NIMBYs Unite - Your Country Needs You!

It started with this Daily Mail lead letter from George Rome Innes. A week later mine was printed below. We need more NIMBYs. And let's face it everyone's a NIMBY when it's THEIR back yard. Fact. But everyone should care about what is in their back yard And what is in their front yard too. Let's make NIMBY a badge of honour, not a term of abuse. It is just a criticism to shut down debate anyway. But the more debate the better. All too often tax payers are presented wtih a Hobson's choice of abysmal planning options to choose from, if any choice at all.

I say towns and cities are for people, not developers or corporations who seek to play Monopoly with our lives, strip us of our assets and sell us short, never mind quite happily bulldoze everything about Brighton and Hove that makes it special. Even the Royal Pavilion has suffered serious threats to its existence twice in its history. It has got to the point in Brighton where families born and bred in this city are being urged to move elsewhere as the city can no longer 'afford' to accommodate them. Meantime our council has plenty of money for silly road schemes that no one wants while they neglect upkeep of our seafront, close our libraries and lavatories and tell us we have to face a future of high rise developments on our seafront and the construction of 'Greater Brighton' cutting a swathe through our city.

Oh For The Wings Of A Gull

On a more cheerful note, latest poem...

Oh For The Wings of A Gull

Synonymous with the sea

You’ll find them in smart white, grey and yellow livery

Surfing the wind above the waves

Patrolling every seashore, cliff and cave

Counting the trawlers in

The ferries out

Combing the beaches

Before other scavengers are out

Then gliding inland to urban dominion

Ruling the rooftops over small town bird civilian

Fish and chip suppers on the fly

They sign summer across the sky

Wheeling and dealing

Squealing and reeling

Gulleted gulls so graceful in flight

But not above a squabble and fight

Over a split bin bag outside the takeaway

Beating the refuse collectors at the dawn of day

Then there’s the Waterloo Street gull who’s friends with a cat

Fancy that.

They emit their soundtrack to the sea

You can even buy it on CD

The council wants to cull the gull

But is happy to use their image to promote its city and CD, no royalties

©LK  King 2014