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The Argument for Zoning in the UK

We’re already doing it, actually. Or sleepwalking into it; as so often, seems to me, to be our preferred method of embracing change or challenge.

We’re a sleepy nation these days – or maybe it’s just me in late January, but this is my first blog entry, which I’ve submitted myself to writing after repeated prompting from a number of associates. Forgive me if my lethargy manifests in this debut in the form of poor verb placement, sloppy word choice, overuse of commas, sentences ending with prepositions, and the suchlike, within. I’m not even going to spelcheck it.

Zoning. It’s already popular in the United States. Codified in state laws and urban planning whatevers. Zoning is where town planners have the power to decide what building is used for what; and how many of each building the town should have.
It’s necessary evil for the Americans; whose ambition to start businesses and build the personal American dream is boundless. So they throttle, bottleneck this energy, and town planners are charge with the duty and power to ensure that every Main Street has a Post Office, a Convenience Store, a Barber Shop, an Auto Garage – a variety of free, independent, yet necessary businesses / services available to the populace.
It varies from State to State and from city to city, please forgive if this essay is a little sloppy in research or indeed, truth – it’s not intended to be a survey or analysis, but an argument for adopting formalised policy.


This writer believes that it could be the Saviour of the British High Street – though the patient is already something of an asthmatic quadruple amputee. That’s the High Street; not the writer – who wheezes onward on four functional limbs, occasionally a viable head, too.


We’re already doing it. In contemporary British urban construction projects – shoebox flats stacked on top of ground floor retail spaces – certain retail spaces are engineered (during the design phase) to become restaurants, cafes, fashion outlets, mini-markets, estate agent offices (to sell all the flats above) and so on.


The informed reader should be asking at this point – if they don’t already know – why it is that between America and Britain, we both seem to have got it backwards(?)
If we’re already doing it, why is it not regulated or formalised in law? We love writing endless regulations! This writer is in possession of qualifications in a few aspects of our Building Regulations; mostly electrical.


Doubtless various components of formal Zoning are already legally codified – we have the Planning Permission procedures – but they’re not codified in our national consciousness.
Nor do they seem to be very well enforced. A tour of many parades and high streets will reveal two or three fried chicken parlours next door to each other. Similarly for betting shops, and beauty salons. Or as is increasingly popular – vacant retail spaces. But I digress.
Why is it so popular in America, where regulation and government interference is a sin?


Alright, answers: more than throttling unbridled American ambition, zoning preserves another sacred America value: competition. If Starbucks opens a franchise on a main street or in a mall in America, Costa wants to open one as well! So does McDonalds; and so does “Mom and Pop, Inc.” Zoning is both the American’s restraint and release valve. Having it formalised and codified at least ensures that the system benefits those who are willing to do their homework, rather than rush blindly into business.
For Britian, we don’t like zoning because, quite frankly, we think we’re above it, and lazy thinking informs this false superiority. For some of us, we don’t think beyond our scepticism of Government / Council competence / accountability. For others who adore regulation, we obsess over minutiae – an example would be the (now passing?) fad of steel measures for drinks measurement in pubs. For if we can expect a pub to serve at millilitre accuracy, surely we can expect the landlord to keep everything else in order – from his accounts to overall business viability, location, footfall and so on… and again, we’re lazy. So we micromanage fine details of how business may operate, exhaust ourselves poring over those minutiae, yawn and write off the overall layout of a high street as our noble sacrifice to the Free Market. Everyone’s happy, right? Except that we’re not.


The Yanks aren’t particularly happier either. Bogged down in bidding wars, endless backhand deals; they’re just as exhausted as we are.


But we have the power now to do something about it. As I’ve said, we’re already sleepwalking into Zoning as our architects and arcological engineers / concrete sociologists demark new developments into distinct residential and retail “spaces”, assign the fate of retail spaces during the design phase, tender to bidding companies prior to completion of the projects. But these people match in unaccountability what the Americans offer in corruption or, in many cases, virtue.


The sensible solution would be to embrace and codify British Zoning. If you’re groaning or scoffing; well, firstly I’m stunned and appreciative that you’ve made it this far through these lazily collated ramblings. But second, I appeal to you reader, to consider that having dedicated Zoning officers for our towns and cities might / would actually take a tremendous strain off our minds. No longer would building contractors have to deal with both client and public concerns; and the public would have an ombudsman with the insight of an engineer and the accountability of an MP. Who in turn would have more time to focus on the other concerns of his Constituents.


I’m sure greater minds than my own; or just minds, are already working away at making this happen. How successful they’ll be this writer can only guess, and poorly at that.


To start with an Argument and end in an Appeal has an obvious parallel with a failed legal case; but this essay was only intended to seal the pan before heartier morsels of prose can be proffered.

Positivity.

I don’t wonder about the power of “positive” thinking. I know well that taking optimistic approaches to problem solving yields measurably different outcome trends to taking pessimistic ones. I do, however, sigh at the overuse and misuse of the term “positive” in lieu of the gallimaufry of wonderful lexis with which our language is blessed. I’ll write a rant about that another time.

But I do wonder sometimes if the subconscious thought processes – though perhaps not beyond our control but at least beyond our free cognitive agency; have equally measurable impact on the outcomes of our choices and approaches. It fills me with hope – albeit in a glass half full sort of way; for despite my own outward sardonic melancholy and apprehensiveness, I think the source code of my programming fundamentally believes in the light at the end of the tunnel.

And that if it’s a train, then so much the better; for the train had to have come from a railway station somewhere out in the daylight. Maybe even sunshine. Perhaps rain, but they have rain shelters on the platforms.

Contrast to my father, (who despite, it must be said – plentiful – occasions of joy and spiritual fortitude) always seemed to harbour a faint, yet consistently bleak outlook on life. An old friend once told me of an experiment where depressive and cheerful people were observed walking past a £10 note planted in the street for opportune discovery. Those cheerful were more likely to notice it. Those not so cheerful, generally didn’t. But that statistical anomaly has never accounted for what I’ve long suspected may also be at work deeper in the fabric of the Universe.

In a phenomenon that I’ve neither seen nor heard of before or since; a two-litre bottle of carbonated water once spontaneously exploded on a shelf, behind him. Whilst he was sat on the toilet. We all heard his characteristic shriek of terror, followed by a plangent wail of despair… …but ignored it; for by this chapter in the in the family saga we’d all become quite accustomed to ghoulish laments emanating from various corners of the house, frequently the downstairs loo.

Might the perennial optimist have embraced the opportunity to enjoy an effervescent mineral water geyser-bidet experience? …rather than devoting an hour writing to Tesco in stentorian tones, with threats of shares being sold and boycotts offending product lines? “…should be re-named ‘Finest Natural Spring Hydro-Grenade’…”

I hope that I always possess, and most importantly, serve to bless my seven year old son with the curiosity and fearlessness to explore all avenues of perspective and inquiry. If only in the name of thorough discovery.

Cabin Fever

Eight days. Eight days my neighbour was blasting away at his decking with his pressure washer. An hour a day stretched over a two hour slot, on average. Now he’s started sanding it with a small power sander. Three days and counting. If I recall, he was quite successful in finance before early retirement. Tempted to put ‘finance’ in ” “.

I don’t have cabin fever, quite the opposite. But many do. We’re still in “lockdown” at the time of this entry. Rumour is the pubs will “open” (this time in quotation marks because I fear open will not be open in the sense that we knew it BL – that’s Before Lockdown. Ridiculous protocol to abide by, no doubt. Awkward balancing acts of mass neurosis and business priorities. Priorities being – to actively trade as much as possible, in case the rules of language and customs of sanity have been totally mutilated by the time someone reads this.

I am seeking for a psychological term to describe what I fear many people are going through within this Pandemic Panic Public Relations Hysteria Stunt. It’s not agoraphobia – though a part of it is uncertainty about the safety of leaving the house. It’s not hypochondria; not germophobia – though again; it bears all the hallmarks. It’s cognitive dissonance actually, and a sort of acute ambivalence. A word not usually associated with acute conditions; it remains thus.

People. We. We all know it’s a big PR stunt; a mass delusion. A folie a tout as opposed to deux. Yet the equation is in too perfect an equilibrium for so many people; between the benefits of leaving the house, seeing pals, taking jobs, work, sunshine, retail therapy and so on… and the capricious nature of the costs and risks of doing so. Phantom-like notions drift into people’s minds through the Media and voices of Government. That there is a killer virus out there; that there are riots on the streets (there are) – Black Lives Matter are busy barbequing major American cities and vandalising European ones. And the veiled threat that one might be judged be either neighbour or society or Police for leaving the house without a sufficiently valid reason.

So many people just stay inside. Nothing gained, nothing lost. But in 2020, in urban areas, it’s all but impossible to shut the outside out completely. We all have whatsapp; the noise of traffic outside our windows and commercial aircraft flights landing and taking off, and of course the incursion of television and radio media; serve as constant reminders that… we’re alone and surrounded at the same time.

In military terms I think the word is “ambushed”.

Karchers and Leaf Blowers.

As we grow from enthusiastic amateurs into seasoned professionals in any field; one of the lessons that we (hopefully) learn is that less is more.

Part of what makes the zenith of the first climb of the Dunning-Kruger curve so sharp is that it its noble mountaineers often espouse the professional values of precision, effectiveness, and later, expedience and longevity. Manifest as snappy, oft’ self-authored, four or five star reviews and two year warranties.

Past the nadir of the curve we realise the inherent follies in many of those younger values. And so follows the emergence of the values of unobtrusiveness, invisibility, silence; a more holistic view of both attention to details and foresight… and sustainability as a more nuanced understanding of blunt longevity.

As a young man riding the (post 2k bubble) wave of “home and office” (now called domestic and commercial) IT solutions and services, I originally marketed my services as independent, advanced, local, comprehensive, and flexible. I’m proud to say I honoured those promises at the time. But a little thought reveals how tidily those values mesh with the simple yet noble values of the initial peak described above.

As the wave began to wash up on the shore; I found myself feeling more than a little unclean when I’d grin at reading of a new computer virus that was set to wreak havoc on people’s home computers; Gold Rush! And somehow, however effective and long lasting my initial solutions may have (had) been at the time, time itself had exposed some degree of jejune folly.

Flexibility too is a bit of a folly if one truly knows the exact solution to a problem. Why let the client delay or convolute the solution they’re paying for? Often handomely? Expedience still holds value; but it is ephemeral in the true Tortoise and Hare interpretation.

I spent a lot of my time landscaping (that’s the grey area between building and gardening) to fill in those lucrative, yet somewhat seasonal IT travails. For reasons that confounded me as a younger chap; it was considered (by my seniors) something of a sin to hire and use a cement mixer. Landscaping after all, is about forks and spades; and good, honest, back breaking work.

Today on this day of writing this entry; the (professional, high end) building site at the bottom of my garden (new school for 800 pupils) dutifully started making its daily clamour no later than 8am; in accordance with the policies of the Considerate Constructor’s Scheme. I’ve worked on that actual site myself for four months, last year. One of my neighbours has also been blasting away at their decking and / or patio with a domestic grade pressure washer; for two hours now. At this rate I estimate he should be through to London clay by Friday and China in time for Christmas.

Oh how I used to take pride in such “attention to detail”. Though, it, and I were more expedient with the power of a commercial-tier Karcher. Another neighbour, and my own father, have in recent years discovered the marvel of the 2kW motorised leaf-blower / sucker. Popularised by American films featuring hectare sized suburban gardens; they now entitle all UK sexagenarians and older to (remaining) lifetime membership of the Inconsiderate Gardener’s Scheme.

Top-tip rule-of-thumb for the novice gardener; if you can’t actually hear Monty Don on your DAB whilst gadening; you’re doing it wrong. And if you’re still apprenticing at sixty; it might be time to try jigsaws instead. NO, STEP AWAY FROM THE POWER TOOL AISLE.

I’ve long cultivated a mawkish fascination and delight in all things Japanese. An investigation into any of their disciplined crafts and practices; be it cuisine (think sushi), or horticulture (think ikebana), or joinery (think of the humble box plane and the scimitar-shaped tenon saw)… or even warfare(?) (ninja?) – the quality of, – and emphasis on – unobtrusiveness permeates. So too does the smooth sweeping hand strokes of the seasoned artisan ripple softly through so many distinct arts.

Here’s to the soft, gentle swishes and swoops of the box plane, the garden rake, the razor sharp knife or… if the noise becomes too much to bear; the sword?

Patio tip: with a stiff brush and some detergent you can scrub the tiles shiny and then simply hose down. Leave the Karchers to the boys at the car wash.

Ambulance Sirens

With no apology for invented words, nor speling or grammarly errors.

Sirens. They’re antisocial, and a hallmark of a society struggling to contain chaos. This author assumes that both of his readership are already aware of why emergency vehicles do not sound their sirens (absent extraordinary necessity) after 11pm in most jurisdictions and 11.30 in others. See Rule 112 of The Highway Code.

Reference to that publication is probably as deeply as the original emergency services’ policy author researched legislation before coming to a decision, and settling on that time of night. And for most civil servants and civicly sensible people; who want seven hours sleep, and have to be up around seven most days of the week, it’s an obvious compromise.

Humans and animals with sensitised hearing, or indeed ears will know what an auditory blight they are in urban areas.

There’s something archetypal about making loud noise and the desire to draw attention to one’s self. Sirens are justified as the vocalisation of the cries of an innocent stabbing victim; of the wheezing gasps of a community pillar struck down by a heart attack – that for a short time, he or she must rightfully take pre-eminence over everyone else on the road. Even babies and the elderly trying to sleep in an afternoon, having not enjoyed a peaceful night in days or weeks.

The problem of the boy who cried wolf echoes in many things; familiarity breeds contempt, and an alarm constantly ringing commands the response of a maintenance crew rather than an emergency service.

Statistics are probably not available on how much hearing damage is caused by sirens; nor how many epileptic seizures are induced by strobing blue lights. Nor mental and biological stress and fatigue.

Statistics are probably available on how many people are killed or injured each year as a result of being run over or RTA’d by emergency vehicles hurrying to a scene or hospital. It’s not zero, and never will be.

With any hazardous phenomenon, for the surviving family, a single fatality justifies change to policy. Ask the IET who compile the electrical wiring regulations.

A solution to the epilepsy risk of those blue lights might be that they are re-engineered to illuminate and de-luminate on a soft 1Hz sine wave. It could be argued that the lights were the solution to the antisocial menace that was the siren itself – and probably was at one point considered such by minds greater than those of this writer. Or just minds. Repeat joke, I apologise.

Would sirens be much less effective if they were quieter? Or if their melody was composed less to alarm and more to inform? Would emergency vehicles find it much harder to weave through traffic?

This author perpetually feels that society is at a fork in the roads or on the precipice of a zeitgeist moment; where we have the power to choose one of two destinies. And that western, if not global society is headed towards a great division between the urban and the rural; the emergence of the 24hr Megacity as a gritty “oasis” of alleged law and order, isolated amidst a sprawling, “barbaric”, (but quieter) landscape.

This vision is perhaps best encapsulated, in this author’s memory, by various futuristic science fiction works such as Judge Dredd and to an extent, Blade Runner.

And better thinkers have noted and documented that the incumbent architects of our species’ future are already busy at realising the visions of those 20th century futurist authors, whose marvels of cinema and literature doubtless directly inspired them.

There was an article on 10th March, 2019, by Neal Sears, published in the Daily Mail about two identical twin sisters; one a paramedic, one an armed response unit police constable; who frequently run into each other during the courses of their shifts. Amusingly their respective colleagues routinely mistake them for each other. Allegedly (Sears’ comment?) they feel they have a telepathic sisterly bond. This author wonders if the known universe may collapse on the day that the life of a terrorist is saved by the sister of the lady who shot him. Both acting in their distinct, authorised lines of duty. Or if they might just have a falling out. Or end up entangled in court with telepathy being cited as a conflict of interest. But I digress. The story merely encapsulates… something ironic.

My second blog post and another call for a spirit of meta-maturity to solve a dichotomy apparently only being addressed by offices and officers who, comparatively and fundamentally have remained children for most of their lives. [footnote: the previous paragraph was added as an addendum to this post after completion; and ‘offices and officers’ makes reference not to the prior mentioned sisters, who are undoubtedly civic heroines – but to the planners who seemingly, still find it perfectly logical to have screaching sirens blaring out all day, only to be almost completely silenced at the witching hour]. Does your author sound too condescending?

He should. Informed perhaps by years of personal child-rearing and remembering the diagnostic advice on infant-care imparted by a lady once perhaps destined to become his sister-in-law: “if the baby’s screaming, he’s either hungry or needs his nappy changed, or he’s ill or just wants a cuddle” – check all those and then forgive yourself for giving up – for whatever duration is appropriate before restarting the diagnostic cycle.

Sidenote: refer to child-rearing manuals for cycle timings relative to age of the infant.

But don’t – don’t – go running to the infant shrieking or panicking yourself; that won’t aid in resolving anything; it’ll only encourage or sustain the alarm.

So turn the sirens off .Or down. And soften the lights. Certainly, the patient or victim may be ill; and may well have pood himself as well – and (God willing) will soon fancy a snack too… but as our societies become more internetted; technologically and psychologically; we may be overdue on taking decisive measures to save our urban centres from stumbling into a nightmarish future-noir destiny.

Later posts may address the First Horseman of the Apocalypse; the “Grammarly” product. And perhaps promote this author’s services in uninstalling garish white LED lighting and replacing it with traditional, warm, glowey incandescent or halogen luminaires. And doubtless all will be convoluted, extrapolated formulas of the basic Broken Windows Theorem. I really could have just tweeted “turn the sirens off, they annoy me”

Introduce Yourself (Example Post)

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

  • Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
  • Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

  • Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
  • What topics do you think you’ll write about?
  • Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
  • If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.

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