23 October 2013

Dozspot wins the fight for a greener Green Square

| johnboy
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Over the course of his time in the Legislative Assembly the Liberals’ Steve Dozspot has very rarely picked a good cause, and even more rarely has he had a win.

But he’s celebrating a well deserved victory with the grass returning to Kingston’s Green Square:

Off the back of consistent community pressure, the Canberra Liberals Steve Doszpot has won the fight to have Canberra’s iconic Green Square in Kingston returned to its former glory with the removal of spiky plants and the laying of grass.

“Numerous business operators in Kingston have raised concerns with me about declining business since Green Square’s iconic grass was ripped up and replaced with unsightly spiky shrubs in 2010. The ACT Government has now caved in to pressure and will allow the grass to be returned,” Mr Doszpot said today.

“Traders asked ACT Labor on several occasions to have Green Square revamped as a family friendly place by replacing spiky plants with green grass, but their concerns were repeatedly ignored.

“At the eleventh hour and after pressuring the Government further, businesses, residents and visitors have been granted their wish to have green grass laid again. I am proud to support a petition in the Assembly which has received more than 900 signatures in favour of revamping Green Square.

We look forward to Steve pursuing other causes in less salubrious precincts with such vigour.

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Thanks (I think) poetix.

So, Brown Square in going to become Green Square again, in the teeth of the urban planners Who Know What is Best For Us, Even if it Hurts.

Yay!

Let’s hope they get bands playing on weekend afternoons back as well. It was a pleasant community event, and a bonus for traders who picked up business from the people who came.

HiddenDragon10:52 am 24 Oct 13

Or they could lay AstroTurf and call it Gruen Square.

Actually, Green Square was to be the site of the ACT’s very own desalination plant.

When breda gets going, the rants are wonderful. I particularly like how planting native grasses seems to become the equivalent of oppression in East Berlin in the 1960s, if you read the various posts consecutively.

The Stasi came to Kingston
and sprinkled out their seed.
But spiky things and paving
are not what people need.

Well, they’re using their own money, unlike the social engineers who had a go at public expense last time.

Queen_of_the_Bun11:56 pm 23 Oct 13

breda said :

The reason it go so run down before it was removed was that the ACT government used the classic developer’s technique of letting it get that way to justify destroying it. They stopped watering it, reseeding it and generally maintaining it because the nomenklatura considered it to be ideologically unsound to have a wasteful patch of grass there during the drought.

Having lived in Kingston in the 1970s, I can assure you that it was just fine when it was getting a modicum of maintenance.

As for the (gosh, you must be a paid-up member of the nomenklatura) snipe about the local businesses, it’s curious then that the local businesses are actually paying to have the grass restored. See the Crimes today for details.

Damned capitalist pigs, even when we use taxpayers money for their own good, the devils still somehow subvert our dream of making this town look and behave like East Berlin in the 1960s!

But who’s going to pay for picking up all the cigarette butts once the smoking outcasts colonise the grass every night?

I’m not really sure that lawn is going to make much of a difference to the profitability or otherwise of the shops. Lipstick on a pig and all that.

breda said :

Damned capitalist pigs, even when we use taxpayers money for their own good, the devils still somehow subvert our dream of making this town look and behave like East Berlin in the 1960s!

+ 1

And surely this is a breach of some UN Convention on the Promotion of Native Grasses too?

breda said :

The reason it go so run down before it was removed was that the ACT government used the classic developer’s technique of letting it get that way to justify destroying it. They stopped watering it, reseeding it and generally maintaining it because the nomenklatura considered it to be ideologically unsound to have a wasteful patch of grass there during the drought.

Having lived in Kingston in the 1970s, I can assure you that it was just fine when it was getting a modicum of maintenance.

As for the (gosh, you must be a paid-up member of the nomenklatura) snipe about the local businesses, it’s curious then that the local businesses are actually paying to have the grass restored. See the Crimes today for details.

Damned capitalist pigs, even when we use taxpayers money for their own good, the devils still somehow subvert our dream of making this town look and behave like East Berlin in the 1960s!

What the Hell are you on about? 😮

The reason it go so run down before it was removed was that the ACT government used the classic developer’s technique of letting it get that way to justify destroying it. They stopped watering it, reseeding it and generally maintaining it because the nomenklatura considered it to be ideologically unsound to have a wasteful patch of grass there during the drought.

Having lived in Kingston in the 1970s, I can assure you that it was just fine when it was getting a modicum of maintenance.

As for the (gosh, you must be a paid-up member of the nomenklatura) snipe about the local businesses, it’s curious then that the local businesses are actually paying to have the grass restored. See the Crimes today for details.

Damned capitalist pigs, even when we use taxpayers money for their own good, the devils still somehow subvert our dream of making this town look and behave like East Berlin in the 1960s!

“Having worked in Kingston for some years, I for one look forward to the return of the high-maintenance, threadbare, litter-strewn, muddy patch that used to be there.”

+1. I’ve got fond memories of little more than a patch of dust where now there is a, if not beautiful, at least functional garden. Far less of a desert now when compared to years past. And I still see plenty of kids running around there.

It’s funny. Even with the increased competition from the likes of Me and Mrs Jones, Kennedy Room etc… you still can’t get a seat on a Saturday or Sunday morning at any of the cafés that sit on Green Square. If the operators of businesses on Green Square are suffering declining business, perhaps they need to look a little further than their front yard. Or maybe, Kingston just can’t support 8 billion cafés and yuppy pubs.

The irony is that there are four kids playing in there as I type this, and it is green and healthy.

Having worked in Kingston for some years, I for one look forward to the return of the high-maintenance, threadbare, litter-strewn, muddy patch that used to be there.

Good one.

The grassy square used to be a nice spot for people with little kids to take a break, workers to eat lunch and once upon a time there were even bands playing outside the pub now known as the Durham and people would sit on the grass and enjoy them.

Then the urban design/social engineering crowd (who believed Tim Flannery when he said that rain was a thing of the past) “improved” it at great expense by replacing the nasty non-indigenous grass with spiky things and paving. They wanted a desert, and they got one. Hardly anyone used it except as a thoroughfare.

Unfortunately, the ideologues who created this fiasco (at our expense) are still running things. Just look at the endless, expensive and continually failed “refurbishments” of Garema Place and surrounding areas.

These people don’t care about what the public likes – their aim is to use urban design as a vehicle for their ideology. And, if people don’t respond correctly, why you just double down and do more of the same. Bunda Street is the next candidate for a windswept wasteland ringed by failing businesses which is unsafe after dark.

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