Tim Ridgway column: Creative short term thinking – or big mistake?

Everywhere you look it's clear that size is everything - with clothes now having more Xs than a naughty shop in Kemp Town and wine glasses bigger than an goldfish bowl.

We eat sharing platters all to our selves, drive cars larger than some European principalities and are forced off pavements into oncoming traffic by mums pushing prams the size of a hummers.

It got me thinking: is this island really too full with migrants or are we simply being cramped by our super-sized style?

The more I think about it, it's the latter - and that's why our green spaces matter.

I've recently returned from a trip to the Dorset seaside town of Lyme Regis.

For anyone that hasn't been, I urge you to book a weekend in soon - with the mix of quaint seaside nostalgia, rolling hills and stunning cliff views making this one of the most beautiful places in the country.

For me though, the standout is the seafront gardens which form the central part of the promenade and rise up the cliffs through the town.

The mix of flora and fauna really is stunning - and while a stroll through it can take 20 minutes at most, many spend hours just meandering along, enjoying the freedom that being in an open space offers.

You can relax, you can think and you can escape the ongoing super-sized pressures that 21st Century living throws our way.

That environment is only possible though because it's cared for; by locals, by visitors and by the local authority that makes it a priority to keep it looking good by allocating a large sum towards its upkeep every year.

In contrast, returning to Brighton and Hove last week and I was more than disappointed.

Yes I know it's winter and it's hardly the most attractive time of year for vegetation.

But a stroll through one of the city's major parks left me thinking that the whole landscape was looking a little straggly.

Bushes were overgrown, there were big patches of grass missing and tracks were uneven with large cracks in them.

It was hardly an amazing advert for a city which used to be able to boast of some of the finest urban open spaces in the south.

That was before council cuts kicked in - with Brighton and Hove City Council's salami slicing approach to the budget seeing parks staff pushed to one side and pots of money for plants viciously scythed.

There have been some plus points - such as the redevelopment of The Level thanks to lottery money and the planned refurbishment of Stanmer Park.

But even that doesn't come completely smelling of roses - with it involving the loss of previously green fields for a skate park for the former.

With the latter, it's a little more complicated.

The planned refurbishment of the large open space on the north east outskirts of the city was approved by the South Downs National Park last week.

Much of the attention was on the creation of a large car park at it's heart, something that campaigners claimed was the size of a superstore's facility.

But what perhaps is more concerning is that money to take that proposal forward was only achieved by selling off 120 acres of previously protected land in the South Downs National Park.

This is open space that was bought up by the council to protect the city's water supply.

But the local authority in it's wisdom said it needed the money more than the title on the deed, meaning the plots deemed "non core" and now owned by farmers who are free to do what they want with the land.

That could be to keep sheep on; but it may also be to build homes on.

Those in charge say this is cost that we all have to pay to ensure that our city's parks are updated and turned into places where people want to spend time.

And I agree with them - to an extent.

But this is the thin end of a wedge.

If we are not careful we could find ourselves at a stage where improvements to a couple of open spaces could be to the detriment of the wider environment.

While a bit of creative short-term thinking may be able to create a handful of super parks for today, at no point will be able to wind the clock back to rebuild the super-sized parks and open spaces that our super-sized society may crave.

THE month of December is normally the time of year where we all crank up the heating, snuggle up under the duvet and nurse a warm drink in our hands.

But a group of builders near my house seem to have mislaid the seasonal memo, spending the last few days working with no shirts on.

Yes. That's right. Topless. In winter.

Now I know the last week has been unusually humid but chaps, really?

They were either a few bricks short of a bungalow or thought they were auditioning for the latest Diet Coke advert.

But if that was my house they were working on, I'd send them home to come back not just a t-shirt but with a full frontal apology too.