Now Main Street’s whitewashed windows and vacant stores. Seems like there ain’t nobody wants to come down here no more.
Bruce Springsteen
I’ve used these lyrics before but my sadness at my hometown never goes away. Week by week the once graceful old city, peppered with architecture to die for, slides further into irrelevance, steered arrogantly and blindly by a leader elected by less than one percent of voters.
I wish it was the city I grew up in with a bustling nightlife and decent enough shops to hop on the bus and not even consider Leeds. With confident folk wearing the inimitable Bradford swagger.
I wish numerous good friends had not felt the need to start talking about getting out, packing up our bags. Sporting teams bereft of irrepressible characters, nights out just not the same, old friends scattered like tumbleweed.
I wish we were not the poor relation of the poor relation of this nation. Seldom is a news article about Bradford – regional or national – anything other than same old, same old.
There is still so much to be proud of here in Bradford but, as so much talent has exited, nowhere more does this amplify itself than in the leadership of the city.
I watch the odd council meeting and the quality of debate is woeful, most elected on age-old party-political addictions. Few have any spark or fresh thinking, lifers for want of a better description.
The joint responses of the ludicrously paid CEO and the woeful council leader to several recent scandals have been purely about personal reservation.
Only this week another story indicated our fall from grace. An office block once occupied by Yorkshire Building Society was now to be taken over by the charity, Christians Against Poverty.
Unfit For Office
In response to the public consultation on the 2022-23 budget, Bradford Council received just 77 replies. Broadly speaking that is around 0.025% of the adult population. See the full article here.
Accepting that public apathy towards politics is probably at an all-time high, this is still damning. Of course, Hapless Hinchcliffe had an answer; if ever there was a more deluded figure in any level of authority I have not seen one.
“It is not too surprising about the low response, as this budget has no cuts to jobs or services.”
The low response represents a complete disconnect and mistrust of her administration across all parties and sections of the community. The fact that she clings to her job is a matter of shame.
And how about this from the same person who accused the Chancellor of being “financially illiterate” regarding the government’s response to rising energy bills.
She pointed out that with inflation currently standing at 5.4 percent, the rise in Council Tax was actually “a cut in real terms.” When the boot fits, just slip it on!
Bradford needs rid of her and quickly for, amongst other things, she defines financial illiteracy.
Yorkshire Soap
What could possibly go wrong if a distant governing body with its head firmly in the politically-correct sand responded to a potentially crippling financial crisis at a sporting club by installing a puppet?
Cue Chris Waters once again with another excellent piece on the pitiful modern tragedy at Yorkshire County Cricket Club – see here.
By the time you read this, YCCC will know whether the members will allow it to consider ratifying – retrospectively – the compensation monsoon initiated by the hopeless Lord Patel.
Brexit BS
According to the media, this has been a disaster. However, consider this from The Yorkshire Post. Scottish salmon exports rose to near-record levels last year…across the globe.
And who would have thought that the French would be the biggest buyer with sales up 64%?
Oui!
More BS
How many stories like this one has the local rag filled its pages with over the years?
A run down area of Bradford city centre could soon be transformed by a massive new development scheme. A long vacant former gasworks site near the junction of Thornton Road and Listerhills Road is the subject of one of the biggest private development plans for the city centre in recent memory.
A quick check on the major developer behind this project reveals a balance sheet smaller than The Trumpit.
Choices
KitKat and Durex makers Nestle and Reckitt warn of price rises! So went this headline on the BBC.
If you had to choose one…?
M Leahy says
Surely the choice should be a Mars Bar or Durex .
Readers of a certain age & musical choice will get the pun .