The long-running saga of the Bradford Odeon and it’s much hoped for re-birth suffered a blow this week with the refusal by the Heritage Lottery Fund for a £5m grant. For the price of a very average footballer this magnificent building’s future remains uncertain.
There are signs of life in our city for the first time in many years but this scheme is crucial to a broader reawakening of the centre as a place with a genuine entertainments and cultural offering. Curry houses don’t count as culture!
The Odeon has simply refused to die despite our dopey Council seemingly content to see it knocked down during a long period from it’s closure in 1999.
Doubters and cynics will continue to knock the efforts of those that have saved this wonderful and unique building so far but what would they propose in it’s place; more Legoland inspired student blocks to blight the skyline as recently submitted?
Is this the best we can come up with? Just because we have a new shopping centre the city still has plenty of work to do to attract new footfall.
What do we really have in our city of over half a million? What a poor comparison we make with the likes of Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle and Sheffield, all smaller in population terms but with venues capable of attracting top class bands.
Consider too the following as examples of how and where money flows freely? See if you can work out why?
The cost of converting the Olympic Stadium so that West Ham United can ponce around in the Premier League is put at £272m.
Compare and contrast also a £20m fund announced this week to teach an estimated 200,000 Muslim women in the UK to speak English, many having been here decades. Presumably we can then do away with postal voting?
Or how about £3m to renovate an old cricket ground not far from the Odeon from the same Lottery “pot” – funded by deluded punters – for the benefit of a few dozen in the right postcode?
Frankly, I have no belief that the Council understand the potential this venue offers to the wider population. Maybe there simply aren’t enough votes in it for them?
The Good Old Days?
In the wake of the recent floods and, in particular, the announcements that the bridges at Elland and Tadcaster could take over a year to rebuild, I came across this piece in the local rag based on an article written by a local historian.
It seems they did things a wee bit quicker back yonder.
Papers Fawlty?
The guys at the gym have given me a new nickname – Major – suggesting that I spend more time reading the papers and blagging free coffees than actually doing any exercise.
I call it Care In The Community.
The Not So Good Days?
Perhaps snow gets you nostalgic, at least until you realise that sledging should be reserved for the cricket season and that old bones do not respond well to tumbling off a plastic lid at speeds approaching the Cresta Run?
I decided a walk in the snow would be far safer than attempting to mix it on the piste, having been on it most of the weekend.
I strolled past a row of shops I remembered well as a kid including newsagent, baker, greengrocer, butcher and a Haifax agency. You could deposit your savings from your paper round, indelibly stamped in a book and then walk home checking your worldly wealth each step.
It struck me how the changes here reflect modern society.
The nail bar has replaced the newsagent. I suppose they will have reading material there of sorts crammed with pictures of people claiming to be famous that you’ve never heard of but I bet you can’t buy a quarter of Kop Kops and a cream soda.
A quick nip next door to the Offy and a chance to load up on a few litres of Olde English before hopping in the taxi another door away and maybe down to the bright lights?
Later it’s home time but not before supper and what a choice – curry or chinky – whatever the choice it’s definitely extra chips!
The morning after you have the cafe to try remember the night before. And, if things did get a bit crazy, in a few months at least they built a nursery.
Modern times indeed.
How Councils Piss Money Down The Drain
There was an excellent letter (12/1/16) in the Daily Mail from a Leeds resident making a very good point re the recent howling from local authorities as to the lack of flood defence funding.
As I have commented here before, spending £29m on a cycle “superhighway” for the half a dozen mad enough to cycle between Leeds and Bradford each day is madness. A helicopter shuttle service would have been far cheaper.
Risking asphyxiation, hypothermia and the odd car that decides to try out the new lane – and will promptly sue because the signs were not in a hundred different languages – shows how stupid our elected leaders are, Euro or local.
Of course they will argue it is money from a pot specific to that purpose; the Piss Down The Drain Pot. The reality is that they waste money pouring it away far quicker than the flood waters could ever vanish.
Song Of The Week
Sat in the gym – this time actually contemplating working out – it struck me that in a short space of time we have lost two great song-writers in David Bowie and Glenn Frey.
The offering over the music system suggested new talent was not in abundance as the lyrics seemed limited to “yoh”, “yoh” and a few more to boot. I thought about taking a dumbbell to the offending CD, exercise at last?
Driving home I was rescued. After having my CD collection ignored wholesale during my recent break-in, I’ve decided to trawl through the archives.
On it came, a tune to lift any day – Everybody Wants To Rule The World – and instantly I was oblivious to all around.
Try it, go find a tune to make your day and I bet there’s not one “yoh” anywhere.
Help me make the most of freedom and of pleasure
Nothing ever lasts forever
Everybody wants to rule the world
Body Heat!
“Am too bloody ‘ot” said Our Jackie the other night as she pummelled the beer pumps, trying to keep the local menfolk happy, sedated and free of any thoughts they should not be harbouring.
“I’m having a flush!” she wailed.
I thought about pointing out the dangers of having a menopausal madwoman in charge of community sedation to landlord Michael but unfortunately he was already very well sedated, the joys of recent fatherhood etched over his sleeping face.
Calpon for the kid, Carling for Dad.
Funny how we spend our youth obsessed with steamy sex (only me?) to finally find that the wheel turns full circle. Now, it’s not you raising the woman’s body heat (was it ever?) but hormones raging like a wild sea, as if they needed any more?
And so we continue our quest to try to understand each other. As an educational tool consider this classic piece on You Tube.
Enjoy and my apologies in advance to all redheads, hairdressers (and nail technicians!) plus anybody called Tiffany but you all know it’s true!
Leave a Reply