Michael Manning is the eighth Manx Bard.

Each month, Michael will be sharing one of his poems with us, and letting us know some of the thoughts and ideas that inspired it.

This month his poem is about the flaws in the island’s planning system and the inequality of the housing market.

One of the more distressing sights on the island in recent years has been the scars on the land of new ‘developments’.

I think in particular of Reayrt Mie and the associated infrastructure on the outskirts of Ballasalla but there are others.

While it is undoubted that we need good housing the perverse incentives of the planning system seem tilted towards greenfield development (and, indeed, development without any seeming reference to renewable energy or ecological sustainability).

This, while empty or derelict brownfield sites abound in almost all the towns.

What are we planning for?

The housing market meanwhile occupies a ludicrously inflated space, divorced from any socially useful reality and prey to the capital-rich speculation of developers and wealthy landowners.

Those who already have assets find it easier to acquire more, leading to a poisonous increase in inequality.

Ordinary people find themselves priced out of this racket.

Behind all of this lies the cult of the market and the commodification of life and land, a bizarre hubris that insists that maximum monetary value and profit must be wrung out of every area of our existence, careless of either human flourishing or the environment that we all depend upon.

One day this will be seen to be the derisory illusion it is.

A system driven by greed only causes ruin.

We don’t own the land, any more than anyone can own the sea or wind or sky.

At best we are merely stewards, answerable to the generations that follow for what we did or did not do to sustain a good and liveable world.

Planning by Michael Manning

Dig and slash and scrape and rip,

gouge and gash and tear and strip.

Strike and flay and thresh this field:

come what may, we need a yield.

There is a great and tender patience to the gentle earth,

the generous and unhurried service of the steady seasons

laying down their riches.

The minute wonders of the soil.

Scorch and build and sear and spin,

level out and tarmac in.

Break and burn and rake this field:

come what may, we need a yield.

As the green fades from our deracinated days there is a rumour from across the sea,

a hot and choking world, they say, and smoke and fire and death.

But the wise market -

tumescent and obese,

vain and voracious -

assures us this is gossip.

Its tumid hand promises to dispose its glittering gifts to us all:

a life of style and ease.

Strain for it.

Run and rage and sweat and curse,

the only goal’s to fill the purse.

Flog and scour and raze this field:

come what may, we need a yield.

Ask us, one day hence, as we inhabit all our concrete meadows,

admiring our good views of carnage,

limbs heavy with the corpulent, corroded coils of our desirable life.

Ask us what was here, what was done.

A field, we’ll say, or so the old ones tell, foolish with nostalgia.

Plotted and pieced, lined and measured,

always valued, never treasured.

Ask us, then, about the silence,

about where the birds have gone,

about how the grass became plastic.

Ask us about the absent trees.

Ask us about the deep unease.

Ask us about the lands’ disease.

Ask us why.

Go, tend and love and serve this field,

find there a kinder, freer yield,

for as it lives your lives are healed.