A rather boring organisation that regulates the architectural profession has quietly and unobtrusively got on with its business for years… unnoticed, unloved and uncared for. Until recently, that is.
In the last few years, the Architects Registration Board (ARB), the body whose primary duty is to regulate the use of the word ‘Architect’, has been given a mandate from the Government to respond to the politically awkward fall-out from the Grenfell Tower tragedy. As a result, it has been given more money, more authority and more visibility than ever before. It is increasing its staffing and its budget, but more importantly it is increasing its backroom influence. With random authority handed to a sleepy organisation that has long considered itself to be second fiddle to the more public-facing Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), such power has quickly gone to its head.
The ARB is unapologetically interfering in university education and legitimising its interventionist actions on the basis that there has been an extensive ‘consultation’. The consultations, of course, have predominantly been engaged in by interest groups that have mobilised to control the parameters of the narrative in their favour. On the issue of dealing with sustainability, for instance, the consultation has resulted in a national policy that says ‘Environmental Sustainability’ must now be included at every level of an Architecture undergraduate, postgraduate and professional diploma education.
Architecture students must be taught, inter alia:
• The principles of climate science
• The importance of advocating for sustainable or regenerative design solutions
• The relationship between social sustainability, social justice and environmental sustainability
• How to design to preserve, integrate and enhance natural habitats which encourage biodiversity and support access to green infrastructure space for communities
• Appropriate renewable technologies
• The use of onsite renewable energy generation or further offsetting, to achieve decarbonisation
If you have not been taught these matters – and if you cannot demonstrate that you have learned these environmental rules – then you will be refused access to the Register of Architects. In other words, you will not be allowed to qualify as an architect. In effect, students will be compelled to repeat a mantra in order to pass. There may be ways of pretending to jump through these ARB hoops, but its environmental criteria will still be the frame of reference.
As a result, the concept of academic freedom, long held to be the essence of a university education, is nowhere to be seen. Students and staff are no longer allowed to make up their own minds on environmental matters… if they want to pass. Regardless of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill trundling its way through Parliament at the moment, the everyday reality in most architecture departments is that free expression and the freedom to disagree are no longer sacrosanct. Instead of critical enquiry, we have environmental advocacy as the only permissible answer.
In order to sweeten the pill, the ARB insists that “there is no assumption that this Guidance will be used as a curriculum in itself” but it understands “that some institutions will need to make changes to the structure and content of their qualifications. Those changes will need to be properly planned and resourced.”
To justify this brazen intrusion into each academy’s curriculum – into intellectual inquisitiveness, experimentation, ethical enquiry and critical engagement – the ARB confidently points out that there were 48 responses to the sustainability consultation. (There are over 42,000 architects in the UK.)
Institutional responses came from the following environmental lobby groups, already firmly embedded in the mainstream of architectural discourse:
• Architects Declare
• Architects Climate Action Network
• Sheffield School of Architecture Students for Climate Action
• Newcastle Students Climate Action Network
• Westminster University Climate Action Network
In the interests of full disclosure, there were 26 other responses from architects, including 12 academics (myself included). But it seems clear that a tiny minority of environmental activists have have imposed their views on architecture departments across the country.
For years a sleepy organisation, the ARB has become a monster and is revelling in its position as the gatekeeper of formal, acceptable debate on climate literacy and environmental sustainability. Of course, there may be scope to treat these topics ‘critically’ – in other words, to put another side to the debate – but with climate literacy induction and training courses in preparation in many universities – for staff and students alike – going against the climate shibboleths might be seen as going against the ethos of the university.
It was initially intended that this increased ARB mandate would merely relate to fire safety design (as one might have expected as a response to the Grenfell tragedy). But it has spiralled out of control. It is now yet another unelected regulatory organisation that thinks it has a mandate to interfere in the delivery of education at university level. A regulator checking whether a university is delivering a suitable education is one thing; mandating what must be taught – what the content and the permissible approach to content must be – is quite another.
Austin Williams is the director of the Future Cities Project and author of a number of books on the environment and on China. His latest book is China’s Urban Revolution.
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We always voted Labour when I was growing up, but this was in ’80s Newcastle, and most families I knew had relatives that worked down the pits before they closed. But Labour and the Tories have changed beyond recognition over the decades, so now I’d be voting Reform if I were still in the UK. On a scale of 0 -10, how much of a shitshow is this going to be when Labour get in?
”The tectonic political shift happening in the U.S. is not as threatening to civil order as France’s earthquake, but make no mistake: across the West, this is the end of an era. It matters immensely that the National Rally is now the most popular party in France, and that AfD is the second party of Germany. These are the core states of the European Union.
Plus, unlike in the Anglosphere, most young voters favor the hard-right parties, not the left-wing ones. The bullying they experience on the subways from migrants moves them more than the bullying they receive from establishment bien-pensants on television shows.
That said, all of this makes a stunning contrast to what will happen in Great Britain this week. On July 4, UK voters are going to give the governing Conservative Party a staggering defeat, perhaps even worse than the Tories’ humiliation by Tony Blair in 1997. Despite massive problems with migration and political extremism tied to migration, British voters will empower perhaps the most radical left-wing government since Clement Attlee’s Labour created Britain’s modern welfare state in the ruins of World War II.
Yet Labour back then was thoroughly patriotic, and it governed a Britain that was far more socially and culturally cohesive. Today, especially after two decades of uncontrolled migration, as well as comprehensive national self-hatred instantiated throughout British institutions, the UK is deeply fractured. After 14 years of Tory rule, I don’t know a single British conservative who actually believes the lies the Conservative Party tells about itself. The fecklessness of the Tories, Macronist John Bulls who governed in the interests of London elites, will have delivered Britain into a grim woke future at precisely the same time patriots in continental democracies are finally voting to save their nations.
We remember the Summer of 1914 as the last idyllic season before the West blew itself to bits with World War I. Will we recall the Summer of 2024 as the last idyll before the West destroyed itself with civil war, even if fought primarily through increasingly radical politics? That conclusion seems rash—for now—but one thing is undeniably clear: the center of Western politics no longer holds. It is dead, and the ones who killed it are not Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, Nigel Farage, and other politicians of the real Right, but rather the managerial liberals (including Republicans, Tories, and Gaullists) who lived by lies—and who, crucially, believed their own lies.”
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/dreher/the-center-cannot-hold/
Well described
Cheers luv.
There is no conservative party anymore, it’s just the alternative labour party!
I put a comment on the DT website yesterday under the Tom Harris claptrap about left v right saying that there isn’t room for two Globalist Parties fighting it out (Labour/Cons) since they both served the WEF and the policies were therefore virtually identical.
The future was Globalist (Uni-Party) v National (Reform …. and possibly Galloway’s new outfit).
Not a swear word in it. Nothing offensive towards any individual. Nothing waycist, bigoted or insulting.
Someone replied and said my analysis was bang on the money.
My comment got deleted. Which indicates that it was
Can’t have the readers deviating from the Left v Right bollocks.
They adopted COVID and climate communism, not to mention opening up the borders deliberately. No conservative person can support such a party.
Does anybody sane believe there will be some sort of rally to the Conservatives enough to return them with a working majority?
No?
So it boils down to how big will be the big Labour majority be…. which really makes no difference.
Logically, if Conservatives want to stop Labour, the only chance is vote Reform being the Party with momentum, and actually promoting conservative values. Red Wallers should consider it too.
Voting Conservative this time round, isn’t like 2010, when the electorate had had 13 years worth of Labour so the Cons were in with a chance, it will this time be futile.
Correct. A one seat majority would make Labour vulnerable (except the SNP, Plaid, Green and LibDumbs will nearly always support them).
But the difference between a 150 seat majority and 140 or even 100 make NO difference whatsoever.
The Red Wall voters could once again surprise us all. We can but hope that their voice of sanity will be heard. Their views are I suspect more in line with Reform than the globalist Labour Party who represent only themselves and their metropolitan elite acolytes!
I will definitely not be voting for a party with a leader who admires Putin ‘as a political operator’.
Abhorrent.
So you’ll vote for COVID/climate communist who let nearly a million ppl a year in! You do realise you live in the UK and not Russia?
How on earth do you get to there from my comment?
What a very silly comment!
Nobody’s perfect!
Indeed not and it is a great pity because Reform stand for so much that I agree with.
Putin is a murderous barbarian devoid of morals, quite possibly a psychopath.
The idea that the leader of a British political party that wishes to be taken seriously could admire Putin in any way, shape or form is completely beyond my comprehension.
You should stick to the MSM, more your sort of people.
You should stick your comment where the sun don’t shine.
More your kind of thing.
Getting out of bed is beyond your mental capacities most days given the drivel you come out with.
But he looks fab, topless on his horse in those photos he did. Is it okay to admire him that way?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvujypVVBAY
Editing software problems!
You really are an abhorrent pillock. You never address facts, you just throw out nonsense.
Respect your enemy in order to defeat him.
The down vote wasn’t mine!
Perhaps you should actually read Farage’s comments a little more carefully rather than accept the spin that MSM has applied to smear him. Voting according to MSM headlines is only for those who lack the intelligence and intellectual capacity to look beyond the headlines and consider the situation in depth.
MSM has become adept at spin, nudge, censorship, cancellation and blatant propaganda. They are no longer purveyors of the truth and rational argument.
I’ve mentioned this previously, but my old mum was a clippie on the buses 60 years ago (Ribble Buses, Lancashire). As a mid-teen, I was selected to represent a party in a school mock election. Scarily, my manifesto such as it was, was described by our art master, my mentor Mr Lambert, as ‘broadly fascist’. I asked my mum who she voted for and got the reply, “It makes no difference son, they’re all the bloody same.” Time has proved her spot on!
Mr Lambert sounds like the fascist.
Mothers usually know best – but perhaps I’m biased!
I’m doubtful anything much will change economically for most people, certainly not beyond frog boiling speed. I guess we’ll continue ti run about a 4% budget deficit so borrowings will be 20%-25% higher than now come the next election, which means interest rates will have been kept relatively high.
Labour will have overseen a looser monetary policy so we’ll have relatively high inflation.
There’ll be some taxing of wealth, property & pensions but in general people with assets will still do ok.
The bigger change will be on low cost issues, which means stoking the culture war to maintain some semblance of difference to the Tories or Reform.
The wheels of net zero will be looser too. The prospect of net-zero by 2030 will have receded, so Tory & Labour policy will turn out to be identical apart from self-ID of trans.
This all presupposes we’re not suckered into another war.
Don’t forget Scamdemic ll coming soon.
As an article on here said….We need more Victor Meldrews. I would add we still need the Alf Garnets of this World, at a back stop against Woke.
Many people of my acquaintance would probably describe me as a perfect fusion of Alf Garnet and Victor Meldrew.
I don’t know why
I don’t belieeeve you…
Hitchens is like a dog that is mistreated by his master every day, beaten and starved but still remains by his side out of misplaced loyalty.
Plonker!
He urged people not to vote Tory decades ago, and they ignored him. He was right. He’s no admirer of the Tory party.
If you’d read anything he has written on this subject in the last 20 years you would know that he is more aware than most of the failings of the Tories. His position now is that Labour will be so bad that it is imperative they be stopped, and voting Tory is a way to do that. I don’t agree with him but it’s a plausible and honourable position and calling him a plonker for it doesn’t seem appropriate
Sounds like JRM.
One tries to be fair-minded and looks for things that have imporoved in their tenure or at least situations that have been managed well under difficult circumstances. I can’t think of one and I can’t thing of one under Blair either. Obviously this is because it is supposed to be that way given the real state of affairs. In the time we live in, every leader will be worse than the last; even the noblest of characters can do nothing to stop the decay. Clive James asked the question, how was it possible for Blair to inherit a country ruined by Thatcher and Major and then make it even worse. It is baked into the pie I’m afraid and we are going to chobble on it whether you want to or not. On the plus side these leaders tend to last for shorter and shorter periods at the end of empire which has a funny side to it.
This country was DEFINITELY not ruined by Margaret Thatcher, in fact just the opposite. Yes she had faults but she didn’t seek to destroy us. Bliar did. Bliar is still doing it and must be positively drooling at the prospects come July 5th.
My understanding is that Thatcher was a plant of the G.H.W Bush CIA agenda that started in the early 1970s. What you might call ‘The Chicago Boys’, Allende in Chile being the first victim, although you you go back much earlier -Guatemala for example. . This was an economic model that brought slow destruction under the guise of illusory riches. This CIA doctrine takes many forms. I think we would be naive to see it as a positive influence on the state of our country. I can tell you with certainty that it isn’t a positive influence on our country or any country.
For me, voting Reform is a vote for Reform and is the ultimate snub to the Uniparty. I find pictures of Kiernocchio with his pathetic “Change” logo insulting. I’m far too intelligent to be the single cell amoeba he preaches to.
Within two years Labour will be seen as pariah’s. In five years time it is our turn. Always think ahead when you vote. Trying to stop Labour is empty headed and futile since you are voting to continue the Uniparty. The Tories are, essentially, irrelevant in the here and now. In the fullness of time it will become clear that I am right and only two parties now matter. We may not win that many seats but by heck are we scaring the hell out of Labour and the Establishment.
If you think that the act of putting an x on a ballot paper every four years is going to make things jolly then you are messed up. It isn’t going to be anything like that.I don’t even know where to start. We are moving into serious times and this is just another attempt at distraction. The decision has already been made for August in terms of war. No one will stop that. And I know we are an island and we think that this makes us invincible but not so much on the modern age. There are missiles that can travel very long distances. The ladder of escalation is treated with contempt by western powers because they haven’t received reciprocation yet. When it happens trust me it will be an entirely different story. Do you even have the fitness to get off your fat ass and go and hide in the cupboard under the stairs? I think not you would probably be hobbling around like a paraplegic the moment the bomb drops.
Unherd’s Horror Show. Fantastic Beasts and Why to Vote for Them.
Are we to pray in the style of Augustine: “Lord, make me see the Tory Party destroyed, but not just yet.”
The 14-year-long journey of Conservative Party governance in the slow lane of the automated highway, ‘the road of revolution’, is the route on which the whole country has ‘travelled far down’ in its unholy conversion. ‘Every institution in the nation has been subject to the Long March of the Left. The schools and universities have produced huge numbers of young men and women entirely reconciled to the Blairite new order,’ writes Mr H.
What would a Conservative Party reprieved as major opposition or government continue to be? A zombie in a horror film, a creature having lost its soul, uncomprehending of the revolution it spreads haphazardly and amateurishly: as to radicalism, always uncertainly fabian; as touching conservatism, gelded?
Of all of this, Sunak’s announcement in this election campaign that he’s ‘not against’ assisted dying is the finest example.
“For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?” (1 Corinthians.xiv.8).
If the Tory Party is ‘not against’ something revolutionary such as assisted dying, how can they be an opposition to a radical Starmer Labour government?
The Conservative Party is to be the saviour of the hour. Qualifying only because, having limited horizons conservative and radical, they have made themselves such nice revolutionaries compared to the nasty ones. As the one of the ‘two corpses’ that ‘prop each other up’ that is suffering a more advanced state of decay, a masterful attempt is made using the arcane arts of journalistic voodoo to put a tremor of battery life into its pacemaker. Yet it’s just too small a device to hold the charge of the re-animating zeal of the True Believer.
“So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.” (Revelation.iii.16).
Yet it is already appearing that the March Lords will have effective power. Like the lords who edged the Western Roman Empire as it withered from Imperial Capital to provincial Ravenna. These are the religious and demographic tides welling up in the sea of the electorate. These are currents created by the Tories failures to deliver limited immigration and levelling up. These move the flotsam and jetsam of the electorate in directions that will constrict a Labour government in foreign policy and corral it in immigration policy.
For the Caesars, it was the same. Allies were made of the march lords. First given citizenship; then the dole, acknowledgement of religious difference, and co-rulership.
Vote Reform UK
as if your life depends on it, because it does.
I’m borrowing from the WEF’s Playbook.
If you want (a chance) to build back better, first you have to destroy what is in place. The Westminster Uni-Party has to be destroyed.
It’s like a 3-legged stool – red leg, blue leg, yellow leg – and is very stable. But if you break one of the legs it cannot stand.
We need to break the blue leg.