In Progress

Everywhere seems to be building developments and road works! If it isn’t done well it is best it is not done at all. In which case why do it?! The desire to improve is a human characteristic probably shared by much in nature. But the supposed improvements of buildings are hardly the stuff of natural selection or evolutionary development! Let nature take its course, is not an expression or description relating to the suburban planning or urban renewal obsession! The irony of so much of it being in the service of progress, is not lost on me. As a liberal minded fellow, I am not unaware of the progressive tendancy to sometimes progress in the wrong direction, or backwards, that is the sometime course of action of the modernising way of mankind!

I would like to say, “rant over”- but it isn’t really a rant and certainly isn’t over. In the law of the land, in the UK at least and probably in much law internationally too, there is a presumption for the householder or tenant, of “quiet enjoyment,” of one’s home. Yet in fact rather than in the fictitious world that exists in the everyday surrealism that seems to be the norm with such things, “loud enjoyment,” for the builders, developers, contractors, shareholders, of construction companies and landlords, wins often.

To upgrade that which is run down, is fine and often needed. To do so that takes into consideration the neighbourhood is another. But the former is often not the reason or motive for the development, happening, the latter is rarely the result for the resident or neighbour, suffering! Noise, clutter, mess, obstruction are the affects.

For nearly  four years, with the only  peace being during the most strict of the  lockdowns, and for the most recent year since it has been especially noisy, my so called neighbourhood has been a fine old historical area, surrounded by a building site! Firstly, it was the knocking down of an old building and the replacement of this with another. In the Far East and many countries, very large numbers of workers are the norm for such situations, doing the job quickly as a result. In the UK and some countries, fewer, indeed far fewer numbers of workers are employed, doing the job over a longer, much longer period. After three years of noise for replacing a near by local building, job as of yet not completed, we have had a year of improving several in our own apartment complex. And I use the word complex in more ways than one to describe this!

The aspect of upgrade or improvement, destruction and construction, that relates to climate change, is the particularly odd supposed progress. Too many plans and plots by planners and plotters to insulate buildings or make well meaning environmental improvements, in actuality  defeat the purpose or contradict the reasoning . To put in double glazing, is relatively modest a job. To remove all the windows in an entire housing complex, is  logistical havoc! In the area I am, there was nothing actually wrong with them. They were only twenty years old, these windows merely did not meet the latest preferences of the devisers of the latest models. 

There is more to this business of environmentalism, and believe me, both in the public and private sector, it certainly is for some, a nice and lucrative business. I remember the days when to be, as I have always considered myself, a genuine envrionmentalist, was to be concerned with, yes, wellbeing, before that word was ever used. And I am only in the group who grew up in the seventies and eighties, the older can remember it better. The feeling of being a respectable person with a hippy sensability. Indeed, I do not drive a car, or drink alcohol, or eat meat, or do drugs! So my hippiedom was and is very respectable indeed. Peace not war, for me, begins, like charity, at home. And it is in my home, working from home as I often do, that my peace and quiet are most disturbed.

Progress is an odd thing. More energy is used up in overly dramatic building projects, than would nearly always be, in modest improvements. Of course starting from scratch one would do things differently. In some situations though, such as housing emergencies, the overblown efforts of commercial developers is a luxury few could afford or would indeed want to.If only the world would embrace ideas like the Ustinov Hoffman Construction innovation. Where there is a real need for people in need, in an area of need, there is an imediate solution to a current problem. People who might be homeless, get a home. Easy to put up. Minimum of fuss. This is not for everyone or everwhere. But its principle, its ethos, is worthwhile. Need, and the needs of individual people, struggling, lacking, are secondary too often, to those of organised groups, benefitting, gaining. Lobbies that have seized on our understandable very necessary concerns, have traduced in certain situations, the notion that one’s environment is also about peace and quiet and the conservation of energy within us as individual people, and around us in natural surroundings.

I shall maintain my green liberal values. But I see value as more than the price of a job and the profit of an organisation. And  I mean benefit and gain, because even the not for profit sector know how to manouvre things all too well lately when it comes to this sector. 

I am almost developing a prejudice about developers! Its a work in progress though and could change and improve, if I could only get to move!

Now, talkng of work in progress, the main reason for this piece, we have lots of it happening on here. Ustinov Forum does it all in a way that uses little energy other than of a mental variety. It is, as Poirot would say, whether coming from Sir Peter Ustinov or anyone who played him, all done by the use, “of those little grey cells!” This is serious business. Coming soon, issues and ideas relating to, understanding history, defeating racism, unifying spirituality, defending transgenderism and more, all, here, in development…