The reason is 800 houses. Boningale Homes wants them on 48 hectares of green-belt land off Patshull Road. Shropshire Council has already said no. The appeal ran for 12 days in Shrewsbury. Angela Rayner has called the case in, so the inspector’s recommendation goes to her, and a decision is expected in 2027. In the meantime the residents have discovered that the word “village” is no longer decorative.
Updated green-belt guidance says villages should not be treated as large built-up areas. Purpose A of the green belt is to stop large built-up areas sprawling. If Albrighton is only a village, the farmland next door may not be doing much to stop anything important. If it is a large built-up area, the same farmland is suddenly useful. Campaign banners that once said “village” have had the word covered or taken down. The group that used to be the Albrighton Village Action Group is now the Albrighton Development Action Group. They have raised tens of thousands and produced a 1799 reference that called the place a township.
The council’s planner told the appeal the population is now over 5,000, which the ONS once treated as a larger village or small town. It has schools, pubs, leisure facilities and three grocery stores. The developer’s barrister said the West Midlands green belt was invented for Birmingham and Coventry, not for Albrighton, and that the council’s own documents have called it a village, a small town, a market town, a key centre and a large built-up area, sometimes in the same stack of paper. The local MP declined to choose.
I have no strong view on whether 800 houses should go there. I have a strong view on a planning system that can be moved by whether you keep the word “village” on a banner. Britain has always been good at this: the label does the work while everyone argues about the fields.
If you are rebranding a parish in a hurry, Amazon will sell you an outdoor banner. It will not stop a housing appeal. It will at least let you cover the word you no longer need.
Rayner will decide in 2027. Until then Albrighton is whatever the guidance requires it to be this week. Remember that the next time someone tells you a place is just a village. Sometimes the word is the whole argument.
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She was the most nominated contestant in 13 years. An estimated 4.9 million votes still put her ahead of Lucy “Twinks” Burnett, who left as runner-up to cheers and signs. The Metro columnist who wrote the piece thinks the country chose bigotry over kindness. The public, by the only metric the format allows, chose Rochelle. Both things can be true at once. A vote is not a character reference. It is a number.
The list of things that made people angry is long and already public. A comment to Charlotte Nott, who lost her lower arms and legs to meningitis as a toddler, about feeling scared when she first saw her. Jokes about Yasmin’s weight that earned a mild telling-off. A line about not wanting a transgender person in the toilet. An old Facebook post about Muslims that a family source said she regretted. An offensive remark that housemates treated as a turning point and that ITV did not air. The show that used to sell itself as the transparent one has a gap in the edit and a winner who promised, on the way out, to be more tolerant.
I am not going to grade her soul. I am going to notice that the most nominated person in more than a decade still won, and that the boos arrived after the votes had already been counted. That is the bit that makes the format look honest. You can dislike someone and still discover that enough other people did not. Or that enough people liked the dislike. The house does not care which.
If you want to watch the next series with the sound down until the result, Amazon will sell you noise-cancelling headphones. They will not change the vote. They will at least keep the boos for the people who paid to be there.
She said she would be more tolerant. The public, for £100,000, has already decided it does not mind if she is not. Remember that the next time a reality show calls itself a social experiment. Sometimes the experiment is just counting.
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The list, from a cannabis factory found on 3 January 2024 in the old bus depot on Ropery Road, Gainsborough, is oddly domestic. Thirty-two cans of Red Bull. Laundry detergent. Sweets, chocolate, biscuits. Coca-Cola. Two Lidl bags for life. A bottle of Fanta. Officers say items in the scene photos were gone the next day. The force says he took them to South Park in Lincoln in a police van, then moved them to his own car. He was, they say, alone in the scene for half an hour.
His barrister's question is the one you would ask. Would someone bin a career for pop, sweeties and detergent? He filmed the scene and invited the guard to look, which is a strange way to stage a theft. CCTV shows him with two Lidl bags at the station. He says they held kit that needed washing at home, and that he left them outside because people had complained about the smell of cannabis. He has bank statements from Lidl. The bags, his side says, must have magicked themselves there.
A second factory turned up next door weeks later. The defence suggests the people running that one may have come back for the biscuits. A scene guard, PC Richard Dalton, says he was suspected too, and that colleagues still joke when they do a scene guard. He also noticed the living area was stocked with luxuries. Most of these places, he said, are squalid. This one had a drinks cabinet.
I am not going to decide a misconduct hearing from a local paper. I am going to notice that the alleged haul is what you buy when the shop is about to shut and you have not eaten. Red Bull for the night shift. Detergent for the clothes. Biscuits for the bit in between. If it happened, it is the smallest corruption in Britain. If it did not, a man has spent a Monday explaining Fanta.
If the kettle is not enough, Amazon will sell you energy drinks. They will not come from a bus depot. They will not need a panel.
The hearing continues. So does the question of whether a Lidl bag for life can end one. Remember that the next time a crime scene has biscuits. Someone will count them.
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A mother in Wolverhampton has a conviction because a Honda Civic was £16.67 short of taxed. She is 47. A stroke in January 2024 left her with seizures, fatigue and memory loss, and trouble walking and talking. Medical records went to Birmingham Magistrates' Court. An occupational therapist wrote that she needs relatives and her teenage children to deal with paperwork. The court still has her down as guilty.
The DVLA wrote in August. The car had not been taxed between April 2025 and March 2026. She ticked guilty on the form. That is the whole hearing, if you can call a tick a hearing. The case went through the Single Justice Procedure, which lets a magistrate sit alone, in private, and decide a criminal case from the paperwork. Magistrate Gary May gave her a discharge. She still has the conviction. She still has to pay the £16.67. There is no extra fine, which is the state's way of saying it has been reasonable.
This is the bit that sticks. A discharge sounds like mercy until you notice the criminal record did not leave with it. The people who have asked for this system to be reformed include the Magistrates Association, the Mayor of London and a former Lord Chief Justice. The government consulted last spring and has promised changes shortly, which is Whitehall for not this week. Shortly does not untick a box.
I am not arguing that car tax is optional. I am arguing that a woman who cannot reliably open her own post should not meet the criminal law as a form. The children helped with the paperwork. The paperwork helped the court. Nobody in the room, because there was no room, asked whether guilty was a word she could still hold.
If the letters are winning, Amazon will sell you a wall planner. It will not tax the Civic. It will not sit as a magistrate. It will at least be visible, which the hearing was not.
I do not expect the DVLA to write back and say sorry about the tick. I do expect the conviction to outlast the £16.67 by years. Remember that the next time a form says you can plead guilty by post. Sometimes the post is the whole trial.
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The latest Steve N Allen (almost) Daily is up. This one is called Triple Lock Gone, which is the sort of phrase that makes a pension statement feel draft. Plus the other news nuggets that would not sit still long enough for a newspaper column.
If you like your state pension with a missing padlock and a punchline, have a listen. If you would rather do the sums yourself, Amazon will sell you a calculator. It will not restore the third lock. It will at least look busy.
Have a listen below. If the player misbehaves, the same episode is on Spotify, Apple and the usual suspects. Watch on YouTube, read the Substack, email me@mrstevenallen.co.uk, or tip the host on Ko-fi if the lock news left you feeling generous.
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Sales are up 7.7 per cent. The company employs 33,000 people, most of them behind a counter asking if you want it heated. The shake-up will cost about £60 million now and save about £20 million a year later, which is the sort of arithmetic that makes a spreadsheet feel brave. Retail is safe. Manufacturing is being relocated to meet capacity for growth in the most cost-efficient manner. If you say that sentence out loud in Kelso it does not heat a steak bake.
Gosforth will stop making tinned bread. I did not know Greggs still made tinned bread. I am now mourning a product I never bought, which is the most British form of solidarity available on a Wednesday. Treforest keeps going as a depot. Clydesmill and Manchester will make fewer things. The queue at lunchtime will look the same. That is the point.
I am not going to pretend a chicken bake is a human right. I am also not going to clap for a press release that treats a factory like a seasonal menu. You can like the shops and still notice that “evolving” here means the same pastry, fewer towns, and a consultation that arrives after the map has been drawn. If the high street version of Britain is a paper bag and a hot drink, someone still has to put the filling in before 11am.
If you want to practise self-reliance before the next round of evolving, Amazon will sell you sausage rolls. They will not be a Greggs. They will not employ 740 people in County Durham. They will at least be honest about coming from a freezer.
I do not expect the consultation to un-close Penrith. I do expect the shops to be fine, because the shops were never the bit under review. The sausage roll survives. The factory is a phase. Remember that the next time a brand says it is only changing how it makes the thing you already eat.
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Due to a sudden processing backlog at recycling plants, thousands of unwanted fridges and freezers have ended up stacked together in a massive white pile at a former recycling site outside Norwich. It is being described as a temporary storage issue. In Britain, "temporary" usually means it will still be there when archeologists dig up our civilisation in the year 4000 and conclude we worshipped a deity named Beko.
It is an extraordinary monument to human inconvenience. A mountain made entirely of appliances that all used to contain three dead tomatoes, half a bottle of stale salad cream, and an old tub of margarine containing mystery soup. If you stood on top of it with a pair of binoculars, you probably would not be able to see the sea, but you would be able to spot at least five hundred missing ice scrapers.
The sheer scale of it is breathtaking. It is essentially our version of Mount Rushmore, only instead of historic presidents carved into granite, we have four storeys of rusty frost-free drawers and broken door seals. You could try packing your own picnic in a portable cool box, but even that feels like a risk when the entire county is slowly turning into a giant appliance graveyard.
Naturally, officials have assured everyone that the situation is being closely monitored. That is always comforting. Monitoring a mountain of three thousand fridges sounds like a very peaceful job, mostly consisting of standing nearby with a clipboard to make sure none of them suddenly decide to defrost. If nothing else, it proves that no matter how advanced our society becomes, our ultimate destiny is always to be defeated by basic kitchen logistics.
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She told the local paper she has to step over the rubbish to reach the actual bin. About four people from the council have been round and taken photographs. “It is like a museum,” she said. “I feel like I have artefacts in my garden.” Her housing manager’s line was that these things take time. A year, she suggests, is taking the mic. City of York Council has been asked for a response, which is the civic equivalent of putting the kettle on and hoping the foxes finish first.
This is the British fly-tipping model in miniature. First someone leaves a mattress because a collection slot is three Thursdays away. Then someone else sees the mattress and decides the garden is now a tip. Then the foxes open the food bags, which is nature’s way of writing a strongly worded email. Then officers arrive with cameras, which is enforcement as a hobby.
I have some sympathy. Councils are short of crews and long on process. A communal garden is nobody’s and therefore everybody’s, which in practice means it belongs to the person with a broken wardrobe and a dark evening. I have less sympathy for a system that can photograph a chest of drawers in January and still be living with it in September. If the artefacts are catalogued, they are not a surprise. They are a filing system with slugs.
If you are not waiting for the museum to close, Amazon will sell you heavy duty rubble sacks. They will not summon a crew. They will at least pretend the chest of drawers has a future other than the lawn.
I do not expect York to declare the garden a scheduled monument. I do expect another photograph, another promise that these things take time, and another fox with a clearer diary than the housing team. Remember that the next time someone says the report has been logged. Logged is not lifted.
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The latest Steve N Allen (almost) Daily is up. This one is called No Benefits for Alcohol, which is the sort of headline that makes the nation reach for a drink and then think better of it. Plus the other news nuggets that would not sit still long enough for a newspaper column.
If you like your policy with a hangover and a punchline, have a listen. If you would rather stay on the official side of the bar, Amazon will sell you alcohol-free beer. It will not settle the benefits argument. It will at least look like a pint.
Have a listen below. If the player misbehaves, the same episode is on Spotify, Apple and the usual suspects. Watch on YouTube, read the Substack, email me@mrstevenallen.co.uk, or tip the host on Ko-fi if the dry news left you feeling generous.
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Bedford has had a directly elected mayor since a referendum twenty-four years ago. The current one is Tom Wootton, Conservative, in post since 2023. Labour’s motion was to let residents decide if the model should go and a leader-and-cabinet take its place, the way Luton and Central Bedfordshire already do. Councillors were told the poll would cost about £375,000 across twenty-eight wards, plus officer time. Sixteen voted for it. Twenty-four voted against. Four Conservatives abstained, which is the civic equivalent of leaving the room to take a call that never comes.
The mayor’s point was simple. He had not seen Bedford marching through the streets demanding a ballot. A petition existed. It had 171 verified signatures. The statutory threshold to force a referendum is 6,940, which is five per cent of the electorate. That is not a rounding error. That is the difference between a Facebook group and a mandate. Independent councillor Doug McMurdo called the timing ill-thought-out. We cannot afford it, he said, which is the most Bedford sentence available when the alternative is a very expensive conversation about a chain.
I have some sympathy with reviewing the furniture. Models of local government should not be sacred just because they are old. I have less sympathy with spending the best part of four hundred thousand pounds to discover what a petition of 171 already told you. If the public really wanted the mayor gone, they would have found the other 6,769 names. They found the energy for a lot of other arguments this year. They did not find this one.
If you are founding a breakaway parish with a ceremonial chain of your own, Amazon will sell you a mayor’s chain. It will not cost £375,000. It will not require a monitoring officer. It will look slightly more official than a clipboard.
Britain is very good at this. We will pay almost anything for a consultation except the bit where we notice nobody asked for one. Remember that the next time a councillor says the public deserve a say. Sometimes the public already said it, quietly, by not signing.
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The source, residents say, is South West Water’s Marsh Mills wastewater works. The smell has been around for years. They say it got worse when the new town of Sherford started sending its business the same way. One mother in Cattedown says it is usually every morning. An independent councillor in Plympton says people are selling up. If you sleep with the window open, it gets into the curtains. That is not a lifestyle choice. That is a utility with a personality.
Plymouth City Council’s answer is a survey, so it can “better understand the location, frequency and impact.” Then the findings go to a scrutiny panel, and South West Water is invited to a meeting. This is how Britain treats a smell. First we live with it. Then we map it. Then we invite the people who make it to explain, in a committee room that does not smell of eggs, why the committee room does not smell of eggs.
I have some sympathy. Waste has to go somewhere, and new houses have to flush. I have less sympathy for a process that treats “it stinks” as a data gap. You do not need a heat map of hydrogen sulphide to know that a street should not greet you like a bag of forgotten salad. House prices will do the mapping for you, just more slowly and with more estate agents.
If you are holding the line until the scrutiny panel convenes, Amazon will sell you air freshener. It will not fix Marsh Mills. It will at least pretend the living room has a different opinion.
I do not expect the survey to surprise anyone who has a nose. I do expect a report that says the problem is complex, the works are essential, and residents should keep feeding in their lived experience. Lived experience, in this case, is the smell of eggs at breakfast. Remember that the next time a water company says it is listening. It usually means it has booked a room.
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Warwickshire County Council says it looks after the road, not the sculpture, and had “no involvement in the commissioning, delivery or installation.” Stratford District Council is “currently investigating” and “exploring the options,” which is council-speak for a long meeting and a short conclusion. They hope to recover the cost from the driver’s insurer. A former mayor has pointed out that a lot of people never wanted the thing in the first place. When it went up in 2009, paid for from a developer pot of about £100,000, a petition to take it down gathered 1,183 signatures. It stayed. It has now been improved by a Ford.
This is the British way with public art. First we argue about whether it is art. Then we argue about whether it is public. Then a Vauxhall settles the aesthetic debate and we argue about the invoice. Nobody is against spheres, exactly. Nobody is for a four-figure welding job that might turn out to belong to a department that was abolished in 2011 and reconstituted as a strategy.
I have some sympathy. A roundabout is a hostile environment for anything with feelings, including motorists. I have less sympathy for three organisations in a room, each holding a folder marked “not us.” If your Arts Strategy of 2005 can birth a sphere, it ought to be able to admit the sphere exists when it gets a dent.
If you are restoring your own household armillary sphere, Amazon will sell you metal epoxy. It will not decide which council writes the cheque. It will at least pretend to be a solution.
I do not expect Shakespeare’s town to unbend this quickly. I do expect the sphere to remain a conversation piece, which is what public art is for, just not usually because a bumper got there first. Remember that the next time a press officer says they are exploring options. It means the sculpture is still crooked, and so is the organogram.
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The latest Steve N Allen (almost) Daily is up. This one is called King v Earl, which is the sort of fixture Britain still puts on the fixture list even when the rest of the week is on fire. Plus the other news nuggets that would not sit still long enough for a newspaper column.
If you like your headlines with a coronet and a grievance, have a listen. If you would rather settle the matter over a brew, Amazon will sell you a teapot. It will not decide who outranks whom. It will at least be warm.
Have a listen below. If the player misbehaves, the same episode is on Spotify, Apple and the usual suspects. Watch on YouTube, read the Substack, email me@mrstevenallen.co.uk, or tip the host on Ko-fi if the peerage news left you feeling generous.
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