• Once upon a time…

Once upon a time, there was an elderly man called Mr Potus who lived in the largest house in the village, surrounded by substantial grounds. He had an exceedingly good opinion of both himself and his property, although both had seen better days.

He had a large household of family members, servants and dependents, all of whom he treated with a capricious and bombastic superiority. He was generally well disposed towards them providing they did what he said and believed everything he told them. Unfortunately, a good proportion of them did not. He was a meddling attention-seeker who loved hearing the sound of his own voice. Anyone in the village who displeased him would be subjected to furious, high-volume rants and threats.

Not far away lived another elderly man called Mr Ayer-Toller. His property was quite extensive but far more run-down.

He too had a sound opinion of himself and kept his family members, servants and dependents, particularly the female ones, in a state of subjection. He, like Mr Potus, had some singular and deeply-held views about how his household, and the world in general, should be run. He too was a meddler and was unpopular with many of the other villagers, being accused of poisoning pets, sowing weeds in their garden and polluting the river.

All in all, the two men had a lot more in common with each other than either was prepared to admit.

Perhaps for this reason, the two detested each other. Each felt that the other was the architect of all their problems and, with rather more justification, constantly trying to undermine them. The strong beliefs each held, though similar in many ways, also contained some startling differences as to how life should be organised. Neither held back from saying that their dearest wish was that the whole village would be run according to their precepts, with them at the head of it.

• Hormer’s Lane

Through the centre of the village ran a path called Hormer’s Lane. This was a very convenient cut-through for the residents as it linked the main shopping area with the main residential quarter. Due to some ancient legal quirk, a small and narrow part of the path was owned by Mr Ayer-Toller.

From time to time he would threaten that he could close it off, but never did so. It was too convenient for everyone, including him – after all, he owned a profitable shop in the High Street that sold coal and firelighters. The remarks were merely to remind everyone that he was a big man and not to be trifled with.

Mr Potus’ household was large and greedy and consumed an enormous amount of food, much of which was carried down Hormer’s Lane. The idea that the hated Mr Ayer-Toller might block this route reduced Mr Potus to a state of blistering rage whenever he thought about it.

Mr Ayer-Toller continued to mutter his threats and Mr Potus would continue to fulminate his frustration. And so it went, from bad to worse, but always with each party pulling back from direct action.

• Enough is enough

The day came when Mr Potus decided that he’d had enough. There had been stories that some of the Ayer-Toller household were displeased with their living conditions. If, Mr Potus reasoned to himself, he could disturb Ayer-Toller’s grip on his part of the village, his nemesis might be driven to leave. A new paterfamilias might then emerge who’d be more amenable to Mr Potus’ worldview.

He therefore began to throw rubbish into Mr Ayer-Toller’s garden and to swear at him over the fence. Mr Potus was blessed with a strong throwing arm, stronger than Mr Ayer-Toller’s, and so his adversary could not directly retaliate. He did, however, throw rubbish of his own into the gardens of the houses nearer to him which were owned by Mr Potus’ dependants, adding choice insults of his own.

Before long, these parts of the village were awash with cabbage stalks, dog mess, half-bricks and offal, while the air was full of the sound of the two foes swearing at each other at high volume.

Mr Potus’ plan did have one immediate result, for Mr Ayer-Toller soon departed. However, his successor was not, as Mr Potus had hoped, an amenable replacement, but his son. Young Ayer-Toller proved even more difficult to deal with than had his father. Confronted with these physical and external assaults, the disputes in the Ayer-Toller household became forgotten. Mr Potus’ aim of displacing the entire family and its “crazy views” had actually made it more secure.

Eventually, Young Ayer-Toller decided to enforce the closure of Hormer’s Lane at its choke-point. Fewer and fewer people were in any case using it as, with all the ordure and rotten vegetables flying around, it had become dangerous. It was safer to take the longer way round.

This incensed Mr Potus more than ever, as his hamburgers would be delivered late and cold. His invective and missile-throwing increased.

• A three-way split

Unfortunately, there was no functioning Parish Council to try to control the situation. The last Chair who had managed to get anything like acceptance of his power had been voted out of office in 1945. Since then, the village had been dominated by the three largest landowners, each of whom believed themselves to be pre-eminent.

These were, as well as Mr Potus, the secretive and sinister Mr Pooten who lived in a cold house surrounded by a vast and poorly-managed estate which had once been even larger and which he was carefully trying to re-assemble; and the very modern Mr Xi, who owned a chain of Chinese restaurants with a huge staff and was mainly interested in doing deals with the other villagers on terms advantageous to himself.

Mr Potus, who believed wrongly, that he had a similar gift for deal-broking was constantly enraged by Mr Xi’s behaviour. For Mr Pooten, Mr Potus had a sneaking admiration.

He also deeply envied both men for being able so completely to control their family and servants. This was something which the philosophy of his household did not permit. This reflection did not improve either his attitude towards these opponents (and occasional allies) or the ways in which he sought to deal with them.

Although there were rumours that Pooten and Xi were aiding the Ayer-Toller household to embarrass Mr Potus, they stayed aloof from the conflict. Both reasoned that any dispute that absorbed so much of the energy and attention of Potus and Ayer-Toller could be turned to their own advantage later on.

• A stalemate

After about two months of this, it became clear that the conflict was moving towards a stalemate.

The Ayer-Toller property and those of the neighbours they’d been targeting were full of broken windows, destroyed vegetable beds and damaged solar panels. Mr Potus was happy to carry on throwing stuff but it was increasingly clear that he was not going to achieve his initial aim, that of getting the Ayer-Tollers to move out.

This had now been replaced by a secondary aim, that of getting them to re-open Hormer’s Lane so he could once again enjoy an uninterrupted supply of hamburgers.

After a final foul-mouthed threat from Mr Potus that he’d soon start lobbing dead pigs into the garden, a pause was agreed. The Ayer-Tollers would re-open Hormer’s Lane and Mr Potus would stop throwing rubbish, but everything else remained exactly as it was. The Ayer-Tollers were now even more secure and, to prove it, continued to lob rubbish into the gardens of Mr Potus’ friends and dependants.

Both sides claimed total victory as they took five and wondered what was going to happen next.

• Glorious victories

Young Ayer-Toller was happy. There was a lot of mess to clean up but Mr Potus had done him a favour by driving away his tiresome old father, so enabling him to take control of the household sooner than would otherwise have been the case. The domestic rebellion had been forgotten and Mr Potus been made to look a bit of an ass.

In Mr Potus’ view, the destruction of the Ayer-Toller’s garden had been total. As a result of his bold stance, nothing could grow there; nothing would bear fruit; the bench could not be sat upon; the gazebo was destroyed. The family had been taught a lesson. He’d spent a lot of money on the things he’d thrown about, but figured it was worth it for such an important point of principle: this being that Mr Potus could hurl dog mess and rotten vegetables at anyone he wanted, as he was Mr Potus.

The fact that he’d wanted to drive the Ayer-Tollers out, and had failed to do so, was conveniently forgotten.

The big win for him was that Harmer’s Lane was now open again. Also conveniently forgotten was the fact that it had only been closed because Mr Potus had started throwing rubbish. But, no matter – in the Potus household, hamburgers were back on the menu.

Mr Pooten and Mr Xi watched this debacle unfold, scarcely able to believe their good fortune.

The more rubbish and foul language Mr Potus threw at the awful Mr Ayer-Toller, the less he’d have for them – and, if things worked out badly, the more he’d need their help. This three-way dance would continue but, for the moment, Pooten and Xi held the upper hand.

After a lot of delicate discussion, they finally agreed to meet to discuss the situation over a friendly game of cards. Both were, however, aware of a previous game between them during which both had, to a great uproar, simultaneously played an ace of spades.

• Postscript

I can see, on reading back through the above, that the aim of employing someone unknown and untrusted, but recommended on the highest digital authority, to write a piece of pure whimsical fantasy that took our minds off the current horrors has not succeeded.

They have allowed themselves to be infected with Fake News, Lies of the Great Satan, Ideological Failures, Crimes Against the Party, Disloyalty to the Motherland and galloping Orwellism.

I can confirm that Mr Chatterbot has been shot, or removed from the party list, or no-platformed, or sent to the front line, or had his TruthSocial account suspended, or all of the above.

• Setting the trap

In all these transient and self-interested squabbles, we must not forget the existential threats of climate change and bio-diversity depletion which hang over all of us like an ever-darkening cloud.

The solution that some propose – but which only a very small number of us have any chance of realising, given how many of us there are and how tightly packed together we are – is to become more self-reliant. The time was when we were completely this way, moving from place to place as hunter-gatherers.

All of this changed about 10,000 years ago when someone, probably in what we now call the Middle East, thought that rather than traipsing round after migrating animals and seasonal fruit it would be better to put a few seeds in the ground, put a few lambs in a a fenced field, wait for them to grow up and then eat them.

The idea took hold. From being hunter-gatherers, we became farmers.

This changed everything. No one human development, apart from learning how to speak and including the invention of the internet, has altered our relationship with our planet as much as did this.

At that point, we walked into a trap from which there was no escape. Once we stopped moving around, we accumulated land and possessions, and so needed a social structure to protect them. We needed organisation, and thus central control, to provide irrigation and mills. We needed armies to defend our territories and to acquire new ones. We needed to use our social instincts to create systems that gave us a greater edge when united but without losing our even more basic instinct to personally come out on top.

Farming not only enabled population growth but actively encouraged it. Cultivating land is labour-intensive in a way that hunter-gathering is not. Very soon, our population had outstripped the capacity of the world to feed us as it previously had done. More people meant that more resourcefulness was required. Since we became farmers, we’ve also become miners, mechanics, industrialists and technicians.

Everything we’ve done has both bound us closer together and exacerbated our naturally competitive tendencies. We crave space, but embrace connectivity. We are a mass of deep contradictions, highly intelligent apes that were both selfish and sociable suddenly realising that the world could, with a lot of hard work and ingenuity, be tamed to meet our desires.

There are now over eight billion of us. At the dawn of the age of farming, the world’s population was probably about that of present-day London. We’ve reached the point where the environmental consequences of our ingenuity have become clear at exactly the time when the population pressures have started to bite. What’s to be done?

We are a clever and ingenious species. Sadly, the two very structures that our endeavours have created and on which we rely – nation states and large businesses – provide exactly the worst models on which our reaction to these problems can be based. They demand increased and competitive production, a growing population of workers/consumers and central control. Many would argue that our salvation lies in their polar opposites.

That ship sailed about 12,000 years ago. We are where we are. There are plenty of signs of people awakening to the plight and of good-news solutions that are being implemented. None of us can change the world but all of us have the power to change the part of it we can control. That, after all, is how the whole farming business began.

Think of Covid, a dress rehearsal for dealing with climate change if ever there was one. Who came out of this best? Not governments – but local communities which, when faced with an immediate problem, immediately found a local solution.

We were actively providing information on such organisations in the early days of the pandemic and were amazed by how many were emerging, organising themselves and getting stuff done: while Whitehall and Westminster, paralysed by process, self-importance and the big picture, dithered.

We clearly haven’t lost our knack of being able to survive. If we can ally this to the ability to reduce these problems happening in the first place, perhaps there is still some hope for our species, and our planet.

• All change

The government is considering changes to the way the planning system works. This is a familiar ambition and on each occasion a particular group or aspect is held up as the primary target, by Whitehall or others – fix that, the implication is, and all will be well.

Past targets have included bats, environmentalists, planning officers, land-banking developers and skill shortages. The latest one in Whitehall’s crosshairs is planning committees.

Must planning decisions are decided by professional officers. A small percentage, however, go to a planning committee where the matter’s discussed in public: everyone can have their say according to a pre-arranged structure and the elected members (but not the officers) take a vote. Sometimes these verdicts support the officers’ view and sometimes they don’t.

Arrangements vary in each area within national limitations but in West Berkshire, a matter can go to committee if (a) the local councillor requests that it be “called in” and the planning chair agrees; (b) if an officer requests that it be called in; (c) if there are more than ten objections; or (d) if the local council is itself the applicant.

Committees are quite time-consuming for the members. There’s a lot of paperwork to read and a site meeting to attend. The meetings themselves can last for several hours.

I doubt the officers care for them much either: not least because they have to explain in public and to lay people matters that are normally discussed in private among experts.

Everyone’s also giving up an evening for which the officers probably don’t get paid extra and the members aren’t paid at all.

At the end of all this considerable expenditure of time, it may well be that the committee goes with what the officers had recommended all along. So, what’s the point?

The point is that, although planning officers are professionals, they can make mistakes or can overlook matters that might prove to be important. Planning decisions involve weighing competing pros and cons of the scheme and the various policies that apply and coming to a view. This takes place in a different way when the discussions are public and others are involved.

Scrutiny is also important for its own sake. The very fact that an application might be shone under a spotlight keeps everyone up to the mark. Psychologically, it’s also good for local residents or opponents to have their say on contentious issues – even if the verdict is unwelcome, they can comfort themselves that they were able to have their say.

The proposals seek to water down the role of planning committees. Householder development (ie extensions), small commercial development and residential development of fewer then nine homes would not be able to go to committee in any circumstances.

In addition, the decision on those that can be called in would now rest not just with the committee chair but also with the senior planning officer. Therefore, the way I read these proposals, if the officers didn’t want a matter to be discussed in public then it wouldn’t be, no matter how many objections there were or what the local elected members thought about it.

This doesn’t look like great news for local democracy. It’s also far from certain it will achieve what seems its main aim of speeding up the planning system. There are many more serious choke points, one of which is that planning departments are under-resourced and so don’t employ as many officers as they need. When it comes to enforcing the decisions, the situation’s even worse.

There are things that each planning authority can do to make their committee system more streamlined and these are doubtless being considered as I write.

• One might be to encourage chairs to be more critical of call-in requests from local councillors.
• A second would be to enable a call-in to be rescinded if the issue that was causing concern has been addressed.
• A third would be to increase the number of objections needed from ten to say 25. An objection by a town or parish council would be regarded as five objections, with an extra three if it has an NDP in place and three more if it has general power of competence.

This wouldn’t be perfect. Then again, nor is the current system. At least this would retain the local scrutiny and give parish councils which had troubled to get more involved in the planning process a greater say in its local outcomes.

You can take part in the consultation by clicking here. You need to have responded by 11.59 on Thursday 23 April.

• And finally…

• This BBC article says that a teaching union has warned that a “masculinity crisis is brewing” in UK schools after almost a quarter of female teachers it surveyed reported that they have been subject to misogynistic abuse from a pupil in the last year.

• If you think the potholes in your street are bad, there’s one in Johannesburg in South Africa that’s so huge that a local politician recently went snorkelling in it.

• It seems incredible but this time ten years ago the country was gearing up for what was to prove to be the toxic, mendacious and divisive Brexit referendum campaign. This article in The Guardian takes a look at the legacy of this, describing the UK as “a divided nation frozen in time.”

Across the area

• Road improvements

Everyone who uses the roads is increasingly aware of potholes. However, a new national assessment of road maintenance performance by local highways authorities ranks West Berkshire Council near the top. A recent statement from WBC has announced that it’s also “set to deliver a significant new Highways Improvement Programme for 2026-27, investing in smoother, safer and more reliable roads for residents right across the district.”

This will begin in will begin in April 2026 and “includes 41 resurfacing, retexturing and surface dressing schemes. Communities such as Thatcham, Lambourn, Streatley, Aldermaston and Burghfield will all see improvements.” Residents can find the full list of improvements and follow updates as work gets underway by visiting WBC’s highways webpage.

• New kerbside plastic recycling

West Berkshire Council has announced that plastic tubes can now be recycled from home as part of the regular kerbside collections. “This includes all toothpaste tubes both hard and flexible, cosmetic tubes and food tubes” a statement from the Council explains, as well as the tubes used for “herb pastes, cake-icing tubes, hand creams and moisturisers. – if it is hard or soft plastic and tube-shaped it can recycled.”

Residents are asked to squeeze out any remaining content, put the cap on (which can be recycled too), leave flat (these are easier to deal with at the recycling centre) and put in your green bag along with cans, plastic bottles, tubs and trays.

• News from your local councils