WINTER | THE COMMENTATOR
Martin Fullard
is in the silent
majority
T
o procrastinate from
writing this column I
elected to flick through
my local parish magazine. Yes,
I live in a Surrey village, and
yes, news is often tedious in
extremis. One cracking feature
caught my eye, in the same way
that news of a rail fare hike
might.
A man with crossed arms and
a furrowed brow was pictured
standing next to a road in
which the annual Ride Surrey
bicycle race comes through. The
synopsis was that he was very
cross at the number of cyclists
passing through the village year-
round, in order to, presumably,
avoid their wives and children
ahead of the Big Day.
He is quoted as saying he
doesn’t mind the race taking
place but is very cross that he
lives on the training route.
Classic Nimby – Not In My
Back Yard.
You can’t do anything
these days without someone
petitioning to the council –
which I remind you are unpaid
volunteers with nothing else
to do in life than raise parking
fares and moan about cars.
This attitude is becoming an
increasingly big problem for
local sport.
Councils are reluctant to do
anything for fear of the vocal
minority depriving them of
votes, and such voters will stop
at nothing to prevent local sport
happening. An example: Up the
road from me is Woking, and
just outside the town is the new
Rise of the Nimbys
Woking Sportbox complex.
Sportbox had a controversial
life before opening in early
2019. Residents, sorry, Nimbys,
were very sad that it was
being built at all. The fact it
was being built on Greenbelt
land was, according to one
resident, an “abomination”. It
was suggested that the empty,
boggy marsh land next to the
Portsmouth mainline railway
should be left as it was: an
unsellable patch of uselessness.
Never mind how it is next to
a school which badly needed
new sports facilities. However,
despite rabid campaigning,
which included the customary
petition, planning permission
was granted.
The next move in the Nimby
playbook is disparagement and
cheap insults. In one article I
discovered on Surrey Live, a
resident is recorded as saying
the name Sportbox is “better
suited to a cricketer’s jockstrap”,
while another spoke of his
“dismay”.
The “dismayed resident”
went on to say, and I quote: “It
would have been a very nice
touch if the elite of the council
had the foresight to involve the
local community on the naming
of this intrusion, rather than
one or two people making this
decision.”
The elite?! Intrusion?!
Councillors don’t get paid,
and the work they do is
voluntary, with only nominal
reimbursement for expenses.
Maybe, then, Dismayed Resident
has a point. We should have an
Elite Council, a board of people
who get paid huge salaries,
skilled businesspeople who don’t
shy away from making cold,
hard business decisions. Then,
maybe, we’ll end up with a better
functioning society, with the
Nimbys back where they belong:
in their back yards and in parish
magazines.
“Councils are reluctant to
do anything for fear of the
vocal minority depriving
them of votes”
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