Toby Atkin-Wright

I see that England has reclassified gardens in planning terms so they are no longer “brownfield” sites (a category otherwise used for post-industrial land). This means that councils can make the planning process for building on gardens more arduous, which I welcome. Suburban gardens should be treasured and valued, rather than viewed as a money-making development opportunity. In particular, I don’t think that houses should be built on gardens in a way that significantly changes the housing density or character of a neighbourhood.

In covering this story on the BBC News channel, their report said that new houses will still need to be built. Do they?

I see that England has reclassified gardens in planning terms so they are no longer “brownfield” sites (a category otherwise used for post-industrial land). This means that councils can make the planning process for building on gardens more arduous, which I welcome. Suburban gardens should be treasured and valued, rather than viewed as a money-making development opportunity. In particular, I don’t think that houses should be built on gardens in a way that significantly changes the housing density or character of a neighbourhood.

In covering this story on the BBC News channel, their report said that new houses will still need to be built. Do they?

For some time I've wanted to post a notification on Twitter whenever I update my LJ. Some other blogging systems have built-in support for Twitter, but with LJ we're stuck with using a third-party tool.

I found a service called twitterfeed.com. After creating an account using my LJ OpenID, it allows one or more RSS or Atom newsfeeds to be specified (LJ feeds are of the form username.livejournal.com/data/atom), and it then posts any updates to Twitter. It seems to work well, and was very easy to set up.

No idea how they make any money from providing the service, though.

For some time I've wanted to post a notification on Twitter whenever I update my LJ. Some other blogging systems have built-in support for Twitter, but with LJ we're stuck with using a third-party tool.

I found a service called twitterfeed.com. After creating an account using my LJ OpenID, it allows one or more RSS or Atom newsfeeds to be specified (LJ feeds are of the form username.livejournal.com/data/atom), and it then posts any updates to Twitter. It seems to work well, and was very easy to set up.

No idea how they make any money from providing the service, though.

With the Welsh badger cull about to go ahead, and calls from Boris for a cull of urban foxes, should we be looking for culling costs to be recouped through the sale of badger-head sporrans and fox-fur hats?

They could be the fashion hit of 2010.

With the Welsh badger cull about to go ahead, and calls from Boris for a cull of urban foxes, should we be looking for culling costs to be recouped through the sale of badger-head sporrans and fox-fur hats?

They could be the fashion hit of 2010.