Monday, December 04, 2006

Lancelot Hogben

"You may provide creches, school feeding, family allowances, holidays with pay for expectant mothers, & 1001 other inducements. If you do not give people space you will not make parenthood endurable"
Lancelot Hogben wrote that in his 1939 book Dangerous Thoughts. He was particularly railing against the prospect of European style 'workers flats' being built in Britain. Well, we learnt that lesson the hard way. But now we, collectively, not just the government, continue to build ever pokier houses, ever more closely jammed together, because we have convinced ourselves that we have no space for better

Nobody who has ever travelled by train from Manchester to London could possibly believe that; once out of south Manchester only a tiny portion of the country is built over until you get to Watford