<b><b>The summer silly season has thrown up two stories that, Robert Jones argues, have an impact on the housebuilding industry and the wider planning process</b></b><br><b>I must confess to rather liking the silly season, that period of the year when parliament is not in session and the editors of national newspapers are desperately searching around for stories to fill their pages. Such desperation usually means both that minor stories get blown up out of all proportion and that non-stories get into the press, when at any other stage of the year they wouldn&amp;’t make it beyond the most junior reporter&amp;’s waste paper basket.</b><br><b>To some of us the silly season means an absence of the routinely boring political argy-bargy, even more boring and routine in the present one-horse political race. It means a chance to learn about some of the things happening nationally and internationally, which if not exactly news are nevertheless interesting because of the insights they give into human nature or what is really happening underneath the surface of the rather grand and generalised diet, which we are force-fed the rest of the year. </b><br><b><b>Massive implications</b></b><br> Two stories struck me most particularly this year. Although both relate to the housebuilding …