Britons Face Carbon Spotchecks

An Eco-Town Resident Fails To Reach The Perimiter

Britons should be subjected to random carbon spotchecks and intensive surveillance of their diets, transport and waste disposal habits, says the Government's architecture and design quango in a new report today.
The word "monitoring" occurs 19 times in the 32-page publication by the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE). If the proposals in the report What Makes An Eco Town?are implemented few aspects of life will go unrecorded.
CABE says the strict monitoring is needed to ensure the carbon footprint of the eco-town dwellers remains at one-third of the British average, which is the requirement for what's called "one-planet living", the quango says.

Examples of monitoring include "the ecological footprint of the diet of 100 randomly selected residents", and the number of shops selling local produce. Waste disposal and transportion habits will also be scrutinized.

The Carbon Cult also wants to choose what you food you eat, and will carefully pre-select only the most righteous retailers. Veggies will be pleased to read that the report recommends "actively seeking retailers on site who will commit to supporting residents in reducing the ecological footprint of their food consumption, in particular providing a wide variety of healthy, low meat and dairy options."

One statistic that won't be recorded is the mortality rate from suicide caused by living in such a grimly regimented and obsessively monitored environment. Or maybe that's the plan. The Government proposes 15 such towns to be built for over 100,000 citizens.

As we have already reported, other eco-town restrictions include a 15mph speed limit for vehicles , and toilets that don't flush.

Residents would also be "fined" for leaving the eco-town.

You can download the report from here - and it's well worth a read. It has the zeal of a Maoist revolutionary order, as written by the most anally-retentive bureaucrat who ever lived.

The Register

Government paid charity to produce eco-town 'fact' leaflets

Gordon Brown's eco-towns scheme was embroiled in new controversy last night as a housing charity admitted it had been paid to produce information leaflets setting out the Government's case.

Shelter, one of the few organisations backing the plan to build new towns in the English countryside, said it had been given £100,000 by the Government to publish a series of 13 pamphlets, one for each proposed eco-town site.
Called "Eco-town – the facts", the publications are branded with the Shelter logo and claim to assess the impact the new homes will have in the different areas. Each one begins: "Shelter has written a series of leaflets to help clarify the facts."
But each 20-page leaflet focuses largely on the need for more affordable housing, with only one paragraph addressing such concerns as traffic levels, flood risks and pressure on public serices.
Opponents called the leaflets "Government propaganda" and accused ministers of trying to mislead the public into thinking the information came from an independent source.

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