Swivel eyed loons 1

Michael Gove, secretary of state for education, champions the government's relaxation of planning controls because "we cannot think of our built environment without thinking of beauty" and we should welcome the prospect of new Chatsworths, NashTerraces of Regent's Park, Edinburgh New Towns, and Salisbury Cathedrals that the government "reforms" are about to unleash upon us. These new buildings of "grace and beauty'" will not only "ravish the eye and lift up the soul" but will provide new affordable housing for thrifty, aspiring, freedom-loving, socially mobile families. (Why be mobile when you live in a Chatsworth?) "No-one who believes in social mobility, in aspiration, in pro-family policies, in thrift and in freedom can be anything other than delighted by the release of more land for housing." The fact that "too few modern buildings can aspire to real beauty is a challenge to the architectural profession". That is the architectural profession which he has recently shouldered out of the business of designing new schools. The property developer "profession", hitherto bound hand and foot by those wicked mediocre architects, is not mentioned, but it is believed to be as delighted as Mr Gove.