The End of an Era

The HSSA is going to lose their chairperson; Martin Robertson has been the chair of the HSSA right from the start and has given his time tirelessly.

He started campaigning for at Skate Park in Horsham as back as 1987 some time before some of the users of today had even been born, in that time he has seen many young people grow up and move on, in order to help the development of the skate park and insure the safety of its users he took on the role of Streets Sport liaison work for the HDC on a voluntary basis.

The HSSA will now be looking for a new Chairperson, also as Martin looks after the website and all the email some else will have to take on that roll, Martin warns who ever take on the website will have to bear the cost as he has done for many years.

I had to ask why Martin was giving it all up, he told me after many years of happiness in doing this in the past few years things in his life has changed making it harder for him to fulfill this role to his best, and more over in the past few years has suffered some abuse, he has been accused of being a paedophile, a drug dealer and also has received rude remarks about his age and size. More recently some of the people who go to the skate park have made remarks that he does not know anything about skate parks and should pack up and go home. On top of this he is fed up with having to clean up and defend the users of the skate park from the other young people who turn up and get drunk in park.

Martin has said he will meet the entire obligation he has for the summer holiday but after that he will hand back his HDC identification card. He will keep doing the roller disco and you will likely see him in a parental role at the skate park with his son.

I asked Martin what is he going to do with his spare time he said the Binliners website will still be there to give information to young people of the area but at the same time Martin and a group young people are hoping to start an on line radio station supplying local news and music aimed at the young people of Horsham. He hopes the local bands will help by sending CDs or recordings of their music.  He is now working on getting the License sorted out.