Letters | 27 March 2010

Rural matters

Sir: Alexander Waugh’s reference to planning officers asking impertinent questions about sexuality (‘The countryside under attack’, 20 March) reveals but a glimpse of the crackpot behaviour considered normal by these people. Last autumn, I went to an event sponsored by CABE, the government architecture quango, in which someone was brought in to lecture the audience, mainly council planners or diversity officers, on the importance of ‘inclusive planning’. This apparently requires councils to analyse the supposed different needs of people according to their race, religion or sexual identity, and to ensure that plans for public spaces are designed accordingly. The speaker’s argument rested on a series of astonishing non-sequiturs and ended with her excited announcement that she was conducting what she called ‘research’ into the different ways that LGBT — lesbians, gays, bisexuals, the transgendered — experience their environment, so that this could be translated into planning bylaws.

I was particularly struck by the fact that any dissent from this attitude was treated by the assembled diversity officers as high treason. When I said that I didn’t want to have special planning arrangements made for me, they all started shouting angrily, the woman next to me actually shaking her fists.

Timothy Brittain-Catlin
Kent



Sir: Well done to the Spectator for highlighting the damage already done to the countryside by New Labour and what we have in store if they win the next election. It will be a catastrophe.

Alexander Stilwell
Godalming

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Sir: In reference to your leading article on the propaganda war (20 March), I hope your conclusion that ‘our votes are not for sale’ proves correct. I have a nagging doubt, however, that the main reason for the polls being as close as they are is that roughly 35 per cent of the electorate actually want the Labour party to continue.