On Wednesday, local radio personality Bobby Mac launched a new Facebook group “for those of us who are tired of those whining people who don’t want any progress in this great city of Halifax.” Its name? SCREW THE VIEW.

By Sunday morning, STV had 164 members.

“We are tired of the groups that stop progress in this great city of Halifax,” he explained. “We want new buildings. No one goes up Citadel Hill for the view. They go for the fort, and for sex at night.”

Accepting Bobby Mac’s dubious proposition that no one goes there for the view, let’s analyze his most serious argument: Whining, save-the-view-of-the-harbour-floatables crazies are preventing “progress” – by which I assume he means a forest of highrise office towers on the slopes of the Citadel.

Really?

Last year, Dalhousie University’s Planning and Design Centre released a map showing 23 major downtown development projects, all of them approved, but almost none built or under construction. Who’s to blame for that? Heritage groups? Developers? Or perhaps the economy, stupid?

The convention centre? Despite the whining from the all-things-ancient lovers, the city and province eagerly approved the proposed project and shovelled buckets of our cash in its direction. The first real delay came because Ottawa took its time to say yes.

By the time it did, the economy had gone to hell in a handcart. The developer is still scrambling to find financing and tenants to make the project viable.

Speaking of which, the whiners – who also raised economics 101 questions about the convention centre – appear to have been right about that.

Consider this from the Dec. 31 Wall Street Journal, hardly a preserve of loony preservationists. There’s “a nationwide surplus of empty meeting facilities, struggling convention halls and vacant hotel rooms,” it notes. “How have governments responded to this glut? By building more convention centers, of course, financed by debt backed by new taxes and fees on already struggling taxpayers.”

Uh… perhaps Bobby Mac’s next Facebook group will be to whine about how all our tax dollars are being wasted on a white elephant.

Now that would be progress.