There have been numerous stories lately about the chronic problems in Bradford city centre from drunken idiots.
Say what you like about Bradford but it is trying to smarten up it’s act with millions poured into the centre in recent years, albeit you might question some of the projects.
So what an irony that, just as some of us who have been absent for many years might consider taking a look again “downtown”, some traders are seriously considering uprooting and getting out. And all for a few yobs and hopeless drunks.
One of the reasons that idiots can freely ruin the lives of hard-working people is cheap booze and the failure of central government to enforce a sensible minimum pricing policy on alcohol.
For several years now the licensed pub trade has been fighting for it’s life whilst supermarkets have been free to sell ever more volumes of discounted and high-strength alcohol.
And the ultimate irony is that many former pubs have been converted into mini supermarkets free to do far more damage to their local communities than the presence of a managed and regulated pub.
It is very easy to blame Bradford Council but in this case the blame lays further afield. Cameron’s Coalition Government failed to implement a minimum price per unit of alcohol despite several soundbites eventually backing down in favour of the big supermarkets.
And yet just the same percentage of people who voted for Brexit actually favour such a move, introduced in Scotland in 2012.
The reality is that a minimum price per unit would not make a jot of difference to the pub trade nor seriously impact on the average drinker’s weekly shop. But it would increase the price of the rubbish drunk by those incapable of making adult choices.
As the experience with tobacco has proven over time, there is a direct relationship between price and consumption. Just as there is a direct relationship between resources and service provision.
Herein lies the ultimate issue; austerity – brought on by the excesses of the untouchable few and paid for by the masses – means that we suffer from reduced public services ever more needed to control those who cannot control themselves.
For the greed, stupidity and vanity of those who should have known better, those incapable of ever doing so now wreak havoc on the rest of us.
Born To Run?
I awoke the first Sunday morning of the off-season free of the usual aches and pains of a Saturday afternoon’s combat. Able to get out of bed without rolling sideways and collapsing in a heap on the floor was a bonus albeit I was clueless as to how to fill the vast void until routine via The Scruffy saved my soul.
It struck me that, in the same week Springsteen released his long-awaited autobiography – Born To Run – many of us are simply born to meander. Ahead lay a day of Radio 2, the tip and garden centre.
En route to the tip I passed a blast from the past and it seemed rude not to stop, especially as it looked like my only human contact until Big Al – not something to salivate over – and an audience with the far right convention at The Scruffy.
We’d met almost twenty years ago when, from my holiday balcony, I spotted the unusual combination of a Bradford City shirt and bikini bottoms far briefer than the shorts Stuart McCall was wearing in those days.
I smiled in the knowledge she would still do justice to the same bikini now.
I’ve always thought it made sense to remain on good terms with the past as there are enough ways to get run over in Bradford. With child on the way to adolescence the mandatory dog was now in tow.
It struck me it might be a good idea to get one too as long as I could hand it back each April.
In so many ways cricket is like a marriage only with a separation each September to be rekindled without question the following April.
We know as we get older the passion can never be the same but there is comfort in the tried and trusted. We might have the odd reckless fling – with golf – but we come back tail between legs, bat oiled and ready.
As we said our farewells there was a supreme irony that Springsteen came to life in the car as I charged to the tip with abandon, the open road and a free Sunday ahead.
Someday girl, I don’t know when
We’re gonna get to that place
Where we really want to go
And we’ll walk in the sun
but till then tramps like us
Baby we were born to run
Born to run…where?
Donald Smith
One week after the joy of promotion for the Stiffs life on All Alone Road lost one of its hardest workers with the sudden death of Donald Smith.
He joined the club in the late seventies, making an appearance in the Waddilove Final of 1981 and then went on to coach the kids later on in that decade.
However, his transformation of the Villas’s wicket from a death-trap to a batters’ paradise is his biggest legacy. A few seasons ago Don retired from wicket duties but was still a hard grafting volunteer saving the club an awful lot of money in the process.
Our sincere condolences go to his wife Chris and family.
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