End of eating dogfood
I wrote the Press Release System (PRES) back in 2000, and have kept my own blog on it since 2004. It wasn't a bad blogging engine. But I didn't promote it nearly enough, and very few people use it. So it no longer makes sense to maintain it — it's time to move to a more mainstream engine.
I can't help being slightly sad.
Site specific low cost housing for a windy site
Part of the issue of building housing on the site we're considering is the wind speed, which is high. I imagine we're all going to want homes which don't take a lot of energy to heat, and the wind-chill effect on exposed walls is going to be considerable. The parts of the site which are most exposed to the wind are also the sunniest — the southern and western slopes. Of course, one can insulate, and straw bales are worth considering.
However the alternative, given that we have reasonably steep slopes, is to get down out of the wind. And if you do that you also lessen the landscape impact of the dwelling dramatically.
We all need structures which are low cost and simple to erect (since we're likely to be using mostly our own labour).
Practicalities of 'affordable' housing
This document attempts to address how in practice we would implement an affordable housing policy if we choose to do so.
The company — that is to say us together as a corporate entity — will buy the farm and resell the land to each of us; in reselling the land it can add a burden. But that would be a burden on the land, not on the dwellings, and I don't think that's what we want. We could probably sell the land with a condition of sale that any dwellings built on it would be subject to the burden, but I'm not certain exactly how we're do this — we need to check with a lawyer.
Rural housing burden
A Just Price for housing
Standing Stone: reasons for adopting a 'just price' for housing
We live in a late capitalist society in which democratic politicians have deliberately stoked a speculative bubble in housing prices, because most voters are property owners and spiralling house prices mean that those who are already on the housing ladder feel richer. The consequence of this is that, over the country as a whole, house prices are already beyond the reach of many folk on ordinary wages. Along the Solway coast, the pretty villages have a price premium because they are attractive and pleasant places to live, but local wages are depressed. This means that folk working in the local economy cannot buy houses locally — unless they have inherited wealth.
So begins a process of clearance which is just as socially corrosive as the clearances of the eighteenth century, when the landowners enclosed land which had traditionally been common. The reaction, then, here in Galloway, was of a violent revolt by the country folk, throwing down the walls of the new enclosures and burning barns. Now, here in Auchencairn, I think the Caldows and Helen Sankey are the only people born in the village who still live on the main street (Geordie Milligan lives on Spout Row). Every other house is owned by incomers, and the native population has been effectively cleared across the burn into the bantustan of social housing. We have a very nearly complete ethnic segregation, with those who live in the old village now overwhelmingly rich and English, and the Crescent overwhelmingly poor and Scots.
Auf Essen in Deutschland
I've spent the week in Germany, where I've been performing a safety audit on a device made by a German subsidiary of a Swiss company on behalf of an English subsidiary of a French company. I write this sitting in France, fifty metres from Switzerland, while waiting for a plane to fly me to the Netherlands and thence home to Scotland. It's all remarkably painless.
But let's talk about Germany. Lots of the things you thought you knew (or I thought I knew) about Germany turn out to be true — or at least, turn out to be true of small towns on the fringes of the Schwartzwald. My view might be slightly influenced by the company I was auditing, by the fact that that Swiss-owned engineering company was absolutely obsessive about quality in everything they did (including hospitality). It was engineering of the kind I associate with Germany: always up to a quality, never down to a price. Over-engineered rather than under-engineered; good and thoughtful design, but emphasising sturdiness and durability over style.
The taxis were spotlessly clean, their drivers unfailingly courteous. The factory was clean and efficient and all the staff positive, relaxed, confident and happy to explain their work. The hotel was extremely well fitted and comfortable (and clean), the rooms generous and luxurious, the staff helpful, friendly and welcoming. They were mostly middle aged, not young; I think almost entirely local; and the ratio of staff to guests higher than you'd find in anything but the most upmarket British hotel. Yet the cost of a room was exactly the same as in a grubby corporate flea-pit in East Kilbride — where you would not have got the delicious and varied breakfast.