"It is important to only get mad about things that are real."
Somebody needs to explain this basic concept to our leaders here in the USA. There is a case of "shoot your mouth off first and ask questions later" going around.
And there is a lot of competition for the title "Most Deeply Unserious Country." I will defend the honor of the USA as the rightly winner of at least the swimsuit competition, since we are the champions at LooooooksMaxxxxxxing. Prove me wrong.
Tomfoolery needs to meet its comeuppance, and will. But most importantly, the story has gone viral.
I need to add though that it bothers me from the other angle. Lot of people out on the social media seem to think a "fiction-driven tourist site" isn't worthy of protection. But I can't help feel that if we proposed a nuclear plant in Brontë country, then fiction-driven tourism would suddenly be acceptable as an economic reason to alter a planning permission.
I actually did some of the research for this article in a cafe in Beddgelert, a town in Wales with the grave of a dog that is not only mythical, but the myth itself is a myth - "Gelert the faithful hound" was so called because they wanted to say his grave was in Beddgelert, which is so called because it's the site of the grave of Saint Gelert. The actual legend isn't part of the Mabinogi and was just adapted in the 18th century from an Indian story of a prince with a faithful mongoose.
Listening to the clip, I'd say this is a PR puff gone wrong. The anecdote is meant to reveal that beneath the cold corporate exterior beats a heart of gold. "We stopped everything and changed all the plans because we didn't want to break the poor kids' hearts!" Okay, so it's bending the truth a little, but now you've got a successful project to brag about *and* a heartwarming story of energy infrastructure and Harry Potter fans living happily ever after. His closing line in the interview is the giveaway...
"I think you've got to be flexible, agile and thoughtful. And sometimes, you know what? A ten year old girl... she's right!" Straight from the agency briefing sheet...
Alas, it's already taken on a life of its own, and (inevitably, perhaps) metastasised into another 'blimey you couldn't make it up" story. No doubt a teachable moment for someone...
Inventing a planning accommodation where not exists is bad, but by hypothesis rare: that is why it provoked this note from you. A far more common cause of "the idea that public consultation is intrinsically frivolous and illegitimate" is that planning processes tend to go through the motions of public consultation without the substance.
Definitely a very interesting case, especially coming from a planning person themselves, would honestly love to hear more of your analysis on this example and related ones. It seems to fall under the vague umbrella of a “self-fulfilling prophecy”, where even the developers who didn’t run into silly obstacles have bought into the idea that development runs into silly obstacles. The system was hallucinating outcomes that “sound” like they could’ve happened in that they fit the public stereotype, but weren’t real.
Agree. There was some analysis by a Mary Douglas disciple on moving Arsenal’s old football stadium from Highbury to somewhere else nearby in North London. The whole point of the 4 groups in the 2 x 2 grid of hierarchy, individualist, fatalist, egalitarians was that there was discourse between these groups which led to a better outcome and a solution which wouldn’t have been found by hierarchy (planning authority) or individualists (let’s get rid of planning permission and build it anywhere we like) acting alone.
I figured it wasn’t true based on your past posts, forwarded it to the groupchat anyway for the quick dunk. Thanks for spelling out why thats a bad impulse
Thanks for writing this, people were saying it isn't true and it seemed kind of fishy but not something I had time to look into.
It is important to only get mad about things that are real.
Thank you, Jenny, for saying it out loud:
"It is important to only get mad about things that are real."
Somebody needs to explain this basic concept to our leaders here in the USA. There is a case of "shoot your mouth off first and ask questions later" going around.
And there is a lot of competition for the title "Most Deeply Unserious Country." I will defend the honor of the USA as the rightly winner of at least the swimsuit competition, since we are the champions at LooooooksMaxxxxxxing. Prove me wrong.
Tomfoolery needs to meet its comeuppance, and will. But most importantly, the story has gone viral.
Well said.
I need to add though that it bothers me from the other angle. Lot of people out on the social media seem to think a "fiction-driven tourist site" isn't worthy of protection. But I can't help feel that if we proposed a nuclear plant in Brontë country, then fiction-driven tourism would suddenly be acceptable as an economic reason to alter a planning permission.
I actually did some of the research for this article in a cafe in Beddgelert, a town in Wales with the grave of a dog that is not only mythical, but the myth itself is a myth - "Gelert the faithful hound" was so called because they wanted to say his grave was in Beddgelert, which is so called because it's the site of the grave of Saint Gelert. The actual legend isn't part of the Mabinogi and was just adapted in the 18th century from an Indian story of a prince with a faithful mongoose.
That deserves a footnote in a history of the decay of Christianity — saint replaced by faithful Indian mongoose! Don't anyone tell Allister Heath.
It's legends all the way down.
The story made it to the New York Times this morning: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/10/world/europe/dobby-harry-potter-grave-wales.html
yeeeeeesh.
Listening to the clip, I'd say this is a PR puff gone wrong. The anecdote is meant to reveal that beneath the cold corporate exterior beats a heart of gold. "We stopped everything and changed all the plans because we didn't want to break the poor kids' hearts!" Okay, so it's bending the truth a little, but now you've got a successful project to brag about *and* a heartwarming story of energy infrastructure and Harry Potter fans living happily ever after. His closing line in the interview is the giveaway...
"I think you've got to be flexible, agile and thoughtful. And sometimes, you know what? A ten year old girl... she's right!" Straight from the agency briefing sheet...
Alas, it's already taken on a life of its own, and (inevitably, perhaps) metastasised into another 'blimey you couldn't make it up" story. No doubt a teachable moment for someone...
Inventing a planning accommodation where not exists is bad, but by hypothesis rare: that is why it provoked this note from you. A far more common cause of "the idea that public consultation is intrinsically frivolous and illegitimate" is that planning processes tend to go through the motions of public consultation without the substance.
Definitely a very interesting case, especially coming from a planning person themselves, would honestly love to hear more of your analysis on this example and related ones. It seems to fall under the vague umbrella of a “self-fulfilling prophecy”, where even the developers who didn’t run into silly obstacles have bought into the idea that development runs into silly obstacles. The system was hallucinating outcomes that “sound” like they could’ve happened in that they fit the public stereotype, but weren’t real.
Agree. There was some analysis by a Mary Douglas disciple on moving Arsenal’s old football stadium from Highbury to somewhere else nearby in North London. The whole point of the 4 groups in the 2 x 2 grid of hierarchy, individualist, fatalist, egalitarians was that there was discourse between these groups which led to a better outcome and a solution which wouldn’t have been found by hierarchy (planning authority) or individualists (let’s get rid of planning permission and build it anywhere we like) acting alone.
You may be being both unfair and too kind to the journos. Maybe they did look at a map, but had it upside down.
I figured it wasn’t true based on your past posts, forwarded it to the groupchat anyway for the quick dunk. Thanks for spelling out why thats a bad impulse