Club and gallery owner Alex Proud published an article in the Telegraph yesterday in which he suggested “10 ways we can fix the UK”. It was an iconoclastic list, verging on the revolutionary, including such ideas as:
- make it illegal not to vote
- limit Prime Ministers to one term
- increase the retirement age to 70 ‘tomorrow’
- delay children starting at school by two years
- triple the congestion charge and spend it on alternative transport
- legalise drugs
- build more houses (“Really, we just need to build”)
It is not quite the revolution that Russell Brand has promised us, but it is getting close, and indeed the article contains some very good ideas.
However, the one thing that Alex Proud would not do is interfere with the Green Belt. He says: “By way of a sop to traditionalists, I wouldn’t build on the greenbelt. We don’t need to: our cities are not dense.”
It is rather depressing that a person who is clearly prepared to ‘think outside the box’ and consider alternative solutions to our problems is totally unprepared to recommend building on green belt land. Yes this one thing would make more of a difference to the lives of people in London than any of his other recommendations. It just shows what a mountain those who favour building houses on the green belt have to climb.
Michael Ingle – michaelingle01@gmail.com
Michael Ingle - Interesting Times 
Leave a Reply