I sometimes wish I was possessed of the humour and talent of GB Shaw, the great Irish wit and polemical playwright. He seemed able to find the humour in the most serious of situations and used a mordant wit and incisive intelligence to present his arguments. Maybe it’s a gift of the Irish. I had an old Irish friend who would say, ‘Don’t be so serious and miserable, me boy. It’s all a joke.’ Alas, I don’t accept that it is all some cosmic joke.
I have never made any secret of my belief that Byron Bay has been, and continues to be, in the process of being ‘done over’. I have watched the process over some decades and nothing, in my opinion, seems to have changed. The worst thing is that the process seems inexorable, and there seems little to be done to prevent developments that would seem not in the best interests of the place. We see the amount of time, energy and money expended over the West Byron DAs, as the most recent example.
Paul Kingsnorth in his England, the Battle against the Bland describes the process we go through as asking the public for their opinions and feedback on a proposed development project, (thereby being seen as paying lip service to some kind of democratic process), but ignoring feedback for the most part and then simply getting what they want and going ahead and doing it anyway. And pouring large amounts of cash into the process is seen as the lubricant to achieve their ends.
I shake my head in bemusement over The Echo’s article on the appointment of a former mayor of Byron to the Northern Regional Planning Panel at a recent Council meeting. But, as my late Irish friend would say, ‘Don’t be so miserable…’
I voted for Fast Buck$ for Mayor at the last Council election.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
