I think you are alittle out of touch with golf and golf clubs which has become alot more accessible to all in recent years and I am pretty sure will only continue. You only need to look at Trent Park in Oakwood which is routinely packed to the rafters and granted is a nightmare for serious golfers re waiting times but the facilities are great and at £ 20 a round and under a £ 10 in the afternoon a bargin.MCB wrote:Of course it's massively hypocritical! I'm a massive hypocrit - I had a pop at golf and stopped playing after breaking 100. But then I realised how exclusive golf clubs are, exclusive in that it's great to look at and walk around, but fundamentally exclusive to those who are well heeled. The numbers using the golf course are tiny. Conservatively the footprint is 25 x Underhills (and remember it's just one of TEN council owned golf clubs). There used to be half a dozen football clubs in Barnet as well - now they have what - 1 - Hadley's in Barnet right? Golf players could simply go to one of the other 9 courses, football fans have to go to a different borough.BeeBoi1980 wrote:As much as the people there were c*cks, you want to concrete over a club's leisure facility that many enjoy that has been there since the 1900's and drive them out of their home. Is that not a little hypocritical regardless of what we think of those that use the facilities.
I'd be more than happy if they just opened it as a nature reserve, open for schools and all to wonder around. It's a false pretence to say the golf course is all greenery - the actual courses are so carefully manicured and chemically ridden, the only wild areas are the trees that stop the poor people looking in. Of course, 1 new stadium, 400 affordable homes, 1 new GP's, primary school and a massive open park & nature reserve would improve life for everyone except the handful of locals and golfers.
It'll never happen of course as golf, like rugby, is popular with the tories.
Building/watching football is a not a physical leisure pursuit akin to golf or physically playing football so unless you are insinuating building a Hive like complex with facilities for all on South Herts or any other golf course you are comparing apples with pears.
Additionally to be a member (and attend/play unlimited golf) for a number of these courses for Under 30s (and in some cases under 40) is less than £ 600 (and in some cases less then £ 300-400) which is largely the demographic of people attending football is actually cheaper/more cost effective than paying for e.g a Bee's membership and attending 22 days a year.
Funny thing that lefty liberals like to have a pop at things like golf thinking its an elite sport etc but if you actually went to a course you would find a large amount of the membership is made up from people in the trade, black cabbies etc and just proves people like to just assume. Of course you can always find people or things to try and disprove this theory and by coincidence both South Herts and Hadley Wood (thread title) are probably the most "exclusive" clubs in the borough but it is not reflective of the wider golf community