Fifteen billion quid on Crossrail 1 and plans for a second to follow; fifty billion (at least) on HS2 all starting in London and landing North when I am pushing up daisies; and Lords knows how much – should they ever build it – on a new runway at Heathrow.
Meanwhile ‘oop North the silence is broken only by the clatter of thirty year-old diesel trains lumbering between the twin pillars of the promised Northern Powerhouse, Leeds and Manchester.
I don’t support for one moment the idea of devolved government for the North given the bunch of incompetents we suffer locally already but you have to wonder how the North actually commands a more equitable share of the cake.
For now we endure the transport system of a Third World country.
Planning Madness
And speaking of localism, just as soon as the half-wits at City Hall signed off on the wrecking balls at the Victorian Hutton Middle School comes news that, less than a mile up the road, Councillors have consented to the continued existence of one of the local area’s monstrosities.
The old QLM building, which started life as a Morrisons, has been a local carbuncle for decades most recently subject to a plan to convert it into a Bazaar by a convicted fraudster.
The building is surrounded by double yellow lines and the local area has plenty of retail outlets already so what need for another eight shops? And what could they possibly be selling?
You can best your last tenner that Starbucks and Pret A Manger won’t be in the queue. Predictably Councillors wailed that they were only doing their job “not able to consider all the important factors before granting permission.”
That’s always assuming they were actually capable of comprehending them.
We flatten green fields, knock beautiful old buildings down and preserve piles of concrete crap like this for purposes nobody in the local community wishes. So what function does a local councillor really serve?
No parking, no local need and works having been going on for several weeks ahead of the final decision. At the risk of yet more threatening legal letters from small people, why would you commit funds to a building without planning permission in the bag?
Or are these really simply dirty, done deals? What a piss poor Council we suffer.
My Mate Mike
Over the years I’ve had the odd exchange of views with the game of cricket’s elite as to the current state of the game and it’s future form here down in the basement.
There are many of us at grassroots level of the belief that few at the elite level really understand the issues we face to keep our clubs alive, ultimately enabling the game to flourish.
In 2012 the English Cricket Board published it’s National Strategy document for the recreational game with the foreword written by Mike Gatting, ex-England captain and grandly titled ECB Managing Director Cricket Partnerships.
I wrote to Mike, aware I was approaching an ex-England Ashes winning captain, with a few views suggesting the document was a pile of crap written by someone who had never played cricket.
His PA called me out of the blue and there I was, amongst the vegetable patch, sharing a thirty minute conversation with Fat Gatt from Lords. Surreal perhaps but a conversation that left me firmly of the belief that all was fine viewed from the ivory towers.
In a BBC interview last week Gatting suggested “…the ever-growing pressure on exam results is making it harder for summer sports in schools.”
Despite calls for more sport in schools, he said, there was a “huge drop off” among 14-to-15-year-olds. You don’t say!
Gatting suggested that the issues were impacting on the state and independent schools but show me a state school locally that actually plays cricket at all?
And as most of the kids I coach don’t appear destined to be brain surgeons I’m not sure his theory holds much weight here.
To give us some hope though that we are in good hands “..he suggested one solution might be to move the exam season away from the summer months.”
And off he went to speak to the Education Secretary…
Visionary or what?
It’s All About Taking Part?
We’ve all heard the saying but how many really, honestly believe it? Personally, I never step onto a sporting field not wanting to win.
Of course, there are days when you fear the odds are stacked heavily against you but still the hope is for the form book to look an ass if for one day.
Learning to lose is something we must all do.
Coaching youngsters you have to be as honest with them as you would want to be treated yourself; lulling kids into a falsehood with dodgy decisions helps nobody even if it continually goes on. Wins have to be hard earned to savour fully.
On Sunday my Under 15s won their first game of the season, no mean achievement for a squad decimated at the start of the season – not by the ever-increasing demands for brain surgeons I might add – and often up against six-foot bearded giants week by week.
As with every Sunday morning, I had three hours ranging from delight to hair-tearing frustration yet somehow this week they came good.
Onwards and upwards or maybe for now just enjoy the moment.
Dear Mrs Bayne
Just thought I would send you a picture of your lad so you can see he is in good health and not eating those nasty Aldi 99p frozen lasagnes anymore.
Here in the Land of Plenty the crops are in full bloom now and we enjoyed the first new potatoes of the summer under our unusually hot sun, butter mingling with a few herbs and some fresh cut salad from the patch.
To further amaze you, I can happily confirm that he is now a master of the washing machine – I showed him the “on” button – and has self-taught himself to hang out his – and my – whites!
I have promised to teach him how to cook if he will also teach me how to bat and this seems a good deal though the cooking lessons might be easier.
As yet, I have not sampled his signature dish – avocado on toast – but he now knows how to resuscitate a wrinkly tomato with an ice bath which I swear as a wrinkly 52 year-old has never worked for me.
Over here we have some fairly unpleasant things happening; we have a heatwave and the Australians are here. Finally, he received a belated welcome gift this week; it seems you can never have enough of the stuff.
Mad Dogs…
Is it me or do you also sense that as soon as the sun comes out, so too do numerous fat people to pound the streets, forcing themselves into lycra they simply should have binned years ago?
Ten months of the year sat on the sofa clutching the box of Oreos in front of X-Factor and then, as soon as “the sun has got his hat on”, out they come.
Ruddy cheeks, clutching the bottle of water like a bar of gold and setting a pace that Mo Farah’s gran would beat.
Roll on winter.
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