BBC Breakfast this morning, interviewing a designer (didn't catch the name or what he is a designer of, but he hails from Lancashire) about proposed new strategies for planning housing estates in a bid to make people who live in them more neighbourly. This was the gist of his argument:
Well, of course, up to now, new building has given too much consideration to the car. What we need to do is put the cars away from the houses, round the corner somewhere so that people have to walk to them and, on the way, they'll meet their neighbours. No problem about cars being broken into because new cars are practically burglar-proof. (So what about those people who don't have new cars / can't walk round the corner because of disability / need to carry heavy shopping back to the house?)
And as well as freeing up all the space to meet your neighbours in, we can free up even more by having a recycling point down the road somewhere rather than having individual wheelie bins. So you could meet Mrs Bloggs going down to the recycling bins with last night's take-away rubbish in her negligee and, who knows, she could eventually become your wife.
(So it doesn't matter that she is apparently already married then? And are the females among us, by the same token, going to get the chance of meeting Mr Universe by the same recycling bins? And is the wearing of negligees manditory? Even in winter?)
All joking aside, the whole interview was a joke, made worse by the interviewers sitting there with serious expressions on their faces, nodding solemnly to every ridiculous sentence that came out of 'Mr Designer's' mouth!
But my question is this:
What provision is there for your average British misanthropist who just doesn't WANT to meet the neighbours and exchange a friendly but meaningless quip on the way down the road to his car or to throw out last night's rubbish?
You see, no consideration for minority interests!
