Private Eye caught by the Nimbys - again!

[Gilliver's Travels]

Here's this week's Rotten Boroughs entry. A fine example of objective reporting and clear-eyed, unbiased comment...

All our old favourites unquestioningly repeated: Building on an AONB, plans rejected by two inspectors, Prescott: "stadium not in the national interest, dangerous precedent, etc, etc.... Caught by the Nimbys indeed!

Read on, O moronic fans, read on and wish you'd had all the benefits of a first-class education.

From Private Eye, 9-22 Dec, page 15

SEAGULL DROPPINGS
NEWS that Lewes District Council in Sussex was to mount a legal challenge to John Prescott's decision to allow Brighton and Hove Albion to build a 22,000-seat football stadium on downland in a designated area of outstanding natural beauty provoked a hysterical reaction in Skidrow-on-Sea, where "the Seagulls" have been effectively homeless since the club flogged its previous ground to a property developer in 1997.

The Brighton Argus expressed the "outrage" of football fans, who of course don't give a damn where the stadium is built, as long as they get one somewhere. Skidrow's beleaguered Labour politicians, clinging to their seats on the council and in parliament, joined the populist clamour against neighbouring Lewes. The Argus's front page pictured the nine members of Lewes DC's cabinet, under the headline "These Councillors Could Wreck Albion's Plans For Stadium" as if democracy and justice had been overturned by a bunch of football-hating nimbys. Lewes DC leader Anne De Vecchi has sought police advice after receiving threatening letters and emails from Albion's moronic fans.

In fact it was Two Jags' politically-motivated decision in October to allow the stadium on the site, on the boundary between Skidrow and Lewes (see Eye 1146) that was an affront to justice. Albion's plans, approved by Skidrow council, were rejected as unsuitable for the site by two planning inspectors after long and costly inquiries. To get around this Prescott said that although a football stadium in itself is not in the national interest, the "regeneration" of an area of deprivation such as Moulsecoomb, a nearby run-down estate at the edge of Brighton, is. Prescott has now set a dangerous precedent: any developer could in the future use this specious argument to build on any area of outstanding natural beauty, or even National Park, as long as there was a handy "area of deprivation" somewhere near.

Not only can a developer use the "deprivation" excuse to build on protected land, but the government will pay him to do so. Thus Skidrow United hopes to get £10m in grants to drive its bulldozers across the government's own countryside policy.

 

[Bigtomfu]

*cough*- im a mug....

 

[Gilliver's Travels]

*cough*- fixtures...

Didn't think anyone posted the full text of this latest piece though...

If so, please delete, mods!

 

[Bluejuice]

No, the article hadn't appeared on here as far as I can tell. Well done for reprinting it Gilliver.

What really winds me up about this is the fact that they've made the same glaring mistake 2 issues running. If they want to argue the case of building on AONB then let them, but to claim our club sold the Goldstone off, as if we benefitted from this, is a total fabrication AS WELL THEY KNOW.

Even if the cretin who wrote the ignorant piece last month in Nooks and Corners genuinely didn't know about the Archer situation, they certainly do now. As, I would hope, do most of the editorial staff. And yet they've just gone and printed the same garbage again this month.

If you aren't going to deal in fact then how can you expect to be taken seriously? This whole article stinks of NIMBY and with the malice in calling our fans "moronic" they've let unsubstantiated biased opinion get in the way of good journalism. How dare they label our entire fanbase moronic. Even Cricket has a small minority of fans who can be aggressive and unpleasant, as does every sport, but it's no excuse to tar every one of them with the same brush.

Far too emotive and aggressive in its stance, this is the article that's made me cancel my subscription to the Eye.

And worryingly, I have all too often taken what I've read in the Eye at face value, without questioning it. But with journalism as sloppy as this how can I believe anything they print in there?

Deeply disappointing

 

[Cadiz Seagull]

to claim our club sold the Goldstone off, as if we benefitted from this, is a total fabrication AS WELL THEY KNOW.

Er, sorry to be pedantic, but the club DID sell the Goldstone and the club DID benefit - it paid off lots of debts.

So private Eye are factually correct.

Absolutely no way am I condoning or excusing what Archer and the Board did but the fact remains that they did what they did. And they were the club's owners at the time.

Ian Hislop is hardly the most fanatical supporter in the country as anyone who's watched HIGNFY will know so it doesn't suprise me in the slightest that PE have taken this stance.

You will always get people taking an opposite view; some you can persuade with reason and some you can't. I think PE comes into the second group.

We could try writing to them to explain but I think we'd be pushing water uphill. Their objective is to sell magazines not necessarily to print the truth and the background. They are not about informing people so that their readers can make up their own minds.

This is a classic Private Eye story - based loosely on truth (or at least a version of the truth) but interpreted in such a way to have a go at polititians in general (a policy I normally approve of!)

 

[Barrel of Fun]

Er, sorry to be pedantic, but the club DID sell the Goldstone and the club DID benefit - it paid off lots of debts.

So private Eye are factually correct.

Thats what I said. It was very silly to sell of the ground with no home. But that was Belotti and Archer through and through. Silly men.

 

[Easy 10]

Er, sorry to be pedantic, but the club DID sell the Goldstone and the club DID benefit - it paid off lots of debts.

So private Eye are factually correct

It wasn't 'the club' who sold the ground - it was Archer. And it was Archer who profited from its sale. That article gives no acknowledgment whatsoever to the (pretty important) fact that the present regime had absolutely nothing to do with the sale of the ground. Its exactly those kind of blithe, sweeping statements in articles such as the one in PE that perpetuates the myth that the club has in some way "coined it" by selling its assets in 97, making itself homeless, and so "only has itself to blame".

 

[HampshireSeagulls]

Does anyone still buy or read the Private Eye? I thought most people moved on to better journalistic offerings, like The Simpsons Winter Special?

It's a smug, self-serving rag written by people who congratulate themselves on how clever and incisive they are, before trying to persuade their parents that they "have a real job". Pointless trying to argue or correct their writing, you stand more chance of recovering used toilet paper once you have pressed the handle to flush....

 

[Icy Gull]

Er, sorry to be pedantic, but the club DID sell the Goldstone and the club DID benefit - it paid off lots of debts.

True, just a shame that Hislop's rag didn't mention that the club were the losers which is why they ended up in Skidrow and why they need a new ground.

The debts may have been paid off but who benefited from the additional £16 million that the land was sold on for a year later?

Didn't I see somewhere on here that one of the contributors to PE is a Falmer nimby?

Hardly worth trying to get them to give a balanced opinion in that case is it?

 

[JJ McClure]

Does anyone still buy or read the Private Eye? I thought most people moved on to better journalistic offerings, like The Simpsons Winter Special?

Unfortunately my Dad reads it, which is why I went over there lastnight and told him never to buy that shitrag again.

 

[HampshireSeagulls]

Unfortunately my Dad reads it, which is why I went over there lastnight and told him never to buy that shitrag again.

Disown him. After Christmas, obviously.

I bet he moves on to "The Oldie" - then it is time to take him into the field with the shotgun.

 

[Dandyman]

The sort of football and working class hating shite that one has to expect from a gang of effete public school wankers.

 

[Gwylan]

It's a smug, self-serving rag written by people who congratulate themselves on how clever and incisive they are, before trying to persuade their parents that they "have a real job".

You shouldn't confuse with Hislop with the rest of the people who work there: there's a broad church of people who work there and you can't really judge them all by Hislop's standards.

I played cricket for the Private Eye team in the 80s and there was no sense of the sort of elitism that you're talking about - there were some mad keen football fans too.

Obviously, the personnel has changed since then but I know at least one person who's a regular freelancer there who's a football fan (well, a Middlesbrough supporter) and a genuinely nice guy.

Besides, the appeal of PE is that it has so many divergent views and personalities writing for it. They'll publish NIMBY nonsense about Falmer and at the same time expose the malfeasances of a prominent businessman.

 

[Cadiz Seagull]

Thats what I said. It was very silly to sell of the ground with no home. But that was Belotti and Archer through and through. Silly men.

Not quite the adjective I would use to describe them

I think it's quite ironic Private Eye have picked up on this now. You would have thought they would have revelled in reporting the goings-on during the Archer years (or maybe they did, I can't remember).

 

[HampshireSeagulls]

You shouldn't confuse with Hislop with the rest of the people who work there: there's a broad church of people who work there and you can't really judge them all by Hislop's standards.

I played cricket for the Private Eye team in the 80s and there was no sense of the sort of elitism that you're talking about - there were some mad keen football fans too.

Obviously, the personnel has changed since then but I know at least one person who's a regular freelancer there who's a football fan (well, a Middlesbrough supporter) and a genuinely nice guy.

Besides, the appeal of PE is that it has so many divergent views and personalities writing for it. They'll publish NIMBY nonsense about Falmer and at the same time expose the malfeasances of a prominent businessman.

I don't think Hislop is that much of a wanker actually. His current TV series re: WW1 is really worth watching (Not Forgotten). Didn't deserve being called "Sperm of the Devil" by Geldof's ex-wife!

 

[attila]

Stupid, patronising waste of paper - not even very clever. One below Viz Comic.
I think it'll rebound anyway: many readers will be football fans.

 

[Skaville]

Who are Skidrow United? Will their plans to build a ground in Falmer scupper our chances?

 

[HampshireSeagulls]

Who are Skidrow United? Will their plans to build a ground in Falmer scupper our chances?

We are ground sharing with them. It's the spin-off team from Palace supporters and players who don't want to be owned by Jordan.

Think FC United and Manchester United, except this is the Lidl, pikey version.

 

[Rangdo]

Thats what I said. It was very silly to sell of the ground with no home. But that was Belotti and Archer through and through. Silly men.

They weren't silly at all. Devious, coniving asset strippers yes, but not silly. They knew exactly what they were doing.

 

[Mtoto]

Icy Gull

The Falmer NIMBY you're talking about writes this very column - though without declaring an interest, naturally...