For these anti-stadium residents of Falmer who feel they now occupy the moral high ground, I offer some suggested reading, in the form of Simon Inglis's defining text on world stadiums, Sightlines.

Chapter five offers the cautionary tale of the residents of a middle-class Auckland district and the struggle of a local residents' association against the expansion of Eden Park, spiritual home of the All Blacks. It teaches the following valuable lessons.

First, if they wish to fight the good fight all the way to the courts, they will need to find a substantial stash of cash, possibly close to £100,000.

Second, once the local council thows its weight behind a planning application, there is no stopping it.

Third, it is likely a significant number of your neighbours, the silent ones, have no wish to obstruct the planning application.

Last but certainly not least, the value of properties will not fall. Indeed, it may well rise and, when the expansion of Eden Park went through, there was no rise in crime, petty or otherwise.

Think what you will be denying this city. Or perhaps let Simon Inglis explain, as follows. "I do like living in a city where things are happening, where things are moving, where people say 'Yes' more than they say 'No'. Where the lights go on seven evenings a week. Where the pavements hum and the air sizzles. Whether it's a stadium or an opera house, a pub, a street market or an all-night bagel bar or an evening barbecue with interesting, opinionated neighbours, it is what makes city life so exquisitely tolerable".

Wake up and smell the coffee.

-Jason Martin, Greenfield Crescent, Brighton