“I was radicalised by trying to buy a house”
What we asked James O'Malley, journalist, podcaster and 'Professional Opinion Haver'
James O'Malley is a journalist and writer who co-hosts YIMBY Pod, which advocates for growth and progress through new housing, infrastructure, and technology. Steven met with him (online, inevitably), where they discussed abundance, the Postcode Address File, and whether he would support a nuclear power station being built in his neighbourhood.
What is your official occupation?
I always describe myself as a journalist and writer, or a ‘Professional Opinion Haver.’
What does that role entail?
I do two main things. I write a newsletter on Substack about politics and policy, with a steer towards technology and digital things. It's about whatever I want, basically. I always like to try and pick things apart, particularly from a policy perspective when I want to feel smart, or I just get angry about politics when I want to feel dumb. Also, I do a podcast called YIMBY Pod, which is all about why we should build more things.
Do you have any additional roles, paid or unpaid?
No, not at the moment. I occasionally freelance for other places. If anyone wants to pay me to write something for them, I am very happy to have the conversation. In fact, I wrote a piece for Kent Current once. That was very exciting.
And we'll continue to occasionally badger you to do another one.
One day I will do it. I've got more time now. I've just finished a major freelance project for someone else, so I have slightly more breathing room.
James O’Malley
What is Substack? Why are you there and not on WordPress?
Substack, I think, have done a good job. They've combined the old blogging model with the ability to get paid for it. Because they integrate the entire payment pipeline, it just makes it easier. Fewer clicks from someone going, “I quite like this person,” or what they have to say, to clicking the subscribe button to get on their mailing list, so that you get everything in the future. The trouble with blogs in the old days with WordPress, is someone will read something, and then they go away forever. Whereas you get them on Substack, you get someone to sign up, and then you've got them for life. Then even better still, if they really like the stuff and they hit a paywall, then it's easy for them to pull out the credit card and pay for your stuff.
At the risk of sounding like your mother-in-law, do you get paid for that?
Yeah, amazingly it does pay its way. People do care about my opinion, remarkably enough, to pay.
The podcast was previously called The Abundance Agenda. Why have you given up on abundance?
I've not given up ideologically, I'm still very much abundance-pilled. I still believe the abundance lens is a useful one for understanding the things we need to fix in this country and this world.
The reason we changed the name was simply pure cynical marketing in that YIMBY means 'Yes in my back yard,' people who want to build things. It's a phrase that emerged for people who want to push back against the NIMBYs. It emerged out of housing politics. It seems to be the words that people understand. Even normal people who aren't extremely online seem to know what YIMBY means. Whereas abundance hasn't quite got that cachet yet. The reason we chose abundance in the first place was because Ezra Klein published a book called Abundance last year, which we knew was coming out and would speak to this worldview.
Local residents shouldn't get an absolute veto over everything that happens in their immediate surroundings
Is there anything you wouldn't say yes to in your back yard?
Well, this is the thing. I think if I got a letter through the door saying we're going to build a nuclear power plant over your back garden, I would probably personally find that quite annoying or quite irritating. Part of me would think that was cool, but part of me would think that was definitely quite irritating to my personal circumstances. But my view is that individually I shouldn't get an absolute veto over that. Local residents shouldn't get an absolute veto over everything that happens in their immediate surroundings. Some things are more important, and that's why we have politics. That's why we elect politicians to make difficult decisions, because sometimes we need more housing or more infrastructure for the national good, for the sake of improving the country.
We like to pretend that we can just get everyone around the table and have a conversation, and everyone will move along together. We have to bring people with us. I'm a big sceptic of citizens' assemblies and things like that. The reason we have politics in the first place is because sometimes you do have to make decisions where there are winners and there are losers. It means that sometimes we do need to build a nuclear power plant or something that might be controversial. If we decide we need one of these because it's in the national interest, it needs to go somewhere, and we need to make a decision about where that's going to be.
What is something you've enjoyed learning about through doing the podcast?
Oh God, so much. I've got a way more detailed knowledge of the insanity of the planning system, because I got into this thing and became interested in these topics, partially because I was radicalised by trying to buy a house in the first place. Then you look at the reasons why that happens. It's the amount of the way the bureaucracy and a lot of the British state structured in a way to just to say no and oppose building things drives me insane and learning again about the real policy weeds of things like the Treasury Green Book, which is the set of rules the treasury uses to decide whether something is value for money or not, and this is a 10 million page document buried somewhere deep in the Treasury you can read it on gov.uk if you really want to, and it sets out the complexity and the criteria, and there's so many little weedy little things like that. You actually realise how government actually works. The more you talk to people who actually work in government, the more you realise, you peel that one layer of complexity and discover 10 million other layers of complexity. This is why we can't seem to actually build anything.
What's a Kent example of something you learnt?
Ooh, I'll tell you what. Learning about the details of the Lower Thames Crossing and how that came to be in the planning process. I can't remember the number off top of my head, but the sheer size of the planning application for that and the complexity there. The absolutely mad thing, my friend, Michael Dnes, who's a transport consultant, who used to work at the Department for Transport, he figured out that for all of the hundred million pounds or something to figure out the planning application, the government could have passed a law in the first place saying, “We approve the Lower Thames Crossing. It will be built.” That would have reduced the amount of paperwork required immeasurably because you would have had that legal footing to go, rather than be open to a million different appeals and layers of planning.
