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The Nimby

by Mickey 

Posted: 21 January 2017
Word Count: 345
Summary: I was in development all my working life and was always amused by the universality of objection from Sussex to Inverness. I reckon there's a 'How To Object To Development' handbook out there somewhere!!


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My five-bedroom home overlooking the green
on some land that my husband acquired,
for a knock down price so cheap its obscene
when the field was no longer required
 
has been ‘Chez Nous’ for many a year
and we’re very well-known hereabouts,
but a note in ‘The Bugle’ has filled me with fear
and replaced what was certain with doubt.
 
Because - horror of horrors - a plan’s been submitted
for cheap terraced homes for the young,
which, in the unlikely event is permitted,
would mean all our dreams are undone.
 
Those feckless young couples who still live at home
too idle to find themselves jobs somewhere else,
and expect to still live where they’ve been born and grown
just cannot conceive of ‘disposable wealth’
 
The houses proposed are simply too small
with just two or three beds I suspect,
so, inevitably local house prices will fall -
will Aldi and Lidl be next?!!
 
We’re not criticising new housing per se -
indeed, we applaud such well-meaning intentions.
Just as long as they build them a long way away
where they won’t interrupt our bucolic pretentions.
 
They can find somewhere else that’s more socially suited
and that won’t spoil my view of the church and its steeple.
I’ll insist that the village pond’s Great Crested Newted
and enlist the support of all ‘right-thinking’ people
 
Thank God for the bats and the Natterjack Toad
which, before in my large Japanese 4x4,
I regularly used to squash flat in the road
but, the ‘threat’ to which I now deplore!
  
Jeremy Wainthrop who’s standing for Mayor
assured the ‘Say No’ group he’ll speak
to the planning committee (he’s pals with the Chair)
at our cheese and wine party last week.
 
We’ve printed the placards – ‘Greed over Need!!’
(I expect we’ll be needing some more)
and I’ve rounded up middle class urban protesters
to trample the hopes of the poor
 
We’ve hired the finest top planning consultant
whose take on our problem’s astute,
he’ll prove that the roads and the drainage can’t cope
like a latter-day planning Canute.






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Comments by other Members



James Graham at 20:26 on 21 January 2017  Report this post
Hello Mickey – I was about to comment on ‘Clive’ but your prolific versifying beat me to it! All I wanted to say was it’s a very good joke in verse and I enjoyed it very much, and to add a tiny criticism which must rate as one of my most pedantic. The last line
caribous called reindeer

needs an apostrophe:
caribou’s called reindeer

Now it says ‘where Santa dwells, a caribou is called a reindeer’. Without the apostrophe, ‘caribous’ is plural. Nit-picking, eh?

Your new poem is a lot more satirical, and I’ll comment soon.

James.

<Added>

Mickey, you could write a cracking poem about Trump. Lots of good rhymes such as chump and Forrest Gump. (Unless he's just not funny.)

James Graham at 20:25 on 24 January 2017  Report this post
One of your best, Mickey. As I read it I can hear this posh lady’s voice – and accent – as she puts the nimby ‘argument’ and reveals her attitudes. A lot of the satirical humour depends on the effect of the truth drug she has apparently been given beforehand, so that she says a lot more than a real nimby would – for example, she admits she has gleefully squashed toads under her 4x4, but is now a conservationist. The ‘knock down price so cheap its obscene’ is another giveaway, much more revealing than ‘my husband acquired the land very reasonably’ or some such genteel hypocrisy. And of course the devastatingly honest ‘Greed over Need’ placards.
 
You seem to have found a place in the poem for every attitude and specious argument. The best known nimby notion is there: ‘We’re not criticising new housing per se…Just as long as they build them a long way away’. But as well as that you’ve also got  the social status thing:
 
we’re very well-known hereabouts
 
followed later by her name-dropping reference to the would-be Mayor.
 
There’s snobbery about ‘the young’ who are merely on the first step of the ‘housing ladder’ and are generally undesirable neighbours anyway. It’s not only the fact that they are young, though – it’s class too:
 
They can find somewhere else that’s more socially suited
 
And so on. It’s a complete portrait.
 
Surprisingly enough, I’ve found one stanza that seems not quite right.
 
Jeremy Wainthrop who’s standing for Mayor
assured the ‘Say No’ group he’ll speak
to the planning committee (he’s pals with the Chair)
at our cheese and wine party last week.
 
Do you agree that it reads better with the lines reshuffled?
 
At our cheese and wine party last week
Jeremy Wainthrop who’s standing for Mayor
assured the ‘Say No’ group he’ll speak
to the planning committee (he’s pals with the Chair).
 
Otherwise he’s going to speak to the committee at the cheese and wine!
 
Great stuff. Good fun, but proper social comment too.
 
James.

<Added>

Mickey, you could write a cracking poem about Trump. Lots of good rhymes such as chump and Forrest Gump. (Unless he's just not funny.)

Mickey at 12:44 on 01 February 2017  Report this post
Hi James
Thanks for your thoughts on this poem.  I’m so glad that you picked up on all the points that I was trying to convey – the hypocricy, the snobbishness, the status-awareness, the pretence, the insincerity, the closing of class ranks etc.

As I said in the summary, I was in residential development all my working life as an architect and estate planner, and what really pisses me off with these people is that they think they have the right to deny homes to others.

Do they really think that any developer would outlay thousands of pounds on pre-application soil tests, environmental reports, land surveys, arboricultural assessments, traffic surveys, architects fees etc. if what they were proposing didn’t comply with local and national planning criteria?  The fact is that, if the proposal meets these criteria, it will be approved notwithstanding the fact that they have walked their dog there for years.

All they are doing by putting pressure on the spineless members of the planning committee is imposing the not inconsiderable cost of lost appeals on local tax payers, and forcing up the eventual cost of the new homes.

As you can imagine, I’ve seen first-hand the objections lodged against proposed development.  My work covered the Home Counties and latterly Glasgow and Inverness.  What is so telling is that the objections raised were identical in content and invariably invoked the EU Protected Species Initiative from people whose sole objective in life was apparently to protect creatures they’d never seen, in order to prevent development of land they have no right of access to anyway!

These are the same people who complain their children can’t afford to buy a home.  Have they never heard of supply and demand?

Mike     


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