Harry Potter fans will know that he spent much of his younger years living under the stairs a 4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging. But I think modern day Australia has outdone him and author JK Rowling, because it seems we are living in the land of Big Whinging. This is the time when NIMBYism has taken hold as the cult de jour, and its devotees never stop their incessant whining. Fair dinkum, it seems our towns and villages, our communities and our businesses are all grinding to a halt because of the never ending stream of complaints. And it's so counterintuitive. Every time an interesting, forward-thinking project is put forward that promises to create jobs or economic prosperity, there are those who seem determined to make it their life's work to put a halt to things. They are the people who will devote all their time an energy to finding usual worms, hitherto unseen plants or maybe even a rare pile of bird dung as a reason to halt any inclination of moving forward. Everyone says we need more housing, because there is a desperate shortage and the population is growing. But the moment a developer suggests possibly moving anything more than a few twigs or a pile of leaves to make way for the houses then there is hell to pay as people take to the streets making whatever demands are necessary to keep anything from changing. And so the homeless can continue to go without a place to live, and businesses can continue having to make do with staffing shortages because people can't move to new towns to take up jobs because there is nowhere for them to live. We want footpaths in towns so people don't face the danger of having to walk along roads, but whatever you do, don't put those footpaths in front of my place. Maybe the reality is that we are just too comfortable with the status quo, and while we call for changes, as soon as anything looks like happening we whinge and moan and complain until it stops. And of course by complaining about other people complaining, I'm just adding to the deafening chorus of hypocrisy. But as they say, if you can't beat them ...
