Dear Editor, I’m worried about Coun Martin Mullaney. Since taking over as Birmingham’s sport and culture cabinet member, he has announced plans to close most of the city’s seven municipal golf courses yet spend millions on refurbished or new swimming baths (which I have no quarrel with), and now he wants to commit the Council Tax payers to possibly untold millions of debt by bidding for the 2022 Commonwealth Games.
Where is the logic? The golf courses are the envy of other big cities. Since the first one was opened in 1921 they have allowed hundreds of thousands of citizens to take up the sport.
It is a healthy pastime they take with them through life and into old age.
Nowadays more and more youngsters are being encouraged to take up the game which teaches them good behaviour, consideration for others, numeracy, how to lose gracefully, and many other desirable traits sadly lacking in today’s society.
These kids need proper golf courses to play on, not par 3 knockabouts. To suggest that they can move on to private or pay-as-you-play clubs is unrealistic. Most of these are too expensive or too far away.
To destroy this magnificent collection of public golf courses would be to destroy a fabulous amenity which our forefathers had the vision to provide. I know that with the bad summers we’ve been having the courses have lost custom and subsequently about £500,000 last year.
But if public cost is the yardstick then the city should close all its leisure facilities, including the swimming baths, the parks, sports centres, the Library, and the Museum and Art Gallery.
With gadfly councillors like Martin Mullaney, as a Brummie I’m glad I’ve escaped to Kidderminster.
Peter Ricketts
Hurcott Road, Kidderminster
