Planners are never satisfied, and never give up. Central and
local government have departments full of them - all charged with the task of
regulating what landowners can't do on their land. Increasingly, permitted use
rights once held by landowners are being replaced with discretionary rights
exercised by council planning staff (and enforced at the landowners cost).
Underlying it all is preservation and a (false) presumption
that landowners can't be trusted to do the right thing for future generations.
Fortunately, Neanderthals had a more enlightened view of innovation and
preservation.
Planners are dangerous people - dangerous in that they
elevate their own perceptions of the world above those they are supposed to
serve. In an ideal world landowners would be protected from such people by
their elected representatives. They are our line of defence against socialist
planners and the like of radical environmentalists such as the Department of
Conservation (DoC); that's why we elect them.
