Give a man a fish and he can feed himself for a day, but give him a clipboard and a home made sign and he can annoy the world forever.
Tonight at 7pm on BBC 2 we're being given a real treat, a second series of Permission Impossible. The first series was a whirlwind tour of just how petty people can be and this new offering looks to be more of the same but stretched over a whole hour.
Permission Impossible is a brilliant insight into how human beings think and interact. You know how you can watch waves crash against a beach and get a sense that you're seeing how the world works? The same can be said of Permission Impossible. Watch as nice stable people take on new horrifying forms when given the slightest bit of power.
In a shocking indictment of the human spirit one property developer claims that more is spent on the paperwork behind planning than is actually spent on building houses. People are trying to disrupt his housing developments, which create both jobs and houses simultaneously, at every turn. Presumably these are the kinds of people that go home and write to their local MP about job and housing shortages.
The more I see of this the more I'm starting to side with the billionaire property tycoons.
The BBC release certain photos and clips from their TV shows so people like me can preview them. Every single clip is either a depressed builder setting down his tools because some other tool has lashed himself to a tree or a field of grinning idiots trying to get on the telly for standing in the way of progress.
Here's a new rule in which I'm excluding sites where something that matters is at risk ie endangered species of plant or animal and places of historical importance. If, in one of history's biggest housing shortages, you decide to stand in a field because a new development will ruin your sun trap you have to rent one of your spare bedrooms out to a family in need.
Permission Impossible is a brightly coloured sign telling us we can't have it both ways. Of course I wish we still had the rolling fields of corn everywhere but that's not the world we live in. So put down your petition and pick up a shovel because here come the diggers.
