Exploiting a tragedy is not on and yet...
Even without exploitation it’s still possible to draw lessons:
Married couple Stephen Chapple, 34, and wife Jennifer, 33, were found dead at their home in Dragon Rise, Norton Fitzwarren, Somerset, on Sunday night while their two sons, aged five and six, slept upstairs.
Mrs Chapple was stabbed to death, police confirmed on Tuesday. Post mortem examinations are still being carried out on her husband.
Mr Chapple taught computing at West Somerset College and his wife worked at Otter Garden Centre at Pen Elm, near Taunton. The couple's youngest son had just started primary school.
The killings are rumoured to be linked to a parking dispute between neighbours in the Taylor Wimpey development, where it is believed that residents are allocated at least one parking space each.
Sharon Sedgbeer, 50, a resident of Dragon Rise, said parking has been a problem because there simply “isn’t enough of it”.
She said: “It’s horrendous. People park at bad angles, on corners, blocking driveways because the spaces are so limited.”
Another resident, Melissa, said “everyone has an issue with parking around here,” adding: "Some people have multiple cars there isn't space for and it has caused a lot of upset."
The planning system currently insists upon 30 or more dwellings per hectare of land. We already produce the smallest new builds in Europe at something like 75, 76 square metres each. Even at that shoebox level there’s not enough room for how people actually live their lives - this parking being only part of that.
The country has no shortage of land that could be built upon, only a shortage of what may be built upon. The aim of our having an economy, a civilisation even, is that we all get to maximise our own utility, not conform to whatever it is that others think we should be forced into.
Yes, of course, killings are the responsibility of the killer. And yet this fractious nature of the lived environment is due to that planning system. The insistence that everyone must only be allowed a rabbit hutch and without the room to live life as it is desired.
We are aware that the legal system doesn’t in fact work this way but there would be a certain satisfaction in seeing that planning system indicted here for, say, conspiracy to cause violent affray. Then when found guilty, as it obviously would be, we could do away with it.
Do note that this is also about to get very much worse. At the moment this is just about parking - what’s it going to be like when every vehicle needs to be charged overnight as well?
The only reason we have this absurdity of a planning system is that the upper middle classes fear allowing the proles room for a house, garden, and couple of parking spaces might spoil the view. Our opinion on this is that there should be a little more pitchfork and burning brand action outside the Manor Houses. Or possibly the Guido Fawkes solution, blow up The Town and Country Planning Act 1947 and successors.
There really is no good reason why a country as rich as this forces the people into development density that would shame medieval peasantry. So, we should stop doing so.