My objection to Hough End Fields “developments”

TFC has been forced to hit the pause button on their plans for Hough End Fields. The campaign (see website here) is still asking folks to submit objections before the “old” deadline of Tuesday 1st June, and there’s a good portal for this.

My general take on these things is to use the opportunity to tell them that the whole system is rancid, and that it’s a rigged game that they play, where they have all the fine words produced for people who want to believe that they give a damn, but if these words are ever inconvenient, then they are ignored. If I don’t do that, if I pretend that these exercises are anything other than cooling out the Mark, then a) I strengthen their shite (which you do anyway merely by participating) b) I feel dirtier than usual.

Fwiw, I read Animal Farm regularly. So should you. Not absorbing Animal Farm, as a text about the corruption of language and process, as a text about the uses of violence against democracy, is to render yourself powerless.

Dear Council officers and councillors.

I object to your typically disingenuous and ecologically destructive plots and ploys around Hough End.

You have, typically, failed to tell the truth about the impetus for what you are doing. You are doing this as part of your never-ending “branding” and “inward investment” schemes. This has nothing to do with meeting local demand for facilities, which was the line that I heard your bureaucrat trying to spin at the consultation event I went to.

In the middle of a climate emergency (remember that?)  you are proposing to create 167 additional car parking spaces. Have you even heard of the concept of induced demand?  More broadly, what signal does that send?

More generally, your proposal is inconsistent with a number of policies in Manchester’s Local Plan, as well as its Biodiversity Action Plan and Climate Change Framework. This doesn’t surprise me, because all of those are just for show, just meaningless blandishments which are never allowed to cramp your “style”. Ditto for the covenant governing the use to which Hough End can be put. These are just words that get in your way, and are then ignored.

This will wipe out more wildlife, not that you care, because anything that can’t hurt you you simply ignore and exploit. You have no honour. You don’t even have any long-term understanding of your own self-interest rightly understood. Maybe that’s why you went into this game. Who knows.

Doubtless, in keeping with your contempt for democratic norms and processes, you will categorise this objection as “neutral” or “supportive.”

We see you.

How do you sleep?

Yours sincerely

 Dr Marc Hudson