I confess that though pleased by the supposed rejection of the SEP – the only such decision I can recall of its kind since Club Med was knocked back – I suspected that ways would be found to get what the state government want for its so-called ‘vibrancy’ agenda.
I loathe this misappropriation of certain words by certain vested interests.
‘Vibrant’ is well enough when describing, for example, the use of colour in an artwork, but it is tired and inappropriate when it is used as a convenient mask for what the real agenda is. The real quest is about the making of money. This odious ‘night-time economy’ being at the heart of the matter.
The noise in Byron Bay stores is more than enough, apart from highwayman prices, to deter me from wanting to enter most of them. One might add the general attitude of some who are employed to work in them.
The clutter of outdoor tables on the foot paths, combining with careless and oblivious traffic-cycles, e-bikes and clustering pedestrians – if this is considered the much-vaunted Byron ‘vibrancy’, then, sorry, it does not recall the al fresco quality of some European towns in my experience. I’m sorry, but it lacks ‘class’. If what is desired is more punters flocking in at night to spend their money, I predict that it will not generate the cash flow they seem to lust over.
It will remain a ‘dog’s dinner’ of – what? More of the same? Byron Bay remains, in my opinion, to use the writer John Fowles’ eloquent phrase,’ a ubiquitous addiction to wrong ends.’
David Morris, Byron Bay
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. 
