No one wants to see the 'character' of the area they live in change. Whether you have moved to an area or are a local by birth or long term residency, you get used to what you see around you, become familiar and comfortable with it, and for most people except those in the most deprived and run-down of areas, the idea of change is unsettling.
But it is a given that upcoming generations are going to need places to live if they are not to live cheek by jowl on top of their parents in over accommodated households. This and rising population which results from immigration will perforce demand that new housing is constructed - and at rates far higher than we have managed to date.
I've spoken before about the need for 'blue sky thinking' when it comes to housing; it's such an important component of a stable society, that of security of abode, that it cannot be left to the whims of the market to dictate either policy or the practical aspects of getting houses constructed.
Which is why Sunak's decision to capitulate to his backbench MPs and drop the manifesto targets of 300,000 new homes per year is so important. Instead, Sunak and Gove, his housing minister, will place more flexible targets in the hands of local authorities who will be able to reduce numbers in any given area if they believe that the building programme would "significantly change the character of an area".
Well of course the building of a significant number of houses is going to bring about significant changes to an area. There will be more people for starters. But the compromise, brought about in large part as a result of Sunak's weakness as a PM - his inability to stand up to his backbenchers, who in turn are afraid of their own seats being lost if they upset their constituents - is a recipe for nimbyism. Against such a backdrop no houses will be built at all.
Calculation of the required housing needs of a given area going forward is no easy thing; there are many variables and factors to balance, but what is clearly known is that to date we have singularly failed to meet the existing need, never mind that of the future. Sunak and Give have bottled it in their failure to meet their backbenchers head on. The decision they have made is a kicking of the can down the road that will leave thousands of young families unable to make that crucial step in becoming independent autonomous family units in our society, that of moving into the home that will form the central point of their lives in the decades going forward.
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The loss of a child is a terrible thing. That eight children should now have died as a result of scarlet fever almost beggars belief, but it is so. The streptococcus A bacteria that causes the illness is only rarely the cause of serious disease and rarely ever fatal. It responds well to simple antibiotic therapy and should never be a source of major public health concern.
The sudden spike in deaths that we are seeing - still very small in terms of the total number of cases overall - is said to be a result of the fall in natural acquired immunity as a result of locking down children and reducing their mixing with other kids during the two years of the pandemic. It is mixing that allows kids to maintain an adequate level of acquired resistance to these diseases, and in the absence of continual exposure this resistance wanes ever further to the point where normally mild disease causing organisms become more dangerous.
But, but but......
In typical fashion the government seems to be overreacting to the threat in its advice to gp's who encounter the disease. Against all consideration of the policy of limiting antibiotic prescription on the basis of controlling the development of resistance against this mainstay of our therapeutic armoury, the government are advising the
en masse prescription of antibiotics to whole cohorts of children in classes where a case has occurred.
Let's be clear. The mass prescription of antibiotics as a preventative measure rather than a treatment for existing disease goes against every grain of what we are trying to achieve in terms of slowing the development of resistance. The use of incorporated antibiotics in pig and poultry feedstuffs (in order to allow them to be kept at completely unnatural levels of stocking density) is significantly responsible for the development of much of the resistance that we currently see, and in the case of the children in our primary schools is completely unwarranted. Not only are the children not overcrowded to the point where this step could actually be required, the improper and presumptive use of the drugs could
actively hinder their future usefulness should a child go on to contract the bacteria in the severity of which demands actual antibiotic therapy be given.
Put simply, each time an antibiotic is used, it will progressively leave a residual number of bacteria behind that have greater powers to evade the killing action of that antibiotic. It is for this reason that we are told always to complete a course of antibiotics - in order to minimise the number of bacteria left alive. Those bacteria left alive form the breeding stock (if you like) from which the new bacterial generation will come - and all individuals in this generation will be of the higher resistance levels to the antibiotic that their 'parents' possessed. In this way resistance develops.
So no. The blanket prescription of antibiotics to whole classes or schools is absolutely
not what is required here. It is a gimmick, a public relations exercise the consequences of which will do nothing to alleviate the risk to our children from this disease. The absolute correct path here should be to concentrate on diagnosis of infection where it exists and then apply the standard symptomatic prescription of antibiotics where the indications are that they are required.
You'd think that common sense would tell our governors this, but no. They are so bound up in their need to be seen to be doing something, of making grand gestures, that all such sense fly's out of the window. Instead they would rather jettison the entire received wisdom of the medical community to date in a display of "look at us - we've got this!".
It is but a small version of the covid debacle, from which it would seem that our government has learned nothing.
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Just an interesting little addition to yesterday's post about the origins of Brexit and the institutionalised bias in our society towards an entrenched elite.
The Brexit camps of the referendum could be crudely separated into two, often opposed but working towards a common goal, camps.
The 'skinhead' camp which was all about immigration and sovereignty, as represented by Farage and Arron Banks, and the 'toffs' camp, about sovereignty, maintaining control of what they saw as their own fiefdom, in their own interest, and uncoupling of the financial markets from the restrictive constraints of European law - the creation of a tiger economy like wild west for investment where anything goes and the potential for profit (irrespective of the consequences to lesser mortals) was limitless.
In his book Chums which I referee to above, Kuper quotes Daniel Hannan (an arch brexiteer who is probably up there with Farage himself in terms of the 'blame' for Brexit having occurred) as saying the following about Farage.
I think Farage's ambition was to emerge as a leading politician from the referendum campaign, and he was much more focused on that than on the outcome of the referendum, which was a matter of surprisingly little interest to him.
Given that Farage is still involved with the Reform UK party which seems to be garnering some fall-off support from the ailing Tories, and he himself has intimated that he might stand for parliament in the next general election, I'd say that nothing has changed.
Another possibility is that he will do what he did last time (not that it did him much good) and not stand MPs in the seats where Tory support was marginal, only in those where the Labour vote needed splitting in order to pass those seats to the Tories. But this time he would probably negotiate better terms for himself in respect of securing a cabinet position or some other mainstream political position within parliament proper (perhaps a Lordship?). He's been left out in the cold by the Toffs to whom he delivered Brexit too many times for him to make the same mistakes again.
The truth is a Lion and does not need protection. Once free it will look after itself.
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
We are the Bloodguard
).....what with the series coming up and Harry's book in the offing, a good race related royal scandal was absolutely the ticket and bob's your uncle, Lady Hussey opened her mouth and stuck her great size nine into it.