British Bureaucracy drives me mad. It's one of the reasons I want to stay in Europe - it offers an escape route! I watch a lot of Grand Designs on the television, even the repeats. I find the presenter Kevin McCloud, insightful, enthusiastic and engaging. Recently I watched an episode where a couple purchased an old run down RNLI lifeboat station, built on girders above the sea.
Hell of a challenge to make a marvellous home from that, but they did it. Clever, determined, go for it kind of people. They also preserved the place. After huge investment and hard work, outside it now looks very much like it did when it was built. Inside it was just an open space with a sloping slipway. To make that a home you have to put in floors and stairs, walls and plumbing, the lot. So, preserving the interior isn't really an issue. Nonetheless, the planners, bureaucrats that is, denied the owners a hand rail they wanted. Petty.
If it was a Tudor building and someone wanted to rip the heart out of it I can see that there would be a point to stopping them, for future generations and for posterity, but what happened here was an abuse of power, I get a say so I'll use it, I have power, I will wield it. I can't see the planners being invited to dinner parties there, so they'll never see it again. The thoughtful Mr McCloud made a comment to the effect that you win some battles and lose others and that whatever you try to achieve there's always a bureaucrat standing in the way. How true. How very, very true.
Malcolm Snook
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