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High price of the King’s Cross loss
• IT is sad that the campaigners for more affordable housing at King’s Cross have lost out to Argent. But the saddest people of all are, in fact, the apparent victors, in the devastatingly accurate street meaning of “sad”.
Development in Britain became unsustainable when Henry VIII was forced to start conquering Ireland for wood for his ships, because he had chopped down most of England’s forests.
During the next five centuries the process snowballed, and now we are indirectly logging Indonesia for biofuel, having overdosed on carbon fuels. We will overdose on biofuels too.
History has a long and dismal record of civilisations which have used up their own resources, expanded colonially, used up those, and collapsed in a welter of “natural” disasters.
The most familiar account of the process is the Old Testament, but other times and other zones have similar journals.
Babylonian texts record that Babylon was denuded of trees (still is) and salinised by over-irrigation so nothing would grow (still won’t in what is now a semi-desertified northern Iraq and the southern Iraq desert that was once Ur of the Chaldees).
Rome outgrew all its breadbaskets and collapsed. Hadrian refused to invade Scotland on the grounds that the Empire had overstretched itself – he was no fool, but it was too late.
All this doom makes the efforts of the King’s Cross campaigners and millions of good-hearted people like them across the world all the more soul-saving as opposed to soul-destroying.
If you are on a sinking ship you want to see around you the altruistic and their concern and compassion, however futile these might be.
There is some point in trying to make the last hours as comfortable as possible for everyone and going down fighting; no point at all in skulking in the ships galleys scoffing all available food for storage like snakes and looting the cabins.
EDITH CROWTHER
Belsize Park Gardens, NW3
• IT is noteworthy that within a few days of the King’s Cross Railway Lands Group losing its Judicial Review in the High Court, a letter appeared in the Daily Telegraph written by the Executive Member of Housing of London Councils (for all 33 London boroughs), entitled ‘Crowded London homes’ (June 1, page 27).
This is exactly what the King’s Cross Railway Lands Group was questioning.
The court deliberated as to whether a borough committee (previously a subcommittee) can ignore London-wide policy and approve a much lower percentage of affordable homes compared to what is contained within the policy (in this case, less than 42 per cent as opposed to the minimum requirement of 50per cent). It seems they can.
This, without giving any consideration as to the total composition of the varying sizes of the homes, ie how many studio flats, one-bedroom flats, etc, and without consideration of the timeline involved; provision in five years’ time? Twenty years’ time?
It looks as if London Councils executives will have a lot to do if they really mean what they say. They deserve our support.
M HARRIOTT
Address Supplied
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