David 1, Goliath 0

By noeleenm on April 13th, 2007

On Wednesday, 4th April, An Bord Pleanala – Ireland’s Planning Board – decided unanimously to refuse permission to Pizarro Developments to build on the floodplain downriver from our community. Their decision was posted on the Board’s website at http://www.pleanala.ie/DCT/217/S217906.DOC on Tuesday last.

Pizarro had submitted four applications for the same site, two for an area of the site that extends into our neighbouring ‘county’ of Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown, and two to Bray Town Council. One of the latter was for high density construction on the floodplain, rezoned by our Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, and Labour councillors as Town Centre.

An Bord Pleanala took the view that all four applications should be considered together, as they are inseparable in reality. The reasons given for the unanimous decision were that:- 1) the flood defence works promised ‘in lieu’ of the floodplain, which both Bray Town Council and the developers maintained would render the floodplain unnecessary as a safety measure, have not yet been passed (nor even seen) by An Bord Pleanala, nor has an EIS been carried out on them; 2) no road layout has been worked out for the area, nor has a town traffic management plan been put in place, despite the fact that the proposed development included over 3,000 car parking spaces; and 3) “adequate provision has not been made for active open space” and therefore the development “would seriously injure the amenities of the area and of future residents and would be contrary to the proper planning and sustainable development of the area”.

For our community, who have fought this lunacy for two years now, it is a huge victory of David over Goliath. We know almost certainly there will be further battles to be won before we are truly safe from the greed for development of this land at all costs, but – perhaps – at long last sanity will prevail and the buildings will be moved back to high ground, with the park and playing pitch, and the extra space required by An Bord Pleanala, preserved alongside our river. If not, we will fight on…

As John, one of our core group, remarked: “The thing about fighting Goliath is that he’s so big a target he’s almost impossible to miss!” John is a wheelchair user and was a potent presence at the Oral Hearing into Pizarro’s plans – and our Council’s acquiescence.

Most of what needs to happen now depends on our politicians finally admitting that they got it seriously wrong, and that they need now to compensate for that fact. We need our local councillors to return the land to its original safe zoning, and to finally put in place a proper Emergency Plan in case of flooding. And we need our national politicians to commit to paying for these flood defence works so that the integrity of the floodplain is not compromised.

Next month a General Election will be held in Ireland. It’s a time when politicians tend to listen to David…

Posted in Flooding, Ireland | 5 Comments »

Empathy is not just a noun

By noeleenm on April 6th, 2007

It’s funny the lessons you learn when you’re trying to teach…

A couple of weeks ago, one of the tutors in our CELTA (Certificate in English Language Teaching) course started the class by telling us a story. It was a tale of when she’d first gone to Budapest, where she taught English for a few years, but, as she spoke, she sprinkled the story with four verbs that none of us had ever heard before – like ’sprongling’. At first, most of us thought we were mishearing her, then we began to grin as we realised how cleverly she was making us see what it is like to be a student, even with a good command of English, trying to understand what the teacher is saying. ‘Worse again, being expected to work out what part of speech the unknown word is and how to use it in other sentences!

By the end of the lesson, because she is a good teacher, we were all happily ’sprongling’ around the classroom, and even supplying it in its Past Perfect Continuous form on demand.

But I hadn’t really learned the lesson…

A week later I was preparing to teach grammar. It seemed to me to be quite complex, so I prepared all sorts of charts on the tenses, and drilled the students thoroughly in them. I was amazed to find that they didn’t seem to need the drilling, though, and flew through the exercises I set them. During the ‘post-mortem’ the tutor looked at me and asked: ‘Why did you spend so long on the grammar and so little time on putting it into context?’ I explained honestly that I had felt it was going to be very difficult for them, and that was why I’d spent so much time making sure they understood the tenses.

‘But at this stage those students have spent years in school learning grammar, Noeleen’, she pointed out, gently. ‘They probably understand structure and form better than we do – it’s practice in how to use it they really need.’

I had been looking at the lesson through my eyes, not the eyes of the students who need to know that empathy means ’the power of understanding and imaginatively entering into another person’s feelings’ much more than they need to know that it’s a noun.

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