EXTRA: Is it true that Michael Gove took two £50,000 donations from a property developer last year – and should we be asking whether that has anything to do with this change in government policy?

Now read on…

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds briefly became a hero – and then a zero – when it said Tory ministers were liars … and then apologised.

The charity had spoken up against Michael Gove’s decision to strip “nutrient neutrality” demands from rules governing housing developments near UK waterways:

The charity provided ample evidence to support its claim; the Tory government has insisted for years that it will improve environmental protections significantly. Having failed to do this in any way at all – and in fact having caused a disaster in our waterways – the Tories are now legislating to force authorities to ignore pollution altogether. Here are those claims, as provided by Feargal Sharkey, who fears the original posts may disappear:

This is the legislation requiring planning authorities to ignore the threat of pollution when granting permission for homes to be built, followed by the RSPB’s evidence of Tory lies:

Charity Commission guidance on campaigning gives the green light to posts of this nature:

And the RSPB at first won widespread support:

And then it all dissolved:

Let’s remember a few facts:

The evidence seems to be lost on Tory supporters who claim that a promise of funding (£140m extra – not more than £200m as described by the drone below) will entirely negate the damage that will be done:

For clarity: the nutrients (“human wee and poo” as the Wildlife Trust’s Craig Bennett described them on Radio 4) will be going into rivers that are already clogged with raw sewage that has been illegally discharged by England’s privatised water companies (with government blessing).

It will be easy to argue that it is impossible to show what extra harm is being done by new developments – and refuse to spend the money.

There’s also the question of whether the government should be spending public money on such cleaning in any event.

It seems that developers are responsible for one-fifth of donations to the Conservative Party, and have been sitting on more than a million planning permissions, waiting for the Tories to get rid of the expensive environmental protections that would cut into their profits.

After the Tories made their announcement, share prices in just three housebuilding firms rocketed by nearly £500 million – more than three times the extra cash the government has promised to mitigate the environmental harm they will do.

That’s money they were going to get as soon as they decided to start building again; building is a major economic multiplier – it adds a lot to the economy and that means people with cash want to invest in it to make more cash.

So the developers could easily have afforded to implement the environmental protections as formerly required by the law. They just didn’t want to. And to force the issue, they sat on more than a million planning permissions while the government was made increasingly embarrassed by its failure to hit housing targets.

Here’s the evidence:

In summary:

The RSPB had no reason to apologise for correctly calling Tory government ministers liars who reversed their environmental policies under pressure from greedy housing developers who wanted to maximise their profits.

The best way to give these greed-consumed creeps their just desserts is simple: don’t buy their houses.

I know – most of us won’t have the option.

But for the rest: they’ll be built on the flood plains of environmentally-sensitive rivers, and most likely without any of the mitigation measures the government has promised.

So when they flood – and they will – those houses will be filled with human “wee and poo”.

Do you really want that stuff to get into everything you own? Have a think about it.

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