On Fri, 11 Aug 2006 12:54:05 +0100, Greg Hennessy
wrote:

On Thu, 10 Aug 2006 23:06:39 +0100, Arthur Figgis ]
wrote:

On Thu, 10 Aug 2006 10:38:23 +0100, Greg Hennessy
wrote:

No building under 100 years old should be listed period.

There have been too many mistakes made in the past to simply abandon
what protection we do have.

Mistakes which were entirely driven by central planning with SFA direct
local decision making.

You seem to be confused about slightly different issues here. Are you
really saying that having fewer restrictions on what people could do
to existing buildings would stop people demolishing the same existing
buildings?

The 1947 T&C planning act abrogated planning from localities.

So why does the council keep sending me letters about flats which
someone wants to build up the road?

If we ignored everything under 100 years, we could all too easily find
ourselves with nothing - or only inferior examples - left by the time
the most important buildings were "old enough". For example, 100 years
would rule out listing anything related to the two world wars,

So.

I'd prefer it not to be simply swept away because someone who can
afford to wants to build a car park, or a Tescos or whatever. YMMMV.
I've just seen too many crap buildings to be happy with letting
developers and others get on with whatever they think will maximise
short term profits and sod the public who will have to use and look at
the results for decades.


snip

The Victorians often flattened what went before to build their
railways.

Which are now run far beyond capacity, expansion completely hamstrung by
ridiculous planning regulation.

Not really - even if you are counting things like accessibility and
safety as planning, the cost explosion brought by the
post-privatisation structure of the rail industry is hardly a planning
matter.

....

There was loads of victorian building too. Without needing Whitehall to
manage it.

"There was a valley between Buxton and Bakewell, once upon a time as
divine as the vale of Tempe... You enterprised a railroad through the
valley - you blasted its rocks away, heaped thousands of tons of shale
into its lovely stream. The valley is gone and the Gods with it, and
now, every fool in Buxton can be at Bakewell in half-an-hour, and
every fool in Bakewell at Buxton; which you think a lucrative process
of exchange - you Fools everywhere."

--
Arthur Figgis Surrey, UK