The vast majority of councillors, local or regional, have no common sense or ability to see past their front door. A Wellwisher.
The T&A broke a bizarre story last week about a £197,000 grant awarded by the West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA). This is a layer of bureaucrats sitting between local authorities and government, throwing cash around like confetti, usually at useless cycle lanes.
The details of the Buck Wood project says the £197,000 funding will be used to create a feasibility study for a new woodland masterplan.
“The aim is to maximise the huge potential within Buck Wood to create safe healthy communities with access to high-quality green infrastructure, ready for post-Covid resilience and enabling recovery from the pandemic, by undertaking a feasibility research and development of a new Masterplan and Development Plan for Buck Wood.”
What a load of utter bollocks!
The body that will receive the grant, Inspired Neighbourhoods (IN) is based in Idle village? This organisation has pricked my attention before.
Here is some guff from their website – creating a prosperous, cohesive and sustainable place to live and work through neighbourhood regeneration and development of community well-being.
This is a body accountable to nobody locally and with no mandate. It has announced bold plans in the past involving a sports village of sorts in the middle of Swain House Estate, a few miles up the road. Several years on and nothing.
Despite alluding to being a social, not-for-profit organisation, the business is set up along corporate lines – see here.
They should not be allowed to touch Buck Wood with a barge pole, it is not theirs to touch. Interestingly, key local players connected to the woodland knew nothing of this.
I look forward to meeting the CEO – not listed in the family tree – in January.
Lessons?
I heard Azeem Rafiq’s lawyer being interviewed on R4’s Today programme before his appearance at the Select Committee hearing; this was never going to be two-sided.
Jumping on the bandwagon was a local Asian cricketer who claimed this would harm his efforts at junior cricket. In twenty-plus years coaching, I’d never met him; the myth that Asian kids are mad only about cricket is just that.
Many more are just as obsessed with football, video games and junk food; strangely, very few also make it to play professional sport.
MPs lined up to clamber onto the slippery moral high ground. But how can they lecture on diversity; the entire committee was white, as are the vast majority of MPs?
One even suggested Rafiq might have been with the Ashes squad in Australia were it not for this which was rubbish; he was not good enough and time proved this. Many future superstars fall by the wayside in all sports; youthful promise does not always flower.
For MPs still arguing about their own standards of conduct – double seemed appropriate here – only a day later they were behaving like baying brats at Prime Minister’s Question Time.
Even Boris, the ultimate chancer, waded in hoping to divert some flack from his battered hide.
The same night, BBC Look North – live from Westminster (why?) – had the hopeless Naz Shah, MP, Bradford West. What was her solution? “We need more money!” Had she not noticed the monsoon of money falling on her constituency?
“Harrowing” was a word used time and time again; one MP suggested cricketers were not just racists but homophobes and misogynists as well. Having spent over forty years in dressing rooms with all walks of life, I can tell you that I have met some of the very best people.
Take colour out of this and much of what Rafiq described has happened to most of us in dressing rooms; they can be the most brutal and most inclusive of places. Sport reflects this; there are times I would rather forget but, in the long run, I always came back stronger.
Equally, Teflon Tom, ECB CEO, was pitiful. If he is the best the game has got then it is done for. Flanked by three “suits”, he woefully referred to “lessons” to be learned. I agree, stop appointing incompetents.
And what of the other counties, including international venues such as Lords and Trent Bridge, mentioned in the proceedings as culpable too? Will they be punished? Surely not old boy! Those Yorkie upstarts had it coming.
That YCCC has handled this badly is undoubted; that several chose not to front up is inexcusable. However, there is much more to this than the media wish us to know.
Finally, BBC Look North were a disgrace. On Tuesday the whole programme was devoted to Rafiq’s claims followed the next night by a simpering interview by Amy Garcia.
The night after revelations of his anti-sematic tweets were covered off in two minutes.
Planes, Trains And Tuk Tuks
Surprise, surprise Boris has back-tracked on another commitment. The soon-to-be jilted Hapless made the main BBC News on Monday spouting the same old drivel. Bradford has the youngest population she claimed, incorrectly, again.
Here in Bradford we just have more of a certain age group which is all to do with birth rates. So when Hapless makes the point that this upwardly mobile population needs to be “unleashed” who knows what she means.
Predictably, with Bradford sidelined in the great rail reshuffle, there were wails. But not one person is asking why Bradford continues to fail to attract inward investment.
Under Hapless and her hopeless predecessor, Deadly Dave, we have become a joke and a symbol of begging bowl politics.
Mad World
Help!
As I read this – Bradford Council and partners will mark Transgender Awareness Week and Transgender Day of Remembrance by lighting up the city centre blue and pink this weekend – I also heard that Little Mix might be disbanding on the radio.
I looked at my window and wondered if it was high enough to jump out of.
Philip Marks says
Don’t jump out of your window Steve. I’m sure I’m not alone when I say I would miss your views, particularly on Bradford and sport and who would edit The Trumpit each month?