Articles/Letters
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Clutter kills: How to know enough is enough Robert Dessaix
Clutter kills. I read it in the paper. It triggers cancer, Alzheimer’s and irritable bowel syndrome. The article was by an Englishwoman who’d read an article about it in another newspaper. She immediately hired a professional declutterer to empty out her house. Now she has not just no juicer or batik tablemats, but no books, no CDs, no breadmaking machine, no Mothers Day cards from her children and only one plate per family member. Sounds good to me – especially the bit about the breadmaking machine – if a tad extreme. Is there no middle way? Can’t I ditch the Royal Doulton dinner-set yet keep the djellaba I bought in Fez but will never dare wear? Does Proust have to go? There is a middle way. It’s called yutori. My friend Sarah told me about it over a bite in a cramped cafe in Darlinghurst. ‘Yutori is the new mindfulness,’ she said, ‘but much more fun. You should try it.’ ‘Why? What is it?’ And, for that matter, why am I always the last person to hear about these things? I’d only just got a grasp on wabi-sabi, and now here was this new sensation from Japan that makes embracing imperfection old hat. Despite a best-forgotten futon phase in her youth, Sarah
sonous chemicals, displacing creatures such as koalas, honey eaters, rainforest pigeons and butterflies. Herbicides cause damage to the soils, pollute waterways and poison animals, including humans. Many people in this Shire working gently and intelligently to restore the land, without chemical herbicides, that have wisdom and experience to share. Jo Immig National Toxics Network Bangalow
Illegal holiday letting isn’t generally what you’d call woo-woo, so I was curious. ‘There’s no one word in English to cover it,’ she said, reaching for the teapot. ‘There never is,’ I said. ‘Look at Blitzkrieg, but we usually get the picture. Expatiate.’
Hemmed in ‘This table,’ she said, ‘is an example of what it is not.’ I eyed the clutter crammed onto the tiny table-top between us. ‘As is this cafe, everyone cheek by jowl.’ ‘Aha,’ I said. ‘Yutori means not being cramped.’ I could hardly remember not being cramped by something – desire, obligation, schedules. ‘It means having the time and space – and even the resources – to do, with a sense of ease, whatever it is you’d like to do. Plus a bit.’
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18 December 20, 2017 The Byron Shire Echo
What flashed into my mind immediately was the sort of scene every episode of Grand Designs finishes with: a couple with children called Granville and Clementine, sitting in an aircraft-hangar-sized atrium, staring up at floor upon floor of bedrooms, boudoirs, bathrooms and walk-in closets reached by a hand-crafted spiral staircase, looking trapped. All that room, yet strangely hemmed in. By debt, by deadlines, by the need to own the best and love it. ‘All anyone needs,’ said Sarah, ‘is enough room, money and time, enough knowledge, with just a bit over, to be ourselves. Enough plus a bit more to cushion us. Elbow-room.’ She herself lives in a minute, yet strangely spacious, apartment she calls bijou. ‘Aha,’ I said again. In a word, Lebensraum. I tried not to think of Poland.
‘Competence, rather than expertise. Space, but not a vacuum. Plenty of time, but not empty time. We need to live lives that have a bit of play in them, a bit of looseness. They should not be too tight-fitting.’ ‘Japan is quite tight-fitting.’ ‘It’s the word for what they want but haven’t got yet.’ So does that mean no crimping or scrimping but also no splurging, no clenching or clinching, but no lashing out? No clumping together, no clamping, no clutter? Like learning Ancient Greek for fun or walking the dog for the hell of it or Ubud in the ‘sixties’? ‘Do I have to take classes?’ ‘No, just do it.’ ‘I don’t have to buy a mat?’ ‘No mats.’ It sounded like just my sort of thing. I’ll start immediately. Or perhaps I’d better wait until after Christmas.
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$115,000 out of our scarce Section 94 funds on more consultation and on further investigations into setting up paid parking in six months when we have already resoundingly said no. Sorry, Simon, we simply can’t ‘afford it’. Cherie Heale Brunswick Heads
I was surprised as it was lot of money to clean the loos and, to put it bluntly, the loos in Bruns are disgusting. Recently I tried to go to the loo at the soundshell in the Terrace Park and it was closed. I spoke to a local cafe owner who told me about his ‘tear inducing’ conversations with Council about the issue as his toilets were being overrun by people who were busting and it was costing him a fortune in cleaning and restocking. The main problem Council said was that ‘every time they fixed the toilet someone would vandalise it and they couldn’t “afford” to lock it every night’. So why should the residents and visitors of Bruns be taxed again via paid parking to raise money for the same issues? How much does it really cost? Our bill for one person, for three hours a day to clean four toilet blocks, over the public holiday Falls Festival period is $509. Now Simon Richardson has voted to spend another
Introductions A colonialist mentality exists when it comes to authorities that conduct ‘land management’ with chemical herbicides. Europeans came here and ripped down the native vegetation, spreading exotic species, including pasture grasses. Now, in an attempt to make amends, toxic herbicides are spread everywhere to kill ‘weeds of national significance’ and manage community spaces such as parks and sportsfields. In the process, plants such as camphor laurel, coral trees and bitou bush are demonised, which justifies killing vast swaths of them with poi-
The Holiday Rental Industry Association (HRIA) and Holiday Let Organisation (HLO Byron) made a joint submission to the short term holiday letting in NSW Options Paper They stated that, ‘It is evident that the activity of providing short-term residential accommodation has always been, and is generally, a legal activity in dwellings that have residential development consent.’ No evidence was supplied to support this ludicrous statement. Contrast this statement with the response by the legal adviser to the HRIA under questioning by Victorian MPs at the public hearing into short-stay accommodation on March 24. Under oath, he said that holiday letting was illegal in NSW. His response can be found in Hansard. The HIRA and HLO Byron submission failed to present the numerous legal cases in NSW that show the illegality of holiday letting. This includes the benchmark Dobrohotoff v Bennic (May 2013) Land and Environment Court case. Justice Pepper said that the illegal holiday letting offended NSW planning law. The Byron community has seen a massive increase in illegal holiday lets during the past four years. This has been to the detriment of our community. At the June 22 meeting Council repealed the moratorium on prosecution of illegal holiday letting. Council staff said that they were preparing cases for prosecution. Doug Luke Victims Of Holiday Letting
Home sharing There is always another side to the story and a very inspiring one too. For many of us our homes have always been open to friends staying and then we decided to charge a small fee in exchange to fellow travellers wanting to stay in our homes
netdaily.net.au that covers the cost of the extra power and housekeeping. These strangers soon become friends. Home sharers are predominantly people who want to share their homes with other like-minded people from around the world. They want visitors to feel like they are ‘living’, in their home, not just visiting it. To live versus visit allows travellers to truly get to ‘know’ a place. There are groups who seek to undermine the new sharing platforms that are going to become the norm of the future. Our guests participate in the best part of the daily life of locals, they get referred to restaurants and shops so small business gets a boost in our local community. Our guests share our homes and consequently our love for the area. This kind of sharing should not be legislated out of existence, and to restrict sharing our own homes is not what Byron is about! We understand there are those who use platforms like Airbnb for the sole purpose of making money and some do so on a commercial scale. These people should be treated as holiday rentals and be registered, but we believe true home sharers, or people who only use their principal residence with one or two spare rooms, or on occasions rent out their home when they go away do our community a service and should be allowed to share their home with as many people as they like without restrictions. After all, if we allowed those same people to stay free, there is no law that would prevent us. It’s only the fact that we now ask for a small contribution from our guests that has prompted big hotels to lobby government. If anything should be enforced, it should be in collaboration with Airbnb home owners and be appropriate to this small business and support the tourism industry. It should not placed in comparison to the larger accommodation outlets. We offer travellers with limited budgets who visit our region to have a safe and friendly place to stay. Our properties are not used as holiday rentals, we live there and most of the people who stay as our house guests would not normally stay in hotels. We would be open to paying a bed tax contribution to the Shire council. Name withheld Byron Bay Homesharing
Byron Shire Echo archives: www.echo.net.au/byron-echo