Planning. But not for climate change

The Planning Bill currently making its way through Parliament is yet another kick in the teeth for British democracy. The Bill has been cooked up to allow central command to force roads, runways and nuclear power stations onto unwilling communities without having to listen to any of their bleating about it in the process.

Brown's lot like to point to wind farms when asked about the reasoning behind this obviously anti-democratic piece of legislation. But this week they demonstrated quite clearly the true motivation behind it – by voting against an amendment that would have meant Ministers had to demonstrate every major infrastructure project's role in the mitigation of climate change before granting it permission.

Since that would have been, hmm - a bit hard for the new generation of coal fired power stations and airport expansions they've got their little hearts set on, they quite sensibly threw out the amendment. In doing so, they have nailed their true colours to the mast – and none of those colours is green. It's time to dust off the D-locks and start gearing up to fight a carbon hungry development near you. Once this Bill has been passed there'll be no other way to stop it.