Don’t slip up on those new acronyms
Posted: 11 February, 2009 by admin
I can’t exactly remember why Billy Connolly took to wearing these splendid Big Banana Boots in the nineteen seventies. I do remember my parents going to see him and telling me how unsuitable he was for nice young girls (which is what I was then, more or less). All I know is that I can’t see a banana now without thinking of them. What a delight that they now have pride of place in Glasgow’s splendid celebration of people power, the People’s Palace.
Now the humble banana has taken on a new role in the venacular of citizen empowerment. BANANA has apparently replaced NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) as the acronym of choice when describing public resistance to building projects: Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything. Another acronym which manages to encompass all the weaseliness you would expect from public officials trying to put a positive spin on recalcitrant members of the community is LULU: Locally Undesirable Land Use. But my special favourite is CAVE: Citizens Against Virtually Everything – sometimes it feels like there are a lot of them about.
What we need now is a nice acronym for the sort of people who make a positive contribution to public life: Sensible Undervalued Citizens, Keen, Empowered and Rational. Got any suggestions?
Not quite an answer to your question, but I read one report in which anti-tram protestors were known as RANCIDs – Reject Anything New, Condemn it If it’s Different.
Here’s a BANANA alert quite close to home – the redevelopment of Springfield Hospital in fact. Read it here http://springfieldhospital.googlepages.com/home Perhaps with plummeting house prices some of the huff and puff by the neigbours will go out of this?
“Local activists” have claimed victory in getting the mental health trust’s redevelopment plans overturned by Wandsworth Council http://www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/news/local/topstories/4200171.Springfield_plans_rejected and the Trust is now being pilloried for spending money to put the proposal together in the first place. I’ve always thought it was a good proposal http://www.swlstg-tr.nhs.uk/future/springfield_regeneration_programme.asp If it doesn’t happen like this, how do the good burghers of Wandsworth think that the redevelopment and improvement in patient care facilities on the Springfield site is going to be paid for? Do they care so long as their views are unobstructed?