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April 23, 2005
IN DEFENSE OF APATHY! PLANNING PERMISSION IS WRONG! GERMAN SHEPHERD ATTACKS! AND OTHER IMPORTANT THINGS
There is a good reason to not bother voting in the elections next month. it is not that each vote does not, in some sense, count; it is because it will make little difference who gets into power.
Of course, there are differences between the parties. There were also real differences between the policies of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. If by some miracle they were resurrected and ran together for PM on the fifth, few of the get-out-and-vote-for-someone types would advocate voting for them just for the sake of voting. Of course, none of the parties are that bad (yet), but the case against voting remains: the differences between the parties amount to flushing the country down different drains, rather than fishing it out the bog altogether.
That's not to say I won't vote next month. But I certainly don't see anything ignoble in staying home.
PLANNING PERMISSION IS WRONG: If local governments across the country were to confiscate a significant portion of everyone's gardens, for any reason, the result would likely be public outcry. Yet this is little different from what the planning permission system does.
Part of the value people attach to their homes and land is the very fact it is theirs. They would, in a country with sane government, be allowed to do whatever they chose to do with it; it is not the business of other people to obstruct them. The "democratic control" of the planning permission system is nothing more noble than one group of people telling a smaller group of people that their property is not, in fact, their property at all.
The issue of high house prices has been a subject of debate this election season, with all the parties suggesting some hand-out, regulation, or tax break to resolve it. None have pointed out the primary cause of high prices: more demand (because of population growth and immigration) and less supply, due to the costs imposed by the hoop-jumping that housing developers must engage in to build on land that they rightfully own.
As much as I hate to answer problems with "there oughta be a law", Parliament should pass a property rights act (creative as I am, I'll dub this the Property Rights Act) that would make local government interference in construction illegal. While this may be an extreme measure, and a little unhappiness might well result from it, I don't think half-measures (such as outlawing restructions on buildings below a certain size) will do.
RANDOM THOUGHT: Happy Meals are neither.
I GOT ATTACKED BY A GERMAN SHEPHERD YESTERDAY: I got attacked by a German Shepherd yesterday.
WORK RULES: Work rules. Not only do I get to operate one of these bad boys, I also get the opportunity to get mauled by a German Shepherd dog on the way to work. And all was right with the world!
Posted by Lewis at April 23, 2005 10:33 PM