Westministenders: Don't forget to stockpile. Again.

[RedToothBrush]

The government is telling pharmacists and drug manufactures to stockpile drugs ahead of the end of transition on 31st December.

In the middle of a pandemic.

What could go wrong?

@pussycatinboots

It was like the cat was being chauffeured. erm, I do that when taking mine to the vet - they will not accept a carrier. 😹🙄

Would you walk your cat on a lead in the Goyt Valley? It was like it owned its owners!!!

I do find our neighbour's attempt to do up the wreck of a house next door reassuring. The quality and overspecced building is proving to be one of (the many) issues shes having. Its damn well built. Its not falling down anytime soon.

Whats also interesting is how shes having trouble finding a match for her bricks. They are different to ours even though the design of the house is the same and they were built at the same time.

The estate was built in the last 60s / early 70s. They are not the prettiest houses, but they are practical. And the whole estate was thought out in really considered way. Every house has different bricks so they didnt match too much and to give them a bit of character. They all had really well landscaped gardens and the plants chosen must have meant the estate looked cohesive without being too identikit. Most gardens have at least some elements from when they were originally done and look great considering their age. They also designed them with the prevailing winds in mind.

Youd never get anything like that now.

Even our previous estate was good by modern standards - because it had been taken to the high court 3 times before getting approval. This had forced the developer to adhere to lots of additional features which made it a lot better. Other estates in the area that were just green lighted at the same time really suffer from a lack of thought and developers just cramming as many houses in as possible.

What annoys me most here is the backwards thinking of the local council and the abject nimbyism of the locals. We could build good new developments here, which are desparately needed and there is brown field land available but the default is to moan and complain at everything with no sense of thought as to how to get good new builds. Its just new builds = bad rather than how can we force good new builds.

My house was built in 1985. The whole estate was built on the old fruit orchards.
Not sure thatcher had ripped up the Parker Morris rules by that point?
Our houses all have different bricks too plus many have been extended/altered in some way.
The previous owners of our house converted the integral garage into another sitting room and knocked through the box room to make 3 good sized double bedrooms.
Its also got a conservatory.
New builds all look like posts on Pinterest to me...soulless and glossy.
(Old gimmer alert)
I'd LOVE a victoriana or edwardian villa (sigh)

Another advantage of the different laws in Scotland: no leasehold

It does confuse insurers though, when you try to explain that we jointly share responsibility for the common roof, the common foundations, the drains, guttering and pointing etc

Our cats (especially one of them) will try to go for walks with us....we have to semi-block them in upstairs and then run for it before they escape and follow us

My house was built in 1985. The whole estate was built on the old fruit orchards.

Ours 1962, but interestingly, the area was called "The Orchards" previously. And every house has/had an apple or pear tree in the back garden.

When we first moved in a friend of DWs family knew the area and used to come horse riding here as a child. And living near a nature centre we occasionally see horse riders on the roads. And the odd deer stuck in railings ....

Peregrina I have to say that I have seen the Bill Gates Foundation’s fingers in many pies that are not big pharma, including delivering toilets throughout Asia. The monsoon and flooding cause big issues in terms of disease in the slums. In the Cambodian slum I am familiar with one of the slum communities spend six months of the year under water and though the houses are on stilts the children still have contact with water that has been defecated in. (The landlord meanwhile has a solid house in a compound on higher ground with flood defences and a high wall so he doesn’t have to look at his tenants). The other land in that slum community was donated by the government, it is a former graveyard so any rain at all brings bones out of the ground. You can imagine what a difference any sanitation makes in terms of disease control. The same is true for Indian slums during the monsoon.

I have also seen Bill Gates programmes aimed at enabling women to earn money. A simple thing like a sewing machine and help with producing crafts can make a big difference to families in the slums and rural area.

I am no fan of big pharma with good reason but I assume as a successful businessman he chooses projects where he has the resources to make most difference?

Housing : there is no real shortage of supply in the UK.
What there is a shortage of is social housing
If every council house ever sold was replaced by another for social rent
then the whole UK housing market would rejig to provide homes rather than investment opportunities
One of New Labour's greatest failings was not to realise this

Pets Our old cats used to walk to the pub at the end of the road with us and then collect us when it was time to go home

BREXIT
Even the most non news interested people are starting to realise that COVID will still be here when Brexit happens and that they will both make each other worse
interesting times

@SabrinaThwaite

I think Clav is busy on the Covid threads.

fighting on two fronts?

You can have thoughtful, well planned modern housing developments, but they tend to be done by smaller developers rather than the Barratts and Calas. Goldsmith St in Norwich is a good example of how high quality social housing can be delivered.

What annoys me most here is the backwards thinking of the local council and the abject nimbyism of the locals.

Yes it's like that here but worst from those living in new houses themselves - the village was extended with a new housing development completed a few years ago, now the residents of the new houses are up in arms about the prospect of another new development. They were happy for the character the village to be impacted by their new house.

Most new builds in this area are homogenous kit houses but one developer got permission for a big edge-of-village development and it looks amazing, in fact the lovely unique traditional type houses make the neighbouring 1970s bungalows look really out of place and ugly. Not cheap though.

Red no, I can't climb a tree I am not an owner, I am a slave, and lucky to be one, apparently...
re: brick matching - our house was built 2000, they don't make the bricks anymore. Try MKM, the guy at our local one was fab. He said a lot of the smaller manufacturers ended production (or went out of business) c2008 and those that carried on reduced their lines. She might be able to find matches if she shops around and is prepared to take a sample to every builders merchant - not a nice task at the best of times.
When developers do build on brown field sites they still build down to the cheapest possible price as they spend a small fortune on remediation works before they can put the foundations in.
DGR oh, deer 🦌 🤦‍♀️

Indeed. It just demonstrates relative priorities. and which parties are accepting bribes

As we've often said on these threads, with regard to who benefits from Brexit: follow the money. Housing developments (and more particularly, the relaxing changing of regulations) follow the same maxim.

yoikes my house was also built in 1985, not anywhere picturesque but it's well built and functional and hasn't given very many problems at all. I wouldn't touch a new build, or a leasehold. We converted the garage to an additional bedroom in 2005 because you couldn't get a car inside it and still be able to get out of said car, and the extra space is so worth it.

The garden was massively shit because mine is one of the last two built on the estate so the soil is mostly bits of bri ck and old cement, but I've thrown some of my late mum's inheritance at it and it is now lovely (and I can grow food in it).

Todays acronym:

Make
A
Fortune
In
Authority

My house was built in 1885, once the rail away started to be established most of the area was small farms/orchards still some street names that reflect this, my road & a few surrounding roads the land belonged to Birkbeck University & was sold off with small plots being bought by small developers, you can see how each developer built probably a maximum of six houses so lots of variation in styles, love my house but can be a money pit & difficult to heat in the winter but it does have lots of original features.

some street names that reflect this,

I grew up in Torbay Road, parallel to Exeter Road and Lynton Road, crossed by Widdicombe Avenue (which is an oddity as it has a name, but no houses on it ...) and Dunster Way bounded by Malvern Avenue.

Nearby there's a Parr Road, Howard Road, Boleyn Close Aragon Avenue and Seymour Crescent

You can see why "Reggie Perrin" spoke to me growing up

Funny that I still consider houses built in 1985 to be essentially new builds (probably because that’s when I was building them and I won’t think of myself as old).

Housing :
If you think the snagging is bad on a cheap new build, look at the problems with Kevin McCloud's site at Kingsworthy

A friend of mine lives in an estate that is 2/3 private ownership and 1/3 housing association.
Right the way through the construction, the HA staff were there watching and checking and snagging
the HA homes are much much better built than the private ones.

Councils building stuff that they know they will be maintaining for decades will make darned sure its built well

folks like Persimmon and Barratt and Bloor
do not give a shit

One of my favourite programmes ever was Reggie Perrin such sublime silliness.

@dontcallmelen

One of my favourite programmes ever was Reggie Perrin such sublime silliness.

Sadly unlikely to see the light of day again.

The changes to planning rules terrify me. I have been involved in community activism against four big local projects that were championed on behalf of vested interests by our last Tory Council Leader, a croney of Cameron’s, now pontificating in the Lords. There was massive, well organised and funded community resistance right through to taking one to Judicial Review. The justification for one, many, storeys over what was allowed by the planning framework was that it would improve local infrastructure but then magically Mayor Boris (who had promised no high rises) stumped up a million quid for the improvements to infrastructure so the developer didn’t have to. Pathetic contribution to the Council and no affordable housing of course. sank under the weight of its own monstrosity, it simply wasn’t feasible. The other two at least got modified, one got built in keeping with local architecture and one was reduced in height though still a monstrosity, more of a monstrosity than anyone envisaged, since the mock brick cladding is in shades of orange red and purple. At least two never got built and the others were moderated. We could never have been able to achieve that without having input to the Planning framework and being able to use it in the way we framed our case to the Council and Planning Inspectorate / in person to the Inspector who actually cited our case word for word in his decision to reject the appeal. I dread to think what will get built under these proposals. It isn’t even as if the majority are not in favour of the development of affordable flats for the young. There are places in the borough where height is appropriate but not in the Victorian centre. Of the last Council had got away with it we would have begun to look like Croydon.

There is currently a proposal to cram 48 flats in a featureless 6 storey block (or 5+1 as the developer puts it) on a 20 place car park that the planning framework earmarks for 3/4 storey development (in line with surrounding Victorian housing), that complements the building of townscape merit opposite. That will go through won’t it?

TBH, if Brexit results in the peaceful reunification of Ireland, I will chalk it up as a benefit for everyone living there. The Taoiseach will show a lot more accountability than the Westminster PM towards his countrymen.

As for the fall in profits for Johnson's chums...well, we will see. In my darker moments, I wonder what it would be like if most of the landed class had been wiped out here, as they had in Germany and France. Would the inequality be so bad?

DGR Many, many moons ago I worked for the council and we did street naming. There are "Cathedral" areas, "Tobacco", "Wales", "Castles", etc -all historic ones from the 40s/50s.
A lot of the new ones are double-barrelled, e.g. Boris Johnson Close. Awful names, but apparently have a historic/local meaning that none of the residents know of, including me

We turned down the option of "Pratt Close".

Well I take it back about Gates then, if he is involved in providing toilets and sanitation.

I was going to say that this isn't a fashionable topic, but the toilet twinning initiative which a lot of churches support is popular.

We turned down the option of "Pratt Close"

I had a colleague who lived on "Knob Hill".

And "Bell End" is well known locally ...

We had a road named after a local councillor.

Didn’t look quite so appropriate after he was jailed for embezzlement from a local club.