after estate, thousands of houses. No facilities. No shop, no pub, no park. A school bursting at the seams. Can’t we hope for better than that? If your family had lived somewhere beautiful for hundreds of years would you just sit back and say, ‘go ahead and ruin it?’