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November 12, 2007

Gordon Brown Plans Dystopian Eco-Towns

Posted by Dave Blount at November 12, 2007 5:42 PM

You won't be needing your old copy of 1984 anymore. Just pick up a newspaper and read about Gordon Brown's plans for Airstrip One:

London (CNSNews.com) — The British government is planning to build a series of "eco-towns" that are not only environmentally friendly but designed to fight obesity as well.

As part of the latest push to deal with climate change, Prime Minister Gordon Brown earlier this year announced that he wanted to see ten new "eco-towns" built throughout Britain by 2020.

These free-standing towns would house up to 200,000 people and be designed to have as little environmental impact as possible, drawing on renewable energy sources such as solar power.

Health Secretary Alan Johnson told reporters last week that these new towns would also be "fit towns" that encouraged a healthy lifestyle on the part of their inhabitants. […] Children would be encouraged to play more sports, eat less junk food and would be regularly weighed at school.

No doubt each room will come with a telescreen, so that authorities can chastise those who don't participate in morning calisthenics with sufficient enthusiasm. Special scans might be used to ensure that residents think green thoughts.

Not everyone favors the new eco-towns. Anna Mitchell of Friends of the Earth frets that they will contribute to "this continuous urban sprawl," and the Campaign to Protect Rural England "expressed concern about the implications for the English countryside."

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