New Planning Guidelines All Things To Everyone, Beams Pickles

Mr Pickles says everyone's behind him, which is believable

Property developers, tree-huggers, NIMBYs, farmers, bankers, decent working families, Labour, young people, the disabled, the security forces, terrorists, penguins, seals, whales, plankton, generations as yet unborn and John Carter of Mars should unite in praising the government’s new one-page guide to planning, communities secretary Eric Pickles declared today.

“Replacing 1300 pages of really tedious crap that was only of interest to nerdy planners and other interfering busybodies with a simple tick-box ready reckoner is the only way to safeguard the beautiful vistas of England’s grey and pleasant land, both now and for future generations to come,” he insisted with a big shit-eating grin.

Those Planning Guidelines In Full

1. Will the developer trouser a tidy sum from this proposal?
Yes - APPROVED
Of course not, I’m only doing it for the good of my health – go to QUESTION 2
2. Are local (herein defined as <10m) residents likely to suffer significant loss of amenity, health or life?
No - APPROVED
Only poor people – go to QUESTION 3
3. Is the developer prepared to offer a token Section 106 bung to the council in used fivers, thereby keeping a library in another ward from closure for another day?
Yes – APPROVED
There aren’t any libraries left – go to QUESTION 4
4. Is the development in a Tory marginal ward?
Yes – REFUSED
No - APPROVED

Tree-Hugging Lesbians Made Me Tarmac The Countryside, Insists Cameron

Sandal-wearing lesbian whale-fanciers from Greenpeace told David Cameron the only way to safeguard the environment is to place it all in the gentle hands of the construction industry, insisted the prime minister today, so the nice men in hard hats can seal it for ever under a protective coat of hard core and asphalt and charge you a hefty Save The Planet Tax for the privilege of taking your evil car out of your drive.

Welcome to England's grey unpleasant land

“If you cast your minds back to when we won the election outright two years ago, I warned you that we would be the greenest government ever,” observed Mr Cameron. “Well, I had a couple of things to crack on with first, such as my longstanding commitment to play basketball with President Obama, but you must have known I’d get round to saving the planet sooner or later.”

“Here’s the deal,” he continued. “I hand Britain’s remaining green bits over to my environmentalist chums at Amey, and they preserve them under ten inches of tarmac. This will be paid for by the money we’ll save on maintenance by letting the existing motorways fall apart; they’ll soon be glorious nature reserves for Britain’s threatened weeds. In future, as soon as my yellow-jacketed friends see a traffic jam forming, they will quickly paint in an new motorway, set up a tent to sell tickets and bob’s your uncle, that’s another endangered butterfly saved from extinction.”

“My panda-friendly advisors tell me this’ll work beautifully for airports, too,” he smiled. “But remember: every time you raise an objection, a beautiful smiley dolphin dies.”

US Construction Industry Still Not Entirely Clear On Concept Of Bricks And Mortar

As Hurricane Irene threatens to smash millions of flimsy wooden houses to matchwood and scatter the wreckage and its hapless occupants all over the east coast of America, the rest of the western world is desperately trying to understand why anyone in their right mind who lives in a corner of the globe noted for its extreme weather conditions would willingly choose to live in an overgrown shed in the first place.

“This is a brick, which is a reassuringly solid block made of baked clay,” explained a horrified British builder. “You stack them up on top of one another, offset by 50%, and put a layer of mortar in the middle – that’s a sort of quick-drying paste made of pulverised stone. When you’ve built up a rectangle of sufficient height, you top it off with a roof made of tiles, which are also made of stone. People can live in it for a couple of hundred years, despite pretty much anything the weather might throw at it. It’s been working pretty well over here for about eight centuries. You might want to give it a go.”

A typical American residential street

“Another thing you might want to bear in mind the next time the temperature drops to minus 20 is that bricks have pretty impressive insulating properties,” he added, “Planks, on the other hand, do not.”

Cowering Americans, however, stubbornly continue to believe that a flimsy assembly of timber easily recognisable to any time-warping refugee from the Dark Ages is the acme of a perfect dream home, even when it is hurtling through the sky at 90mph.

“The flight characteristics of wood are well-documented and epitomised by Britain’s legendary Mosquito fighter-bomber,” said Britain’s brick champion. “On the other hand, there’s a pretty obvious reason why no pilot ever took to the skies in The Bricky Wonder.”

Train to Gain

Britain’s railways may see their first major expansion since the 19th century, as Network Rail commissions a strategic review of five mainline routes to see if there is a case for building new lines. Passenger numbers have risen by 40% in the last ten years, with around 22,000 trains running on weekdays.

“By 2025 many lines will be full up, especially those running to and from the north and west of London,” said chief executive Iain Coucher. “The way things are going, we might as well park one enormous, stationary train with its front end in London and its rearmost carriage in Birmingham, book southbound passengers in the front carriage and north-bound passengers at the rear and let them walk along the 165km-long train to their seats. They’d probably get there quicker that way.”

The usual construction companies were rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of huge amounts of taxpayers’ money flowing into their coffers. “Back in the Victorian golden age of rail expansion, the tracks were laid by vast hordes of Irish navvies, whose lives were cheap and expendable,” said an industry spokesman. “Nowadays, with all the health and safety regulations and a shortage of skilled construction workers, the sky’s the limit. Or rather, the ground is.”

Builders Surprisingly Discovered To Be Dishonest, Conniving Cheats

The Office of Fair Trading has alleged that 112 construction companies in the UK have colluded to rig tenders for contracts, inflating their prices to the detriment of local authorities and other customers.

So far, 40 firms – including Carrillion and Balfour Beatty - have admitted price-fixing, and 37 have asked for leniency.

Balfour Beatty said that it had conducted a review of its practices, and neither promoted nor condoned anti-competitive behaviour. “We just did it, that’s all,” said a spokesman. “It’s like an addiction – we knew it was wrong and we often beat ourselves up about it, but we just couldn’t stop ourselves. Please don’t condemn us - or indeed fine us up to 10% of our turnover - for ripping off ordinary council taxpayers to fund our addiction. Have mercy on our huge performance-related bonuses.”

Carillion said that the OFT investigation only applied to its JM subsidiary, formerly Mowlem - and that the OFT had granted it leniency, ordering it to write out “I must not form cosy rip-off cartels with my so-called competitors” a thousand times.

The construction industry hopes the allegations will not tarnish the popular image of the friendly, honest, value-for-money builder.