…Or should that be down?

Climate Justice Activists Scale Didcot Power Station

Climate campaigners have this morning shut down N-Power’s flagship coal plant at Didcot in Oxforshire, and Shipley Open Cast Coal Mine in Derbyshire was shut down for several hours this morning.

The twenty peaceful protesters rode their push-bikes past security guards at 4.30am this morning before splitting into two groups. One team has shut down the giant coal conveyors which feed the boilers at the plant, while a second group of nine men and women has climbed the inside of the iconic 200m-high chimney and reached the top. They say they have enough food and water to stay in place for ‘weeks, not days’ – during which time the plant will be unable to operate. Already the activists in the chimney are securing the route behind them to ensure they can’t be reached by police and security guards.

Meanwhile…

Today 20 activists from Earth First! (1) stopped work at UK Coal’s opencast coal mine near Shipley (2), Derbyshire. The protesters entered the site at 9.20am and climbed on top of machinery, intending to stay as long as possible they are currently occupying 6 vehicles. This protest is part of a campaign to stop new coal mines and coal power stations in the UK. It follows hot on the heels of last week’s Climate Swoop at Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station, where coal from Shipley is burnt.

Shipley is one of over 30 new coal mines recently given the go ahead as part of the government’s drive to expand opencast coal mining in the UK. This is to secure coal supply for the 6 proposed new coal power stations. The mine at Shipley alone will provide 1 million tonnes of coal over the next four years, equivalent to the release of 3.5 million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere.

Liz Cartmel, a protester at the site said “We recognise the important role coal mining has played in the local economy in the past, but at a time where our future survival hangs in the balance we need to work towards a future without climate destroying coal. Our only way out of the climate crisis is to reduce consumption and to use renewable energies such as wind and solar.”

I have recently posted an invite to Cornerstones preview in Didcot, so here is short update on how I feel about the opening and the exhibition in general.

It’s nice to see it all done for you, because I think art management is just as challenging as creation;) I am glad to see my works next to so many established local artists! I am glad to see it all done in a nice, pleasant way. The preview was a quiet event, at least at the beginning (we had to leave to London soon), so I met only few people, however I cannot even explain the thrill of having people just glimpsing at my works completely out of the original context! It fills me up with joy and motivates to do more, more, more…

The gallery is located in a lovely, modern building which fills me up with the postmodern spirit of garden photography locked in four white walls, withing a box of metal, glass, concrete in all colors, shapes and sizes!

This one can be seen throughout May, so make sure you check it out – there is plenty of good stuff to see there – and it’s only 10 min walk from Didcot train station (so 30 min from Oxford and 50 min from London Paddingdon one;)).

That was last week Friday, and tomorrow we are setting up the Taster Exhibition in Wantage Museum. I will be there on Saturday from 11Am to 1PM enjoying life musing from The Funky LLamas. Join us if you can!;)

If you live in the area you can probably already see mentioning of our exhibitions, but if you cannot get hold of those, do not worry! Here is one of the local papers on-line;)

See you at the opening in Didcot tonight!

You are invited along with your family & friends to the fabulous preview launch of the South’s Artweek Taster Exhibition

at

Cornerstone Arts Centre, Didcot, OX11 7NE

On  Thursday 30th April, 2009

Time: 6pm- 8pm

Plenty of Parking available at the Orchard Centre by Sainsbury’s ( walk up the pedestrian shopping street and the Arts Centre is opposite the big Cineworld Cinema)

A licensed bar will be open for drinks & light snacks

There is a vast range of talented work on show, paintings, sculptures, ceramics, textiles, jewellery and more.

It will be lovely to see you there if you can make it, bring your business cards as there wil be other people attending for a show so could be good a good opportunity to mingle and promote!

OK, so here is a small update on where we are with Oxford Artweeks. It’s basically starting next weekend, with guerrilla activity on Saturday on Oxford city center – around midday. You can meet us there walking around town with our works and all the possible promotional materials, being able to have a chat with interesting people…and my son:) Dawid is very excited about this part!

Our promo pack has arrived so if you are local to Oxfordshire you should already see Artweeks catalog with full program in your local shop or library. I did see it in library in Wantage today;) Make sure you remember the flag – it will guide you to really cool home exhibitions during whole May!

Next weekend marks also first preparations for exhibitions themselves. We will take our works to Cornerstone Gallery in Didcot, famous not only for its various artistic programs but for the architectural solutions of the building it’s based in, so it is really worth checking out! (not even an hour from London Paddingon, 10 min from Oxford by train).

Following weekend, 2nd of May, welcomes artists to take part in the annual Castle Competition – you have few hours to prepare a work on Oxford Castle to be able to have it rewarded and/or exhibited in the Castle O3 Gallery.

On the 5th of May our joint exhibition in Wantage Museum opens, and if you want to join me, come around on Saturday the 9th (10.30AM-1PM) – I will be there enjoying live music from our Twestival friends, Funky Llamas. This exhibition is open until 15th of May.

But trouble not – following weekend is my garden exhibition, ‘Flowers’ time. I am still considering a preview, but if not then, you can enjoy my works from 22nd to 24th of May. Please note: all income from my garden exhibition will go to support one of the locally important charities – RNIB - so do bring your wallets;) If you cannot make it, but will approve my works and want to support my cause, you will be able to donate towards the charity on-line too.

Until the end of May you can enjoy our works at Cornerstone in Didcot, so you have plenty of options and times to meet us and our works. Please do!

This year my exhibition is different. Main one will happen in Wanatge Squires garden, where you can judge for yourself my abilities to study colors in abstract. In Wantage Museum during the fisrt two weeks of May you can see one of my works, and in Didcot three other pieces. I must admit it’s fun to do single exhibitions, but somehow prepareing and taking part in join projects enrichens me. So, here is the team of people creating in Wantage, town I live in currently (except from Jill, who was not able to make it tthat day, but you will hear of her more later).

In the following few weeks you will hear about them more, but I warned you – I am spending spring enjoying creativity in all its forms and I am happy to meet others who feel the same about their skills and passions;) Names and more details very, very soon:)

Recently I lost it. I stumbled. I walked the darkness and a new type of frustration all on my own. I lost the sources of energy and joy…but only from my horizont. I cried, and I suffered. I wrote about it – but I was told I need a slap.

And so I did, and I am very happy that my readers do treat me with enough respect to be honest with me when I am whining – even if I might have my reasons, those are mine, and I need to deal with this. ‘Every situation has a solution’ and I think I should consider my recent period of slight depression as a healthy reation to lack of balance between work, family, friends, blogging and creativity. I am sorry if I was a bitch to some – I am sure they did not deserve it.

I have learned a lot, again, and I see new prospects and new challenges. I see a period of intense creativity and I am gathering all my energy to cope with responsibilities (three exhibitions in May).

I stumbled, and friendly advise; rational thinking and time taken off to understand where I should be standing help me to pick it all up again. So, if you want to see what is next, follow the blog for news on my Oxford Artweeks events in Wantage and Didcot (on-line gallery here), as well as Sea Land Project on a new blog.

As always – do let me know what you think;)

I have written about the copious amounts of carbon dioxide that coal fired power stations push into the air – far greater amounts per unit of electrical energy than any other form of electrical generation. However, the coal pollution is not limited to carbon dioxide, which warms up our planet. There are other dangerous by products of coal burning.

Of course the actual types of by product depend on the nature and quality of the coal that is burnt, and its energy content.

Most coal burning releases nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide. Both chemicals help make rain acidic, which in turn is making the oceans more acidic. It is indicative of the energy companies’ attitude to pollution that although it has been possible to reduce the emissions of sulphur dioxide from coal by 90% for many years, it has taken a European Union Directive about air quality to force the installation of Flue Gas Desulphurisation at Aberthaw Power Station in South Wales.

All coal burning releases soot. Many people die from inhaling soot each year – the United Nations place the figure at 40,000.

All coal burning creates ash and clinker. The ash often contains traces of heavy metals such as cadmium, lead mercury and arsenic. The electricity generators simply dump the ash and clinker, burying it in landfill. The ash and clinker has about as much use as those slag heaps, now largely grassed over, that surrounded coal mines – both ugly and dangerous. It has no use, so it is dumped.

Again it may astonish you to learn that the operators of Didcot Power Station want to dump ash from their coal burners in local lakes, through a pipeline. One small community, Radley, fears the consequences and has explained in detail the proposal at  http://www.radleyvillage.org.uk/ourvillage/Didcot_PFA/background.htm .

Most coal burning release mercury into the atmosphere. Some species of fish are very good at absorbing mercury and that makes eating those species dangerous for the very young and for pregnant women, as I have explained elsewhere on these posts.

Of course in release these and other by products, the power station operators are simply trying to maximise their profits from power generation because environmentally friendly expenses stand in their way of profits. They sell their electricity to us, and virtually all of us are more interested in buying the product as cheaply as we can, regardless of the environmental consequences.

I got Lou Reed’s Perfect Day stuck in my head this afternoon when I realised that I’d spent a day pretty much exactly as I’d choose, and it was wonderful. A simple day – nothing fancy at all, just a road trip, some charity shops, some English towns… Lovely.

Heading out this morning, first call was the petrol station. Inconvenience? Not a bit of it, when leaving with Munchies and Fruit Pastilles. Then away! On to Oxford, or rather the outskirts thereof, for a touch of Charity Shop Tourism in Summerstown and Headington. Students were gawped at, jacket potato was eaten, the air smelt strangely of seaside and bargains were negotiated. A new coffee machine and a Muji draw-on-able globe? What a day.

Then onwards to the very English country town of Abingdon to peruse its gardens and shops, and not least the famous town hall. It has stilts, you know. While we still had time left for shops, a brief diversion to Didcot. Didcot is an ugly town overshadowed by a powerstation and an eponymous train station, and an odd half-high street. We made a quick run in and out and I find – as always – that seeing new places, even ugly, weird ones, is fun. Human life is curious.

A day of local tourism finished – as the best days do – with a drive around to see where to go the next time we’re in the vicinity. Wallingford, Henley, possibly Maidenhead: we’ll be seeing you soon. Then back to very local tourism, and a fish/sausage/chip supper from Seashell so big it’ll knock us off our feet. Happy times.

Growing up in Didcot is very much like having a prostate exam. As much as you never wanted to be in such a position and as much as you try to get on with your life as if nothing happened, you can’t escape the knowledge that, metaphorically speaking, you HAVE had another man’s finger up your ass.

The sheer existence of Didcot relies on the necessity to link A and C with a B. While the eponymous parkway may have put Didcot on the map, it was the later introduction of the coal-burning power station that made it a visible blight on the landscape. While both the railway station and impressive cooling towers can be appreciated from either the comfort of a train carriage or a reasonably tall hill several miles away, you need to get closer to discover what really makes Didcot so…well, I guess you have to go there to understand (or maybe just read the relentlessly dull Twitter feed)

I was able to escape a little under a year ago and, to be honest, expected to miss the ol’ place a lot more than I do. I still return every now and again to visit my parents or scope some feral jailbait and I’m genuinely surprised by how much shittier the place is than I remember. Recently, I was struck with an inescapable comparison to the moment in Back to the Future Part II when Marty travels back from 2015 to find Hill Valley totally fucked – except worse as I didn’t even have a hover board.

Before tonight, there would have been little I could credit Didcot with except possibly for allowing me to claim a deprived upbringing whenever I think it’ll help. However, after watching an old episode of Mock the Week on Dave earlier, there is one positive thing to say:

Didcot offers undeniable proof that God exists. And he’s a bastard with a sick sense of humour.

You see, a few years back Didcot appeared in the top twenty list of the crappest towns in the UK. If enough people who lived there actually explored the town beyond the route from their home to the train station, this might have been cause for a fuss. As for the young boys and girls who fight with their Abingdon opposites out of pride for their community, their literacy rate falls somewhere just above being able to read the pregnancy test results and below the instructions for a condom, so they wouldn’t have found out about it anyway.

This isn’t shocking anyway. What is mind-blowingly surprising however (and provides final proof in that God character), is that residents of Didcot have the longest, healthiest lives in the whole of England and Wales! This article from The Telegraph uses the phrase “… residents enjoy the longest, healthiest lives…” but I think ‘enjoy’ is surely pushing the limits of journalistic integrity.

What kind of twisted world do we live in where one of the most depressing and soulless places in the UK also has its most healthily long-lived population? Living in Didcot’s kind of like being in a stable coma on life support – do yourself a favour and pull the fucking plug already.

Update! Here’s a video clip of that Mock the Week referencing Didcot (and legs on pies…)

..bo spokojny taki. Dzis to nawet udalo mi sie zdrzemnac! Wyobrazacie sobie?! Normalnie moglam sie po poludniu ukryc w sypialni i pokimac – bez zmartwien (lub tez o nich nie myslac), spokojnie…

Weekend zaczal sie od dosc cichego piatkowego wieczoru – przeczytalam kolejna ksiazke Joanne Harris – jak zwykle polknelam w calosci. Jakos ta pani lekko pisze, choc tym razem o wampirach, wiec cholernie sie wystraszylam, jak podczas lektury moje dziecko zaczelo skradac sie korytarzem, bo nie moglo zasnac…hehe…

Sobota zaczela sie paskudnie, bo padal deszcz a ja bylam umowiona z kolezanka na Old Street dosc wczescie, gdyz obie wybieralysmy sie na Media Camp – spotkanie blogerow i ludzi PR na temat sieci i Web 2.0 i takich tam. Juz w Didcot (choc myslalam, ze bedzie ok jak juz pokonalam deszcz i ciemnosc poranka – nie wiedzialam, ze o siodmej jest jeszcze ciemno – ta godzina dla mnie nie istnieje!!!) utknelam, bo po nocy padania hrabtwo zalalo. No rzesz qrwa! Zeby w tym kraju, po niecalej dobie padania szyny kolejowe zalewalo??? I do tego stopnia, ze kolej otwarcie przeprasza za chaos!! Chaos, rozumiecie, tak sie wypowiadali na wlasny temat – paranoja…

Na szczescie kupmela zaspala akurat te  20 min, ktore ja stracilam na dojazd z Didcot do Londyn Paddingdon (45min) przed Reading, z przeisadka, o.

Spotkalysmy sie doslownie co do minuty! W dodatku padal mi telefon,a ona nie miala laptopa, wiec wzajemnie sie podratowalysmy – ja dajac jej sotep do sieci, ona mi ladowarke do Nokii. Cud!

Dzien byl podly, a ja jakas taka niezorganizowana – bo nawet adresu tej imprezy nie mialam. (ta, na sieci mialam, ale nie spisalam, blondyna!). Kupela na szczescie miala – tez na sieci, ale jakos ta swoja Nokia wygrzebala i dotarlysmy z lekkim poslizgiem.

Media Camp byl zajefajny i polecam kazdemu, choc ludzie z naszej firmy podeszli do tego sceptycznie – fakt, nie dowiedzielismy sie nic nowego poza faktem, ze chyba jako firma nie mamy konkurencji. (wole iecej nie pisac). Jednak ludzie, kotrzy tam byli wykazali sie super wiedza i mysleniem. Poznalam przeciekawe a zarazem normalne osoby z zycia sieci w Londynie, wiec warto bylo.

Przed powrotem mialam jeszcze godzinke na pifko z Lolly, kumpela, wiec omowilysmy dzien i sprawy prywatne. Po plotkowaniu w miare spokojnie dotarlam do zalanego, ale juz ociekajacego z deszczu hrabstwa. Zastalam wyspane dziecko, wiec wieczor tez byl ok.

No a dzis juz ubieralismy choinke, lazilismy pol dnia w pizamach i takie tam obijanie sie.

Fajny byl ten weeked, a jutro szykuje sie ciekawy dzien. Dziecko do taty, a mama na Twinteval w stolicy. Wiecej juz tam przed Swietami nie jade. Dosc.

P.S. Pozostawmy w spokoju małe zajączki.

..do stolicy:P Jadę dokonczyć moje nauki etyki biznesu, choć jakoś w ogóle nie mam dziś do tego głowy. Wyjechałam jak jeszcze było ciemno i wróce po zachodzie.

Choć w sumie cieszę się, że mogłam zobaczyć wschód słońca – nie wstawałam przed świtem od wieków! Dzisiejszy był taki jakiś dziwny, bo niby niebo było zachmurzone i poranne promienie nie miały szans przebicia się przez chmury, ale tez tuż nad horyzontem niebo było zupełnie czyste – z elektrociepłownią w Didcot na pierwszym planie całość przypominała mi scene ze Stalkera…

No a teraz wsiadła do Oxford Tube jakaś wycieczka pań na emeryturze – wyperfumowanych i plotkujących o najnowszych wynalazkach ogrodnictwa. Ogrodnictwo zwalczę iPodem, z perfumami gorzej…:/

Ech…no to jadę…

P.S. Pozostawmy w spokoju małe zajączki.

South Oxfordshire District Council has abandoned its plan to link Didcot with Wittenham Clumps by a country theme park (see Didcot Country Theme Park to cost £2.5m). The council pen-pushers were taken aback by the force of the attacks on their scheme which, to their eyes, had everything going for it – lots of public money to splash about, nasty wild fields and hedges tamed in council-approved manner, and paths, sign-posts and public lavatories (“torlets” in the lingo of the council employee) all over the place.

They are now going for a “series of linked green spaces all around Didcot”. As I have said before, one wonders why the planning officers did not provide for such spaces as Didcot expanded, instead of having to retro-fit them into the acres of tightly-packed little boxes which Didcot has now become. Weak planners against strong developers, presumably.

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South Oxfordshire’s plan to tame Wittenham Clumps into a country theme park are reminiscent of Jerome K Jerome’s caricature of German tidiness. Why can’t these ghastly little people leave the countryside alone, why don’t they leave people to make their own leisure, and why did the planners fail to reserve green space out of the house-builders’ land?

The pen-pushers at South Oxfordshire District Council want to create a 1,500 acre “country park” stretching from Didcot to Wittenham Clumps. There is, apparently a “growing shortfall in green spaces” in Didcot, and a network of paths or “greenways” is proposed.

Alan Bennett’s play 40 Years On, is a sustained lament for a world which has gone. Published in 1969, it gently mocks each era’s values from the turn of the century – until the last couple of pages when mockery turns to a distaste which sends a chill over audiences, as it was meant to.

In our crass-builded, glass-bloated, green-belted world Sunday is for washing the car, tinned peaches and carnation milk.

A sergeant’s world it is now, the world of the lay-by and the civic improvement scheme.

Country is park and shore is marina, spare time is leisure and more year by year. We have become a battery people, a people of under-privileged hearts fed on pap in darkness, bred out of all taste an season to savour the shoddy splendours of the new civility.

The hedges come down from the silent fields. A butterfly is an event.

I don’t suppose local government officers read Bennett, or would understand him if they did. The contempt is not for lay-bys or civic improvements per se, and certainly not for sergeants, but for the officialdom which levels down rather than raises up, for the bureaucrats’ preference for the artificial alternative to the real thing, and for their assumption that people must have their pastimes made for them.

There are already two footpaths through the fields from Didcot to Wittenham Clumps. Doubtless they could do with a little clearance, a new stile or two and the occasional finger-post. We can guess, however, what a pen-pusher with £2.5 million to spend will do. There will be broad, hard tracks, suitable for bicycles, wheel-chairs and prams. “Country-style” notices, perhaps with acorns and squirrels carved on them, will point to the nature trail. There will be a car park and a lavatory-block, or “toilets” as they will be called. A café will be built, with an adventure playground and an information point.

There will be staff – play co-ordinators, nature wardens and traffic wardens. A new road will be built to take the traffic. Health & Safety will want to spend money on fences and notices and on making sure that no-one runs the slightest risk. Equalities will want to know that the very young, the old, the obese and all cultural and religious opinions are represented. Signs will prohibit smoking and drinking. There will be warnings to take your litter home but no bins. There will be speed restrictions and road humps and probably CCTV to check who comes and goes and what they do.

The pen-pushers will think it all as it should be – lots of public money spent, lots of government boxes ticked, jobs for all and an impressive new entry on some CVs. Above all, that horrid nature will have been tamed and put in its place.

In 1900, Jerome K Jerome published Three Men on the Bummel, a sequel to his more famous work about boats. The same three chaps visit Germany on bicycles. It must be 40 years since I read it, but the author’s description of the German’s need to improve upon nature came to mind as I pictured the bureaucrat’s dream for Wittenham Clumps.

Your German likes the country, but he prefers it as the lady
thought she would the noble savage–more dressed. He likes his
walk through the wood–to a restaurant. But the pathway must not
be too steep, it must have a brick gutter running down one side of
it to drain it, and every twenty yards or so it must have its seat
on which he can rest and mop his brow; for your German would no
more think of sitting on the grass than would an English bishop
dream of rolling down One Tree Hill. He likes his view from the
summit of the hill, but he likes to find there a stone tablet
telling him what to look at, find a table and bench at which he can
sit to partake of the frugal beer and “belegte Semmel” he has been
careful to bring with him. If, in addition, he can find a police
notice posted on a tree, forbidding him to do something or other,
that gives him an extra sense of comfort and security.

Your German is not averse even to wild scenery, provided it be not
too wild. But if he consider it too savage, he sets to work to
tame it. I remember, in the neighbourhood of Dresden, discovering
a picturesque and narrow valley leading down towards the Elbe. The
winding roadway ran beside a mountain torrent, which for a mile or
so fretted and foamed over rocks and boulders between wood-covered
banks. I followed it enchanted until, turning a corner, I suddenly
came across a gang of eighty or a hundred workmen. They were busy
tidying up that valley, and making that stream respectable. All
the stones that were impeding the course of the water they were
carefully picking out and carting away. The bank on either side
they were bricking up and cementing. The overhanging trees and
bushes, the tangled vines and creepers they were rooting up and
trimming down. A little further I came upon the finished work–the
mountain valley as it ought to be, according to German ideas. The
water, now a broad, sluggish stream, flowed over a level, gravelly
bed, between two walls crowned with stone coping. At every hundred
yards it gently descended down three shallow wooden platforms. For
a space on either side the ground had been cleared, and at regular
intervals young poplars planted. Each sapling was protected by a
shield of wickerwork and bossed by an iron rod. In the course of a
couple of years it is the hope of the local council to have
“finished” that valley throughout its entire length, and made it
fit for a tidy-minded lover of German nature to walk in. There
will be a seat every fifty yards, a police notice every hundred,
and a restaurant every half-mile.

They are doing the same from the Memel to the Rhine. They are just
tidying up the country. I remember well the Wehrthal. It was once
the most romantic ravine to be found in the Black Forest. The last
time I walked down it some hundreds of Italian workmen were
encamped there hard at work, training the wild little Wehr the way
it should go, bricking the banks for it here, blasting the rocks
for it there, making cement steps for it down which it can travel
soberly and without fuss.

For in Germany there is no nonsense talked about untrammelled
nature. In Germany nature has got to behave herself, and not set a
bad example to the children. A German poet, noticing waters coming
down as Southey describes, somewhat inexactly, the waters coming
down at Lodore, would be too shocked to stop and write alliterative
verse about them. He would hurry away, and at once report them to
the police. Then their foaming and their shrieking would be of
short duration.

“Now then, now then, what’s all this about?” the voice of German
authority would say severely to the waters. “We can’t have this
sort of thing, you know. Come down quietly, can’t you? Where do
you think you are?”

And the local German council would provide those waters with zinc
pipes and wooden troughs, and a corkscrew staircase, and show them
how to come down sensibly, in the German manner.

It is a tidy land is Germany.

Before you accuse me of adding anti-Teutonic xenophobia to my long list of politically incorrect vices, you should know that the Germans loved Three Men on the Bummel, and it was apparently used as a school text-book for some years. In much the same way, South Oxfordshire’s bureaucrats will gape in astonishment at the idea that their scheme to tame the fields, woods and hedges will attract criticism.

There is more to this, though, than dim pen-pushers moulding the countryside into their neat vision. There are echoes here of the Nazi Kraft durch Freude – Strength through Joy – movement, the state-controlled leisure programme. There is a patronising assumption that the people of Didcot must be helped and encouraged to get out into the “country”, and that without “greenways” (yuk) they will not have access to the fresh air. If you wanted to reinforce the prejudiced assumption that the people of Didcot would not lift their fat arses from their sofas without official encouragement, this is one way to do it.

There is also the small matter of the £2.5 million which is to be spent on this. One wonders where that will come from in this time of economic crisis – will the rate-payers fund it or will some munificent Belgian bureaucrat pay? What else will not happen whilst this urbanisation of the countryside is being paid for?

Not least is the question as to why Didcot’s expansion has not included provision for green space commensurate with its growing population. Estates of rabbit-hutches have sprung up all around the town in the last decade, full of commuting middle managers and their families. Developers must have made a fortune. Should not the planners have insisted on adequate open space? Or are they, like the planning officers of Oxford City, too much in thrall to the developers to make a stand? Perhaps (again like those of Oxford) they find actual planning beyond them, contenting themselves with rubber-stamping the builders’ plans.