From The Canberra Times by a guy called Tom Connors
Quote:
I PREFER watching croquet to streetcar racing. You can see both sports near Commonwealth Avenue, but croquet requires no high wire fences, concrete barricades or many days of road closures creating great inconvenience to Canberra residents.
Croquet does not burn up a scare natural resource, create noise pollution or place a financial burden upon ACT ratepayers. Another great thing about croquet is that sexism does not raise its ugly head. There are no glamour pusses draped over vehicles, kissing the winners and acting like bimbos. Where are the female drivers? Very scarce indeed in this male-dominated sport.
Croquet winners and placegetters do not spray each other with champagne like childish ockers.
The national capital is a city of history and culture and should not be defiled by streetcar racing. Leave that for the desperate towns, like Bathurst.
As a long-term citizen of Canberra I was never asked to approve of the V8 race around the Parliamentary Triangle. Like the Summernats, it was imposed upon me and I pay for it in inconvenience, appalling noise levels and I would not be surprised at a future hike in rates to help pay for it.
What do we get out of it in compensation for the estimated $1.4 million lost on last year's event? While hotel and motel bookings no doubt increase, McDonald's sell more hamburgers, restaurants and cafes are fuller and more petrol is sold, what is there for the ordinary citizen? Very little unless you are a petrol head. It is not the role of ratepayers, through the ACT Government, to give traders a boost. We are, after all, in the era of globalisation and a winding back of handouts. We should look after ourselves.
After the Bruce Stadium fiasco some could have believed that the ACT Government, of whatever political persuasion, would leave organisations like those staging car racing to fend for themselves. But I read in The Canberra Times of "independent sources" claiming that the Government paid $850,000 last year to the Queensland-based Australian Vee Eight Supercar Company. Based on the Bruce Stadium experience, I have grave doubts that we will ever know the full cost of the V8 saga.
Car racing around the streets of a beautiful city like Canberra is ugly.
Whoever makes a real quid out of big events except the promoters? Perth scrapped plans for a V8 race after analysis by the Western Australian Tourism Commission revealed that the investment needed for the event could not be justified by the expected returns.
Now that the euphoria surrounding the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games has evaporated some sobriety has been injected into the costs and benefits. Before the Games it was going to be a bonanza for hotels, restaurants and shops. If there was a bonanza it was rather short lived and followed by a lull in trade and tourism. The Olympics downturn was even blamed for a drop in ticket sales for last year's Canberra V8 race. Maybe we can use that excuse again this year if tickets decline again.
Sydney has been left with expensive under-used facilities that require a lot of cash to maintain. Certainly the Canberra V8 event has no problem of that magnitude but there has no doubt been expenditure on facilities that can only be used to support the race. And what about the effect on the roads?
Car racing around the streets of a beautiful city like Canberra, with all its significance for the nation, is ugly. Ugly fences, ugly grandstands and ugly noise. I suppose the gentle croquet folk have to stow away their mallets in the face of all the disruption to normal life.
When the V8 race began I remember some politician going on about the boost to tourism because of the television coverage that would reach people in Australia and beyond. I await a detailed analysis of the effect on year-round tourism.
I suggest that the race's effect on tourism would be zilch, and that it is more likely to turn people off. The television screen shows cars screeching around the streets in front of Parliament House. Viewers may get the occasional shot of the House and the flagmast but little else.
Let's get it into perspective. The V8 race is a pain in the rear for the vast majority of people who live here. Its economic benefits are foggy to say the least and do nothing for the reputation of this city.
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You know, somebody actually complimented me on my driving today. They left a little note on the windscreen. It said, 'Parking Fine.'So that was nice.
So your saying Blurter that if AVESCO decided to hold a street race in Gymea you wouldn't be excited about it and that you wouldn't go? And that you'd rather play croquet?
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You know, somebody actually complimented me on my driving today. They left a little note on the windscreen. It said, 'Parking Fine.'So that was nice.
No, I'm not saying that at all. From my perspective I would think it was great and would be the first in the queue, even if it was a street circuit, I expressed a feeling of sympathy to the residents of Canberra who are not fans and pissed off by the disruption our sport creates to their lives.
Canberra, beautiful one day - full of wind-bag pollies half the year, and boring all year 'round. Haven for dope fiends and porn merchants (often the pollies themselves.)
The guy hates the Summernats too, and that HAS been proven to bring bucket loads of cashola into the ACT economy.
Croquet eh? Tom sounds like your typical cocaine-sniffing, suit wearing yuppie snob who needs to poo-pooh everything because they have nothing better to do in that boring as batshit town than whinge, bitch and moan - and play croquet.
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The Internet is so big, so powerful and pointless that for some people it is a complete substitute for a life. - Andrew Brown
Obviously a useless yuppy turkey who has never played croquet or even watched otherwise he would know about pissed off croquet players chasing each other around with hammers.
Croquet is also a pursuit of the idle upper classes in england and has less relevance to australian culture than riding down foxes with packs of beagles, or starving the peasants.
Its true that the supercar events puts some barriers between the treasury buildings and the sidewalk cafes of manuka, but anyone that makes a habit of watching croquet is likely to be able to afford to detour a few days of the year.
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