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Our man in Istanbul – and Woking…

Read spiked editor Mick Hume's columns from The Times (London) this week.

Mick Hume

Mick Hume
Columnist

Topics Politics

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Keep your ‘dwellings’ away from the greenery

‘As I flew into Stansted on Sunday from Istanbul, a fantastic but gridlocked city of 13 million, southeast England looked like a green, pleasant and largely unpopulated land, with plenty of room to house a few million more. Yet today the debate about “concreting over” the region restarts in Woking, close to where I grew up, with a public examination of the South East Plan, the latest in a forest of planning reports that could replant the green belt. Which seems pretty much what some want to do….’

Read on….

Talk turkey? It’s gobbledegook

‘The Clash of Civilisations Award for cliché of the week goes to: the Pope’s visit to Turkey being “heavy with symbolism”. Indeed, in Istanbul last weekend, it seemed to me the entire Turkey-EU discussion is now so weighed down with symbolism as to be at risk of collapsing into the Bosphorus….’

Read on….

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