All posts tagged: Towns

New towns and old ideas: Labour’s housing plan – podcast | News

New towns and old ideas: Labour’s housing plan – podcast | News

Published by skeptic

Labour’s key housing pledge is to build 1.5m homes if it wins the general election. Its plan includes a promise to build new towns but what would it take to pull it off? “I think the new towns idea is very grabbing,” Robert Booth, the Guardian’s social affairs correspondent, tells Hannah Moore. “To build genuine new settlements, which are sufficiently large to have all the infrastructure, all the character, all the sense of place of a town or even a small city, rather than just another housing estate.” However, it’s not clear how Labour would achieve this policy. “The level of detail that Labour have put out about this is thin,” says Booth. “We don’t know where these might be, we don’t know very much about how they would be funded or delivered, and how long it would take to do that.” Booth explains how Labour plans to change the planning laws to allow for more building, including on some greenbelt land. He reports from Hitchin, North Hertfordshire, where former greenbelt land is already zoned …

Why are the Tories collapsing? These true-blue towns know the answers – video | John Harris, John Domokos, Frances Rankin, Noah Payne-Frank, Katie Lamborn and Christian Bennett

Why are the Tories collapsing? These true-blue towns know the answers – video | John Harris, John Domokos, Frances Rankin, Noah Payne-Frank, Katie Lamborn and Christian Bennett

Published by skeptic

In the latest episode of Anywhere but Westminster, John Harris and John Domokos go to Woking, Guildford and Aldershot. Most of England’s south-east used to be loyally Conservative – now, however, people in the “blue wall” are struggling, cuts are biting, and Toryism today is leaving younger voters behind. Source link

Paris can wait: how we dodged the summer crowds by Interrailing to Europe’s smaller towns | Europe holidays

Paris can wait: how we dodged the summer crowds by Interrailing to Europe’s smaller towns | Europe holidays

Published by skeptic

We were sitting enjoying a quiet beer at a bar in Ghent when I realised we’d made the right decision. Ghent was humming but not heaving, cheerful but not chaotic. It was the first night of our three-week Interrail trip with our 18- and 16-year-old sons. Now, after a long train journey, the calm ambience of the medieval Belgian city left us feeling relaxed rather than exhausted. An Interrail ticket opens up 33 European countries by rail and many people seize the opportunity to visit capital cities on their bucket list. A typical itinerary takes in big hitters like Paris, Prague, Rome and Madrid. We decided to do things a little differently. Our 22-day continuous Interrail pass meant no extra travel costs and we were determined to make the most of it Our ultimate destination was Budapest, but our route there and back took in smaller, less frenetic towns and cities. We opted for Delft and Utrecht rather than Amsterdam, Baden-Baden in Germany’s Black Forest instead of Berlin, Salzburg over Vienna and Lausanne, not Zurich. …

‘Town’s getting multicultural and that’s good’: How Swindon views changes in its workforce | UK News

‘Town’s getting multicultural and that’s good’: How Swindon views changes in its workforce | UK News

Published by Sam

The arrival of the Victorian railway turned Swindon into one of the fastest-growing industrial towns in the UK. Workers flocked to the thriving Wiltshire hub from all over Britain. In more recent times, Swindon has been attracting people from further afield – so many, in fact, that one in five of the town’s population was born abroad. In 2011, 26,911 people in Swindon were born outside the UK. By 2021, that figure had risen to 47,656. The British-born population, by comparison, had risen from 182,215 to 185,754. On Manchester Road there are a host of shops, with signs boasting goods from all over Eastern Europe and South Asia. There are dozens of small businesses with diverse heritage. Asher Graham, who owns a barber shop on the street and has lived in Swindon all his life, says he has seen a change over the last few years: “The town’s getting multicultural and that’s good. “That’s what we need and like – everyone’s just getting to work.” Mr Graham employs two foreign-born barbers – one, Gaja Sherlekar, …

In the West Bank, Guns and a Locked Gate Signal a Town’s New Residents

In the West Bank, Guns and a Locked Gate Signal a Town’s New Residents

Published by Sam

From the outskirts of his town in the West Bank, the mayor surveyed the rocky hills stretching toward the Dead Sea where Palestinians had long farmed and herded, and pointed out the new features of the landscape. New guard posts manned by Israeli soldiers. New roads patrolled by Israeli settlers. And, most tellingly, a new metal gate blocking the town’s sole road to those areas, installed and locked by the Israeli army to keep Palestinians out. “Anyone who goes to the gate, they either arrest him or kill him,” said the mayor, Moussa al-Shaer, of the town of Tuqu. On the other side of the gate, atop a bald hill in the distance, stood one of the area’s new residents, Abeer Izraeli, a Jewish settler. “With God’s help, we will stay here a long time,” Mr. Izraeli said. The case of the two people on either side of the gate is a particularly clear example of a dynamic playing out across the Israeli-occupied West Bank. As much of the world has focused on the war …

General election: Conservatives pledge £20m each for 30 towns | Politics News

General election: Conservatives pledge £20m each for 30 towns | Politics News

Published by Sam

The Conservatives have pledged to give £20m to 30 towns across the country – a move the Labour Party has branded a “reckless, unfunded commitment”. Rishi Sunak’s party said it would add the towns – many of which are based in the Midlands and north – to its existing long-term plan for towns, increasing the number that will receive financial support to more than 100. The Tories said local people in each area would decide how the money would be spent, through new town boards composed of community leaders, businesspeople, local government and the local MP. Election latest: Starmer says Abbott ‘free’ to stand for Labour The prime minister said the “bold action” would “transform” 30 towns, as he claimed Labour’s record in government “shows they don’t care about towns – neglecting their needs, allowing them to decline and focusing instead on cities.” “Sir Keir Starmer has no plan to unlock opportunities in towns and would take us back to square one,” he said. “Building on our strong track record of levelling up in Teesside …

Labour must beware the pitfalls of its new towns policy | Housing

Labour must beware the pitfalls of its new towns policy | Housing

Published by skeptic

As a former town planning policy adviser to both Tony Blair and David Cameron, I have only one question about Labour’s proposed new towns: who will benefit from the significant increase in land value arising from granting planning permission for them (Labour will aim to reveal new town sites within first year in power, 20 May)? Postwar new town legislation forced landowners to sell land to the state at the existing use value. The surplus from the later resale of the land at market prices paid for infrastructure and affordable housing. Angela Rayner gave no suggestion that Labour would deploy such heavy artillery. But if it does, it would be well advised not to announce new town locations until it has control of the land, “grey belt” or otherwise. Alternatively, existing tools such as planning obligations and community infrastructure levies could be used to tax this value out of the hands of the landowner beneficiaries, with the proceeds spent locally. These raise £7bn annually across England, mostly in areas under the biggest housing pressure. They …

A New Surveillance Tool Invades Border Towns

A New Surveillance Tool Invades Border Towns

Published by skeptic

This week, WIRED reported that a group of prolific scammers known as the Yahoo Boys are openly operating on major platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, TikTok, and Telegram. Evading content moderation systems, the group organizes and engages in criminal activities that range from scams to sextortion schemes. On Wednesday, researchers published a paper detailing a new AI-based methodology to detect the “shape” of suspected money laundering activity on a blockchain. The researchers—composed of scientists from the cryptocurrency tracing firm Elliptic, MIT, and IBM—collected patterns of bitcoin transactions from known scammers to an exchange where dirty crypto could get turned into cash. They used this data to train an AI model to detect similar patterns. Governments and industry experts are sounding the alarm about the potential for major airline disasters due to increasing attacks against GPS systems in the Baltic region since the start of the war in Ukraine. The attacks can jam or spoof GPS signals, and can result in serious navigation issues. Officials in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania blame Russia for the GPS issues in …

10 of the best beach towns in Europe, with places to stay | Beach holidays

10 of the best beach towns in Europe, with places to stay | Beach holidays

Published by skeptic

Assos, Cephalonia, Greece There’s something quite particular about small but perfectly formed Assos – butterscotch and rose-pink houses line a horseshoe bay, with Venetian ruins scattered between the narrow alleys. There are two small beaches, but the real joy is to rent a motor boat and discover the small bays and coves that fringe this part of the Cephalonian coast. Walkers can follow the path out on to the headland to the ruins of Assos’s 16th-century castle; there’s not a huge amount to see, but the views make the walk worth it. Roi Suites is a bougainvillaea-clad cluster of well-equipped studio flats in a waterfront neoclassical building, with gorgeous sea views from the pool terrace. Doubles from £117 (minimum seven nights), roisuites.com Akyaka, Turkey A boat on the Kadinazmagi Creek, Akyaka. Photograph: Alamy One of Turkey’s “cittaslows” – slow towns, with an emphasis on nature and sustainability – Akyaka sits at the mouth of the Azmak River on the shimmering Bay of Gökova. Behind the beach, a lattice of bougainvillaea-clad streets is home to traditional …

Target Towns: Voters in Grimsby have their say on Politics Hub With Sophy Ridge | Politics News

Target Towns: Voters in Grimsby have their say on Politics Hub With Sophy Ridge | Politics News

Published by skeptic

Voters in Grimsby – one of Sky News’s election Target Towns – have been offering their views on politics, politicians and “broken promises”. The electoral battle in Grimsby and Cleethorpes, the Target Towns, will be fierce. Labour will need an 11.7 point swing to win this newly-merged constituency back from the Conservatives. In 2019, residents in Grimsby voted Tory for the first time since the end of the Second World War. The old Cleethorpes constituency was always more of a bellwether, having voted Conservative since 2010. However, it has shed some of its rural, Conservative-voting residents in the merger. Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player 0:52 Sunak or Starmer? Politics live: Why have politicians lost people’s trust? Speaking on the Politics Hub With Sophy Ridge, small business owner Shannon said she might not vote in the next general election later this year as she “just can’t trust anything anybody says”. She said she has felt this way since Brexit – something Grimsby was overwhelmingly in support of – because “we were …