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.

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

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.

surely
a rather important part of our history. And where would British cities
be without a 71 year old phone box design?

That's a decision for localities and their electorates to take. Not by
unaccountable whitehall dictat.


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.

If continentals can put new railways underground to spare property deemed
worthy, it's shouldn't be beyond the wit of the UK to do the same.

After all, Georgian buildings were then
fairly recent, and there were loads of 'em...

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

Post-war Britain then did the same thing to the Victorians,

Post war Whitehall did it to the Victorians, While the rest of Europe
attempted to rebuild shattered towns and cities to how they looked on the
31st of August 1939.

Central planning fetishists such as Patrick Abercrombie were let loose,
armed with powers to seize & destroy what the Luftwaffe couldn't.

and look what monstrosities that
could produce, perhaps doing more long-term harm to the fabric of some
cities than the Luftwaffe managed.

Did you expect anything better from wholly unaccountable civil servants in
Whitehall ?

The destruction of Plymouth and the creation of monstrosities such as
Stevenage, Harlow et al was entirely the fault of micromanaging state
control.


For some reason a lot of people think listing is about buildings being
twee and pretty - it isn't, it is about them being of architectural or
historic interest.

That's fine, they can make their case for listing directly to the local
electorate, who can then pick up the costs which listing brings.



greg
--
Müde lieg ich lieg in der Scheisse,
und niemand weiss, wie ich heisse.
Es gibt nur einen, der mich kennt,
und mich bei meinem Namen nennt.