Growth is not always a good thing

Assuming about three people to each residence this would increase the population of the district by what was approximately the population of Leamington when I was a boy. I appreciate the problem that confronts the council given the the reasonable assumption that the Planning Inspectorate would let developers build this self same number somewhere within the district. However, I do believe that we are well beyond the time when as a continent, country let alone district, we need to do some urgent recalibration of our needs and aims across a wide spectrum that might well decide that such wholesale expansion is not only undesirable but not needed. The elephant in the room in case it has gone unnoticed is the European Union which is displaying classic symptoms of becoming a non union. At present all those within this union are free to live anywhere they choose within the union and this does make any planning policies subject to so many variances as to make them virtually useless. It is self evident that we do need extra houses but there is a risk that no matter how many we build given uncontrolled immigration we might never be able to build enough.

There is an argument that setting the construction industry such a task would do wonders for the economy by stimulating growth and there are siren calls for such tasks to drag us out of the present recession. I am not persuaded by this argument and in fact the current austerity/growth argument needs refining. Not all growth is good growth, after all we do not encourage the growth of cancer within the human body! A major expansion of construction projects will undoubtedly suck in both material and labour from abroad worsening our already chronic balance of payments deficit. I have no doubt that the statisticians could point to the economy moving in the right direction if we built these houses sooner rather than later. However, the Titanic was moving in the right direction until it encountered an iceberg! I fear unless we address urgently the imbalance in our trade with the rest of the world we too will sink! Currently we appear to lump all economic activity into into a GDP/growth package and judge our progress as a nation by the results. Frankly, if Primark were to open a store in Leamington and created ‘x’ number of jobs locally this would be heralded correctly as good news for the local economy and would add however marginally to the growth in the district and country. However, as most of the goods sold would be imported adding to our trade deficit I would see only long term negativity.

I firmly believe that the European Union needs massive reform, which I doubt it will ever achieve, or it will be the dream of some that becomes a nightmare for all. The gravy train is currently headed for the rocks of history and when and if we are truly able to govern ourselves again would be a more appropriate time to consider the validity or otherwise of such large scale developments. - J.H. Pearce, Church Lane, Lighthorne.