Ronald McDonald and the myth of the all-powerful Nimby

The habitués of the Westminster village live in a world where it takes only one Nimby with a petition to stop a housing estate.

A story in today's Guardian may have given them a glimpse of what life is like in the world outside:

McDonald’s has thwarted attempts to stop it opening new outlets by stressing that it sells salad, promotes “healthier lifestyles” and sponsors local children’s football teams.

Public health experts claim the fast-food firm uses a “playbook” of questionable arguments and tough tactics to force local councils in England to approve applications to open branches.

The disclosures, in an investigation published by the British Medical Journal (BMJ), set out how McDonald’s gets its way, especially when it appeals against councils’ decisions to block new openings.

Since 2020 it has lodged 14 such appeals with the Planning Inspectorate. So far it has won 11 of them and lost only one, and there are two others ongoing, the BMJ reported.

You can read the paper on the BMJ website.

Later on the Guardian reports Alice Wiseman, the director of public health in Gateshead, who makes it clear who holds the more powerful position in such planning disputes:

It’s very undermining in the role of local government in being able to shape a healthy environment. We haven’t got the resources that the likes of McDonald’s have got to be able to get into any legal battles with this. It’s David and Goliath."

The idea that the planning laws are holding Britain back from a great leap forward has been popular in right-wing think-tanks for years, and now seems just as popular with people who imagine they are on the left.

In reality, it is a prime example of what Chris Dillow (surely Rutland's most celebrated Marxist economist) has called "Scooby Doo ideology":

This week's remarks suggest that Labour seems to think this slowdown is because capitalism has been restrained by stupid government or by a defective working class. Which is not much different from the Tories blaming the deep state or bureaucratic class.

Both parties seem to have the Scooby Doo theory of capitalism: "I'd have succeeded if it weren't for those meddling kids."

There is, however, an alternative possibility. It's that capitalism itself has developed forces which reduce growth.

And he goes on to give five examples.

I'm not a great one for banning things: in the two planning disputes involving McDonald's that have gained national attention, I've been inclined to support them.

One was their attempt to open a branch in Hampstead, where I reasoned that a burger now and then was just what the pallid, muesli-fed children of the suburb needed. The other was a drive-through on the edge of Oakham, which was said, all by itself, to threaten Rutland's rural character.

Come of it! Rutland is not some bucolic fairyland. (I don't know how people can have formed the impression that it is.) People there want a chance to enjoy fast food as much as anyone else.

But where there are serious public health objections to the opening of a particular restaurant then they should be heard and should have a chance of winning the day.

That they don't have much chance at present shows how wrongheaded the myth of the all-powerful Nimby is.