Swift bricks will be installed in all new buildings in Scotland after the Scottish parliament voted in favour of a law to help endangered cavity-nesting birds.The Scottish government and MSPs across the parties backed an amendment by Scottish Green Mark Ruskell to make swift bricks mandatory for all new dwellings “where reasonably practical and appropriate”.
Fot once, a sensible and unobtrusive policy from the Greens, one that will benefit the environment with little to no drawbacks. Why can't we have it here?
Because, Reader, our government is once again proven utterly useless:
The swift move contrasts with the four-year battle to bring the hollow £35 bricks into law in England. The Labour government last year rejected an amendment to make the bricks mandatory for new buildings, instead introducing them into planning guidance, meaning there is no legal obligation on developers or planning authorities to provide them.
And Wales too, another Labour stronghold, followed suit.
The Welsh government rejected swift bricks last year, arguing that developers could use the bricks to argue they were meeting “net benefit for biodiversity” requirements without providing other nature-positive measures.
So rather than applaud the nature-positive thing they were doing, the dog-in-a-manger morons in Wales chose to focus on the things they weren't doing? Sounds about right.
In Gibraltar, an important point on the swifts’ seasonal flyway between Europe and sub-Saharan Africa, swift bricks have helped populations recover. Prof John Cortes, the environment minister of Gibraltar, said: “Scotland’s decision on swift bricks is a significant step in ensuring the survival of this species, which has come to depend so much on us. On the ‘Rock’ we have had this policy for several decades and we have seen a declining population of swifts first stabilise and then increase.”
Shortsightedness from Westminster is clearly to be expected.
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