Conservatives propose scrapping Environment Agency and Natural England
The pitch here seems to be, ‘we’ll build the houses and infrastructure we failed to build during the 14 years we were in government, but we’ll do it in the most damaging and lowest quality way possible’. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
James Murray156Also worth noting planning is just one part of what the Environment Agency and Natural England do. This would be an enormous change and even if you don’t care about the environmental impact of development there’d be huge disruption to work on flood resilience, waste crime, nature recovery, etc.
Capt'n G.30Cutting regulations never reduces prices, it always increases profit.
Mike Shevdon18The pitch isn’t to the electorate. It’s to the potential donors.
Richard18What did we learn from the Grenfell fire... that there was too much regulation or too little regulation? For some parties lessons are never learnt as it contradicts party dogma. www.building.co.uk/focus/decay-...
mev20217We've just had one of the hottest summers and now's the time they announce that all that environment stuff is just getting in the way of profit. They are amazingly out of touch
Jazzaoxon16Tories have same policies that brought about their demise. Extraordinary.
Phil M 🦻🏼💚 🍉 🏳️⚧️ 🇵🇸2214When they talk about reducing red tape, remember this image.
William Lane45In my family of formerly staunch Middle England Tories this has gone down like a bucket of cold sick. Plenty of Tories do in fact like the environment and while the party is saying that this won't apply to housing I'm not sure that message will cut through compared to abolition itself.
Chloe Cumming26Jesus Christ. Those disgusting fuckers
St Aldhelms Birder15I try & stay out of politics on Bluesky. However, anybody who cares about the environment & our wildlife needs to seriously think about why they would vote for any of the right wing parties that plan to scrap our environmental & wildlife protections
Neil Goodrich9Yes, very much my take, too.
Matt8"Tories pledge to enable companies to dump even more toxic waste and actual faeces into rivers"
LeithMotive8We're maybe a day away from Kemi attacking the National Trust, aren't we?
Spooky Snigdha8The Tory plans for deregulation may result in more homes being built. But what damage will be done doing it? 🧵 bsky.app/profile/jame...
Steph' Thorpe7There goes the protections for the natural world🤬🤬
Richard Delevan7The nothing screams “natural party of government” like serving up discount imported MAGA policy reheated in a Tufton Street microwave.
There was a time when the Tories, however hypocritically, claimed to want to protect our natural heritage. Now they're just a party of vandals, ripping down the few protections the living world has for the sake of their rich chums. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
Jack Churchill's Arrow128They whine about the essence of the country being altered by immigration while cheering on its destruction by monied interests. Set of lying bastards who should be ashamed to be seen in public.
Lex15Oh goody yet another 'bonfire of regulations'. They dont have any ideas at all do they. Also you will have a cheaper house. That will be expensive to heat, built on a flood plane and have no sewer then fall apart in 10 years.
Layer814I was wondering in what sense the Conservative party can legitimately claim to be 'conservative'. They have long since adopted radical liberal economics and abandoned any commitments to safeguarding heritage.
Franck11These people are looking at Trump's destructive ways and habe decided they want a piece of it. They no longer want to build a country that matches their ideals; it's now all about laying waste to what is there. Not even a pretence that they will rebuild it better, nop, just burn it all down
Leviathan Wilde4Hear hear! 👍🥹 Not much conserving going on in this policy. Not much “green & pleasant land” or biodiversity left after the last vestages of environmental protections are decimated by these Tory policies. 😳
4017xan.bsky.social3The Tories are continuing their strategy of usurping Reform’s ground. I fear that more & more Conservative MPs will defect to Reform fearing defeat as a result of the splitting of the xenophobic, climate change denying, general resentment vote. Or the parties may merge. RIP Conservative Party.
Chris 🤍💛💙7Not very ...err ... conservative then?
tamengs.bsky.social4The hypocrisy is overwhelming, 1 minute telling us they are a completely different party to the 1 which blew up the economy, now reverting to same old Tories who attack the majority while building up the bank balances of the already rich minority.
I'm sure this'll go down great at conference. I am absolutely not sure that scrapping an organisation called Natural England will go down so well at the election.
Ian Dunt233Still, I'm reliably informed that Kemi Badenoch is apparently some kind of strategic genius, so perhaps it'll be fine.
Warriorcatv226Ah, a brilliant strategy. If one thing is popular with voters, it's environmental deregulation. Water company sewage dumping? Cost of living? Highest energy prices in Europe? No, it is the environment that is the problem.
Mr Brown14Andrew Griffith on R4Today, 'to build, of course we'll need to leave the ECHR..' So no massive baby and bath water, over reaction situations. It's all new pragmatic Kemi-Tories. We're told.
mancwoman.bsky.social11I’ve said this before, the demographic they are appealing to are over 60. They are so out of touch with today. They keep fighting as though it’s 1979. It’s not and never will be again.
Rick Turner5It's probably time they stopped using a tree as their logo tbh
William Avery5Allowing housing developments without planning GP surgeries, schools, etc, also earns an eye roll. Do they really think that the magic of the free market is going to sort that out?
Iain Roberts11The Lib Dems will be very happy. There is a case for neutering NE, but "Tories to scrap body that protects nature from developers" is a lovely headline for those Conservative-facing constituencies.
iansayer7Anyone who reads this Guardian article and still supports the Tories should be put up against a wall and something or other, imho. Be clear about the difference between tolerance and indulgence.
Aletheia4In other news, Tories double down on wrecking the environment.
Why stop there? Scrap the treasury to make the national debt go away Scrap the NHS and cure cancer Scrap the MOD and lo: world peace www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
Ferrick Brick19Scrap the Tory party and give the UK a holiday.
Steve H.7Badenoch and crew are - obviously? - tapping into nostalgia for the Liz Truss years [sorry, days].
Dr Paul Budd Brexaster Resister #FBPE #FBPR6Nice to see the last "i"s dotted and "t"s crossed on the Tories political suicide note.
cptjspaulding.bsky.social6They really are pointless as a party, they have no ideas, just get rid of culture war click bait to appease a base that won’t be here much longer.
Sir Garfield De Umfreville, Baronet Bywell5But they want to keep the green belt of course 🥲
𝓔𝔁𝓬𝓵𝓾𝓭𝓮𝓭 𝓜𝓾𝓰𝔀𝓾𝓶𝓹5It's like Trump and his "if we stop covid testing, we'd have very few covid cases, if any". And it's just as stupid. thehill.com/policy/healt...
Ren Zelen8Can we just scrap the Tory party?
The Tories have announced they would abolish Natural England, support a Third Runway & pull the UK out of the Aarhus Convention - in further signs they’ve totally given up on Middle England, don’t give a toss about the environment & just want to please some wealthy grouse moor owners & raving YIMBYs
![Tory party press release: “[We will leave the Aarhus] Convention that powers the lawfare hindering every major infrastructure project in this country.”
“Abolish Natural England and the Environment Agency, moving to a more streamlined regulatory landscape to protect our environment.”](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:br3kmdgzf5pnbfdnd57jfo6g/bafkreidogxc5es43brvlqj3qx5mgzczudqbsu2df2ijhhwcjhcg2w32pji)
Ralph Darvill8Thc collective failure to acknowledge the shit we are in is totally baffling...these people pretend that they want to lead us, and in theory carry out the first duty of government, while all the time doing exactly the opposite. We need a revolution.
Jack Wallington8It’s just mad, they will never win back their voters with this lunacy.
Peter Matanle4The EA needs to be abolished, because it is completely captured by corporate politics. A new agency that genuinely acts in the interests of nature conservation and recovery is needed. But I suspect that's not what the Conservatives have in mind.
Cat Thompson2So no flood risk work at all, or it all goes to the Councils? … well done.
johnw6458.bsky.social2What a shitshow the Tories have become. Just finished 'The Lie of the Land'. Forget Burnham, Guy for PM. Great read, hugely inspirational and a call to arms. Brilliant.
Elizabeth Acheson1And keep the funds rolling in from the US
Politico: "CCHQ is working to a strategy aimed at appealing to the center, then hoovering up right-wing support to kill off Reform...The plan centers first on winning back middle class Lib Dem & Labour voters" They're starting that by...pledging to abolish Natural England and the Environment Agency
Josiah Mortimer116Oh and "Would-be [Tory] candidates must sign a "memorandum of understanding" backing ECHR withdrawal" and scrapping Net Zero targets. I'm sure Lib Dems will come flooding back!
Assembled Person21Baddenoch’s relationship with reality is long distance.
Mike Foster19Might as well add the RSPCA, National Trust, RNLI and Radio 4
Andy18Maybe Ed Davey is actually playing a bit of a blinder by doing absolutely nothing and just letting the tories further alienate their traditional southern voters and push them towards the lib dems
LibLabGreen Barbara11Lol, have they met lib dems round my way? All monitoring water quality, going wild swimming, saving open spaces or church roofs, picking up rubbish in their spare time, reporting neighbours for felling trees...
Michele10Utterly clueless. The post Johnson purge is a shallow puddle of mediocrity
If anything screams, 'we are the party that doesn't care' this is it This nihilist approach to our environment stinks and in the true sense of nihilism suggests the Tory party has lost its way on beliefs and values...but I think we probably knew that already 🫤 www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
Livsbian 🌈3Yet middle England *is* pro environment & always has been. At one point there were even Tory leaning Greens believe it or not. Badenoch has had her brains boiled by Twitter 😕
Dr Negrin's Victory Pills2It lost its way when it elected Thatcher as leader and it's shown little evidence of finding the path again since.
Bob Bear1I'm not sure who they are trying to appeal to, or do they not know themselves.
James Steel1Nevermind the nasty party, more like the dumbfuckers party.
SchiGa1Toxic Trump influence. Big oil& Co don't sleep.
AWOL1The Tory party can be summed in one word: Philp.
This would be a utterly insane change that both entirely misunderstands the issues we have with housebuilding and tne role of the EA/Natural England. Particularly given the huge additional responsibilities we've just given the latter. Hammer blow for nature and the enviroment for no good reason
James Austin31Proper 'I dont understans the system and want a knee jerk answer' policy
What?3Not enough adjectives to quell any normal person’s sense of indignation at this point! Plain bloody madness at large. #DesparateTimes
James C2There is a reasonable argument that the EA should be broken up into constituent responsibility areas, and that NE need more accountability. But no - not this madness
David Rearlamp1The Thames Barrier is operated by the Environment Agency. Been closed for flood defence 221 times. Protects 48 square miles of central London, 1.42m people, 4,000+listed buildings, 711 healthcare sites, 116 railway & tube stations and more than 300km of major roads... unison.org.uk/magazine/fea...
Ralph Darvill1So now we have two parties hell-bent on trashing the environment on the altar of housebuilding all over our Green (and "Grey" 🙄) Belt. Start with change of use in our town centres, convert empty office space, build on Brownfield sites, and end land-banking.
Alastair Wilcox1It's a bit obscure, but the use of Aarhus to obstruct development is an issue. I don't think I'd leave the convention, but I'd reduce the number of opportunities (3+) to challenge a planning decision. It can put a year or more on a development. I'd make it one challenge and you're done.
The Tory party goes full-on climate denier and nature hater Pure lunacy www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
Our water companies have been dumping raw sewage into the rivers and seas, and what will the Conservative party propose today? Abolishing the Environment Agency who try to enforce environmental protection measures against polluters. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
Spooky Snigdha8The Tory plans for deregulation may result in more homes being built. But what damage will be done doing it? 🧵 bsky.app/profile/jame...
Cat Thompson5Also see Flood & Coastal Risk Management. There is currently no legal bar to building within flood zones & the sequential test can be ignored. Remove the flood resilience work and you can build anywhere. (Although that aspect of EA work may just have been forgotten in the dogma.)
Laura Clemens3It isn’t just water companies! This is also the fault of developers doing faulty hook ups to sewers and then water used for children’s recreation gets botulism and e-coli
Steve1The Tories, the party dedicated to 💩 everywhere, vote Tory, get 💩… it’s a potential winning slogan for the constipated segment of the electorate? 🙄😂
Also, I think some of the Tories announcements on Natural England will help the Lib Dems and also Labour to a lesser extent. Would have helped Greens too if they were actually interested in the environment anymore...
David Herdson20The Lib Dems, yes. Davey, no (sadly, IMO). I have seen Davey give a tremendous speech, vibrantly articulating what a muscular defence of liberal values looks like. Unfortunately, most of the public has not; he's just a man who falls off paddle-boards. Someone else needs to front the argument.
Hugh Stokes3In the same way I don’t think that Badenoch coming out in support of Heathrow third runway will do the Conservatives any favours in London or the South East.
Aslan3Why do people pretend the greens don’t care about the environment? Irrespective of anything else on this particular subject I find this very odd when they have plenty of policies on the subject, it’s just really odd to pretend otherwise.
David Bale2‘The rivers are full of shit. Any ideas?’ ‘Let’s close the Environment Agency’
