Next year is a defining year for the City of Bradford; can it reinvent itself as a modern and vibrant city centre or will it be consigned to decades of terminal decline?
This week the local comic – Bradford’s Telegraph & Argus – re-hashed for the umpteenth time the “story” that developers Westfield will finally start building the long awaited shopping centre. No prizes for cutting edge journalism there.
Crucially as well, the fate of the Odeon will finally be determined after 14 years of abysmal neglect and negligence by a local authority not fit to run the local youth club let alone a city with half a million people.
The story of the Bradford Odeon has been told here before and it is a compelling one of broken promises, dodgy dealings and inept bungling.
The Scandal of the Bradford Odeon
Now its chance for a bright new future hangs in the balance as does Bradford’s, intertwined as they are.
BBC Look North this week offered two groups with ambitious and alternative plans the chance to expand briefly on them. The likely costs of any redevelopment are put at between £10m and £20m; somewhat lower than the paddling pool outside City Hall.
Bradford One and Bradford Live each have websites where you can make your own mind up as to which is most likely to succeed…unless you really want the Council to do it for you.
Take a minute to have a look and judge for yourself.
Every person who joins Bradford One – THIS IS EASY SO PLEASE DO IT – is sending a clear message to the Council that they care about the future of the building and Bradford.
Joining also benefits Bradford Live – and any other potential bidders – by letting the Council know people care. Politicians muck up enough of our daily lives so if you really do care then take a minute to do this.
Whatever your preference at least both groups have to be commended for their vision and positive approaches. So where does the Council stand? Look North also offered air-time to the ear-ringed one.
Every time this man is called on to speak on behalf of the city there should be a warning flashed on the screen – “yes this really is the leader of the council”.
You would have thought that a City centre bereft of anything half-decent going on would welcome a chance to revitalise a key corner with a stand out project designed to draw people into the city?
You would have thought that a council leader with nothing to shout about would embrace this opportunity?
In direct contrast to these two bright and bold ideas, Cllr Clueless needed less than a minute to prove that he has absolutely no idea and that the spectre of demolition – which would be vandalism – still looms.
Has Cllr Clueless got a Plan B or does he think that by flattening another part of the centre, developers will come flooding in?
Reality suggests not as they could not get any redevelopment off the ground in the “boom” years as the building rotted bringing shame on those that perpetrated this.
And what of conspiracy theories?
With no Odeon then St George’s Hall across the City suddenly gains prominence again. Extending next door into the vacant old Telegraph & Argus press hall would be a cosy outcome for some.
To borrow a phrase from Private Eye…surely not? Suddenly the local rag’s clarion call – “We’re Backing Bradford” – looks a bit questionable?
As Bradfordians we have a choice. Look the other way and let your city centre slide further into the cess-pool Clueless and Co preside over or make a noise in support of one or both of these ambitious plans before it’s too late.
And if you needed further evidence of what could happen to replace the Odeon take a look at this.
You may have already seen plans announced for new student accommodation behind the Alhambra and Odeon and this is no Grand Design. Shamefully, the architects are a local practice based in Saltaire.
They already have a contender for the ugliest building in Bradford with the 2012 completed Travelodge – which is some going in a City with some very ugly buildings already.
Sadly I can’t see the desperate dimwits in City Hall doing anything but nodding this through as well; you were warned.
A Big Fat Problem
One year on from the Olympics and we are still a nation of fatties; so much for the promises of grand legacies and a change in our culture arising post the £10bn investment.
There may be big issues dominating day to day life – energy bills, HS2 or the small matter that the nation is bankrupt – but this is serious stuff that successive generations have failed to get to grips with and has immeasurable financial and social costs.
And so the debate rages on as to cause and effect although the blindingly obvious remains ignored in the quest to attach blame rather than seek the long-term, sea-change in attitudes required.
It is also an easy win for politicians as they threaten the big food companies, charged with wrecking the health of the nation, whilst fat bankers who nearly broke us escape to nibble on their sushi.
Admittedly trying to whip over sixty million people into shape is not easy and, of course, some people do struggle naturally with their weight but the majority are simply either too lazy or too stupid.
Comments over the weekend suggested some 30% of adults are either overweight or obese and the situation is worsening especially amongst children who are the most inactive they have ever been.
Channel 4’s Embarrassing Bodies also revealed that there are a staggering 130,000 morbidly obese people in the UK – that’s triple-whopper fat to you and me – and the costs of treating this type of condition are similarly enormous.
The food and drinks industry is an easy target but they don’t force us to eat or drink what they sell nor do they strap us to our armchairs with enough electronic devices to rival Captain Kirk.
We are told that the poor consumer is continually let down by nasty food companies that won’t put warnings such as “Eating This Will Make You Fat You Idiot” on doughnuts and ice-cream.
Likewise, consumers need protecting because they are simply too busy with hectic lives implying that we have a nation of people employed in critical areas of national importance rather than working at the Amazon warehouse.
And so Nanny State wades in with the assertion that, if saturated fats are reduced, all will be well again…and you still won’t have to move from your armchairs.
Debating the issue over the weekend during a Radio 5Live phone-in we had Graham, aged 25 from Bradford, who claimed he was fat because he was poor.
Arguing that he lived in a deprived area so had little access to fresh fruit and vegetables, he also claimed he stayed fat to keep warm and it was all the Government’s fault.
In a nutshell he proved my assertion; because he was too stupid and lazy to walk to find good food he wallowed in his freezing flat living off bread and butter getting even fatter.
Centuries ago he would have been bonked over the head and left outside the cave to feed the vultures.
Stephen Nolan, the voluble presenter, took exception to another caller who intimated that fat people who slurped sugary soft drinks to excess were also stupid.
The caller clearly was unawares that Nolan is one of those fat people and, with wonderful irony, that he was hosting the phone in with his favourite can of fizzy sugar.
The Government is not responsible for our every choice but we have become such a dumbed down nation that the vast majority of people cannot function without basic instructions and the blame culture is prevalent.
Extreme situations need extreme measures so vote for me and I will promise the following.
I would immediately ban fast food (apart from fish and chips at the top of Idle High Street) as this would have immediate and positive curative impacts on some other ills of modern life.
Illegal immigration would dry up as there would be no jobs nor gigantic freezers in the back of the shop to hide in.
Education standards would shoot up as kids realised that flipping a burger for a living was no longer a career option.
I would also ban buses and taxis from all estates ensuring that some form of exercise would be needed at some point in the day. Riding the family pit-bull as an alternative would carry the death sentence.
I would also introduce pictures of fruit and vegetables into the national curriculum; those that recognise the shapes and colours would be marked out early as future leaders of the country and guaranteed 15 A* passes come exam time.
Stupid and unworkable? Probably but no more so than fiddling about with fats in foods whilst ignoring the bigger issue of lazy kids and thick parents on the real value of exercise and nutrition.
What a Waste of Money
I wrote a piece over a year ago (29/5/12 – The BBC) arguing that it was time for a rethink on the licence fee. Now it appears, Grant Shapps, MP, Conservative Party Chairman agrees as well.
How can the BBC claim they offer us value for money when they continue to pour ours down the drain?
Not content with eye-watering pay-offs to employees – golden goodbyes according to the Daily Mail totalled £369m over the last eight years – there was also the matter of £100m written off on a disastrous digital project as revealed in Private Eye.
Most of the output is presented by over-paid nonentities and rarely will one do when two or three can squeeze on the sofa. As an example of current largesse I offer the following from the weekend.
The England versus Australia rugby league match had no less than one presenter plus two summarisers in the studio with one then making up a cosy threesome in the commentary box.
The net result – aside from incredibly poor value for money – was that the viewer was assaulted by incessant babbling as all three competed for airtime; informative and incisive it was not.
As if that were not enough we had three touchline summarisers ready and eager to stuff a microphone up the nose of anybody they could find. Small wonder the mascots looked ready for a shot at fame.
With barely enough time for contributions lasting longer than thirty seconds – each totally inane – why is there this obsession with “fluff” asking juvenile questions?
Moving on to Sunday and another supreme example of BBC waste. I give you Claudia Winkleman, co-host of the Sunday edition of “Strictly”.
Her job is to suck up to a bunch of D-list luvvies fresh from possible humiliation on the dancefloor for which she will doubtless get paid a kings ransom.
The woman is an entirely pointless addition to a show with more padding than Bruce’s toupee.
These people are foisted on us by an organisation that continually bleats about the constraints of its funding, oblivious to the protected state of Luvvy Land and to the reality that the licence fee is our money.
Baby It’s Cold Outside
As a service to you all I endured the Select Committee on Energy & Climate Change – a bunch of MPs generating enough hot air to melt the polar ice caps – attempting to grill bosses of the major energy companies.
Take my advice…buy a pullover!
The Boss
Is there anybody that has made a greater contribution to music than Bruce Springsteen? In a career spanning longer than forty years, outliving many a legend along the way, The Boss stands alone above all, dead or alive.
This week sees the release of a unique DVD allowing fans to offer their own tributes and thanks to a man whose music has inspired millions worldwide.
A catalogue offering rock, unashamed pop, folk, soul and more coupled with an amazing high energy live show that still packs stadiums across the globe, The Boss is unrivalled.
Able to speak for a nation under fire as he did with The Rising post the 9/11 attrocities and again with Wrecking Ball, speaking out for the ordinary man smashed by the greed of bankers and compliant ineptitude of politicians, Springsteen lifts you from the tedium of the daily grind.
The three hour plus live shows are a delight to youngsters perched on fatherly shoulders as much as for hordes of pretty girls who can see a real deal, sixty plus or not.
Catch him while you can because “the future of rock and roll” as he was famously described many, many years ago as a raw youngster is not getting any younger, not that you would guess it.
Meet you down the road Bruce!
Life Begins At 54?
According to yet another poll on the elusive happiness factor, men now have to wait longer to attain nirvana. No longer does life begin at 40 but, apparently, it’s now 54 just in time to coincide with arthritis, dementia and incontinence.
One of the main reasons cited is that men are waiting longer to have kids with the average age now in our early thirties. So when once life began at 40, now you are more likely to be contending with a noisy, spotty teenager or two jerking off to a twerking Miley Cyrus.
Good luck with that one.
God’s County
Yorkshire has been named as one of the top places in the world to visit in 2014 in a new travel booklet. Lonely Planet put the area third in the top 10 world regions, behind destinations in India and Australia.
The guide mentions Yorkshire’s “rugged moorlands, heritage homes and cosy pubs” – so why muck it all up with HS2 encouraging all those Southerners up here?
Gas man says
I agree, get the buggars to source there own food, why only yesterday I bagged a brace of pheasants and a decent sized deer up here in leafy N Yorks, keep up the good work willy TALLY HO