NIMBY is what NIMBY does

The Not In My Back Yard ephitet has been banded around for years. Usually in a negative context as established inhabitants with their undeserved housing wealth and gold plated pensions blocking the youngsters from much needed housing or commercial development.

Anyhow while I thinking about this and whether to write something - I had the phrase 'like a wart on the Mona Lisa's nose' ready to go - when a different matter emerged on a FB music group I'm on. 

This concerned the permission given for a coal mine in Cumbria. Given that social media and the folk music world is infested with 'people of wokeness' you can imagine the comments against it. Ranging from coal is dirty and polluting, via leave it in the ground or it's not needed to the classic Tory Scum. It was quite interesting and hopeful to see some serious pushback in places.

Coal is not used significantly in the UK nowadays as a fuel, maybe a few heritage railways and folks living outside smokeless areas, so the question of climate effects is irrelevent. But coal is needed for current steel manufacturing processes and as a raw material for hundreds of products ranging from asprin, soaps, glues, nylon and rayon materials and more recently carbon fibre. Even the 'leave it in the grounders' had to acknowledge some of those things were useful.

So I imagined a conversation between a 'leave it in the grounder' and a'realist'.

(LITG)The country needs more houses -- (Realist)The country needs coal.

(LITG)We can get coal imported, even the steel firms say they don't need it -- (Realist) Of course they would rather buy it cheap from foreign places with lower safety and employment standards and then advertise their (fake) environmental virtue by not mining it here. 

(LITG) The mines already exist abroad why can't we use those? -- (Realist) There are depopulated villages in Italy desperate for people, can we send young families there and reduce building here?

(LITG) People need reliable access to their jobs and travel to family -- (Realist) Manufacturers need reliable secure supplies of raw materials.

(LITG)Communities need houses for new people to keep them vibrant -- (Realist) Indeed, just as Cumbria needs new jobs and opportunities.

(LITG) Cumbria is an environmentally important area for its landscape and biodiversity -- (Realist) So are the fields and woodlands that they want to build houses on.

I came to the conclusion that most of the objectors to a Cumbrian mine were simply NIMBYs. Not the traditional old, white, overwealthy, prime property hoarding, Brexit voting NIMBYs as maligned in the left wing press but a whole new generation of brainwashed, shallow minded, tribal, sloganising, new age NIMBYs.