Reading 'The Land', an occasional magazine about land rights, shows individual conflicts with Planning Authorities in a wider, cultural light.
Deep-set fears of travellers and incomers, of folk with strange beliefs and different aspirations well up.
European cities have been ever wary of the next horde from the East.
At a three day enquiry about Emma Orbach's strawbale huts in North Pembrokeshire, arguments were essentially about what facilities defined a dwelling, and it's extent.
As water was collected in jugs from a nearby stream, and the compost toilet was set discretely in a hazel coppice, and these resources were shared by three huts, the prevailing middle-class model of independent units just wouldn't equate.
It was even suggested that the definition of a dwelling might include hot running water!
- Tell that to any cottage-dweller up until the 1960's.
I came to see the National Park Planning Authority as successors to the Normans, re-enacting old feuds with the native woodland Welsh.
However, the love and care that Emma showed for her land, and it's impact was far nearer the wider aspirations of greater government.
The arbiters in the end were to be those modern priests in our damaged Eden, the ecologists.
But Ecology is a broad church. The ones who checked out the Roundhouse's impact on it's surroundings were real hair-shirters, who seemed to work on the premise that any impact was deleterious, even a walked path. Also, they declared Tony Wrench's timber use to exceed his supply > as if any rural woodworker was ever likely to have owned the land his trees came from!
Eventually some sort of sense prevailed, through the intervention of a more pragmatic and observant local ecologist, who saw the fundamental truth that the diversity and lack of damage on their lands was due to their loving presence, not despite it.
But until then the removal of a few discrete Eco huts in the Clydach Valley occupied the attention of the National Park as if western civilisation was at stake.
Cultural defaults constantly colour our attempts to be objective..
Each planning case involves another set of appellants and officials. Another set of legal technicalities.
But the urge to live back in some closer connection to the Earth is the common front.
The ludicrous data demanded of the Lammas project was epitomised by Paul Wimbush with his wheelbarrow stacked high with papers. Even now, residents are being stressed by time limits on their legal obligations; hardly conducive to a happy and creative settlement.
It does feel like there is a Dementor energy that seeks to stifle joyous, creative impulse amongst us: That whole 'jobs-worth, health&safety, insurance, precedent, 'what- if- everybody- did- that' line is it's toolkit.
Dreams get sanitised. Control for it's own sake. Authoritism.
We are all potentially guilty of it - one of those inherited abusive patterns.
I don't feel there's any hope of making things really different under continual official scrutiny.
There is a balance to strike. Everyone of us and every location is different. It's good to be discrete, but not to feel furtive. If the fear of being discovered becomes overwhelming, is the lesson not to invest such emotional capital in a structure?
Your path should lead to being strong and clear in your own power.
Any anger, victimhood, or righteousness will weaken your voice.
So does rejoinder in technical terms.
Speak a simple truth from your heart and all is well.
Compromise, and they are on you like a pack of ravenous wolves...
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john
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