DEMOLISH ALL THE THINGS.

I fucking told you. Eric Pickles has signed up for the deeply dodgy Create Streets agenda, on the basis of a report drawn up by a bunch of estate agents. On which planet isn’t this an outrageous conflict of interest?

Also, he wants to get rid of terribad concrete towers through….system building.

But Mr Pickles said he was keen to stop any more 1960s-style tower blocks, which he dismissed as “concrete carbuncles”.

Mr Pickles was today visiting Rainham, Kent, to promote affordable homes from new “offsite” construction techniques, billed as a modern successor to post-war pre-fabricated housing.

Meanwhile, I didn’t see any response from this event, bunch of plastic gangsters that you are.

5 Comments on "DEMOLISH ALL THE THINGS."


  1. I should have gone, Cowcross St is quite convenient, but it was a long day and the thought of listening to what is effectively an Estate Agent’s Presentation on Steroids… well, morale failed…

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  2. Hmmm, back in the 1970s Leeds MDC found that only 29 out of 140 tower blocks in the city needed remedial work, but over 3300 ‘ordinary’ system-built two-storey houses required urgent repairs. But as we known, high-rise flats do represent one of the first steps on the road to serfdom….

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  3. @Igor Belanov

    *Warning crank theory ahead*

    I always feel part of this is that people are generally really bad with aggregate numbers. The cost of repairs per person might have been lower in the tower blocks, but the total price per block gave out a lot of sticker shock compared to the two-storey houses.

    I know this should be impossible in modern (even 1970s) organisations, but in my working experience, it still happens, even more than I expect.

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  4. Yes, I’m sure there’s something in what you’re saying.

    I was feebly trying to make the point that tower blocks don’t necessarily represent some kind of horrible dystopian past. They were less popular with tenants than ‘traditional’ styles of housing, but not disliked as much as two or three storey flats or maisonettes, which Leeds found some trouble filling. Judging the qualities of buildings in a socio-economic vacuum has not helped the cause of housing in this country.

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    1. Certainly true about Bradford; in the end they kept the towers and blew up the mediumrise. Having delivered Yorkshire Co-op white goods into 8 story buildings in parks without lifts, I could get with that.

      Reply

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