Mount Oswald Golf Club - barbarians at the gate

Mount Oswald was where I learnt my golf.

A public course with a private course feel, it sits just outside Durham, an ancient cathedral city in the industrial north-east of England. The fact that anyone could play there sat rather well in what is a university town, where learning is similarly open to anyone who's smart enough.

It's no Augusta: an interesting enough tree-lined front nine gives way to a back nine that for the most part occupies an open field. But it's where I first hit a golf ball in anger, you know? The sentimentality glosses over the architectural shortcomings. I registered my first birdie there; broke a hundred for the first time there and still have the scorecards to prove it.

I watched my friends live out the craziness of youth there. Tony N, so keen he used to run down the fairway to play his next shot; David B, reaching the par-5 13th in two, only to three-putt, calmly pick his ball from the hole and hurl it into a nearby copse as if it were standard golfing etiquette.

It was the start of everything golf for me. And now Durham City Council is considering plans to turn Mount Oswald into a business park: 750,000sq ft of office space, 88 houses and parking for 2,000 cars.

If they fall for the kind of flannel businessmen come up with when they're moving in for the kill, the thing's a done deal already:

• "This is a fantastic opportunity to create a world class business and research community in Durham..."
• "The designs...are firmly based around sustainability principles, as well as being sensitive to the development's historic surroundings..."
• "...economic, social, recreational, landscape and ecological benefits..."
• "...we will be undertaking a full programme of community engagement to find out what local residents and businesses think..."
• "... we have an in-depth knowledge of and great respect for what makes Durham City special..."

Now here's my view, offered with as much objectivity as I can muster (having the playgrounds of one's youth turned into smoked-glass hives for middle-management drones doesn't quite cut it as a formal objection, I appreciate):

• Like most people in Britain, I've seen business parks of all shapes and sizes spring up in the last 20 years. They have several in Peterborough where I work. I have stayed in a very nice hotel in the midst of one in Rotterdam. I even walked the business park on a beautiful Dutch summer morning to give it the benefit of the doubt. My verdict? Even the best of them look like East Germany on a good day.
• The proposal is to replace a public facility with one that will be largely confined to businesses and executive housing, the latter being rumoured to have a £1m price tag. Hmmm...
  
• What is the big deal with bringing 4,000 jobs (and I'll eat my 7-iron if that figure turns out to be accurate) to a place like this? This isn't the recession of the late '70s any more, when a region shedding its industrial heritage was desperate for any jobs that were going. Now it can pick its time and its place. Mount Oswald is neither.
  
• Durham is a glorious, charming antique: a place to draw breath between the north-east's urban triumvirate of Newcastle, Sunderland and Middlesbrough. It needs a dirty great business park like Vienna needs a Kwik Save.

Over to you, Durham City Council.