“I design, manufacture, distribute, and sell elevator buttons. I specialise in the fourth floor and could sell one of my fourth-floor elevator buttons to the owner of a three-story building.”
Jarod Kintz
I’d missed the sensation of watching my credit card melt before my eyes. However, never in my wildest dreams did I expect to be sold a winter coat on the hottest day of the year.
Welcome back Towny!
The Welfare Industry
As Child Welfare Office at our cricket club, every three years volunteers like me are tortured. We have to prove our suitability to coach kids; none of these inane sessions tests our sanity for doing this in the first place.
Every time I promise if I am still doing this in another three years I will hand a gun to my worst enemy. The sessions are run by masters in the art of stating the bleeding obvious. Their chosen favourite words are “fantastic”, “great” and “breakout”.
Coronavirus meant that my “refresher” was via a webinar and would only be two and a half hours! Blocking the video would mean I could continue uninterrupted with the Yorkshire Post.
A fresh faced thing full of cheery enthusiasm proceeded to explain “housekeeping” rules. I found this rather bizarre sat in my own kitchen.
No sooner had we started when we had a “breakout” and I was paired with a glum looking woman in Manchester. We chatted for five minutes sharing our misery at having to suffer this.
I realise we have a duty to protect kids but volunteers are getting rarer than rocking horse shit. An hour passed; it was coffee time already and I could not recall one new thing worth knowing.
The Giving Mr Hussain, MP
Last week my MP suggested it was “abhorrent” to limit child benefits to those with more than two kids. I believe it is abhorrent not to reward those of us who choose not to add to the world population.
Not content with one display of idiocy, he popped up again.
Bradford East MP Imran Hussain wrote to cabinet minister Robert Jenrick after organisations working in the constituency raised concern about “unsuitable meat products” in the packages.
“…our Muslim, Jewish, Sikh and Hindu communities are unable for religious reasons to either consume certain food products at all or consume food that is not prepared in the proper manner, whilst vegetarians and vegans choose to abstain from eating meat on ethical grounds.
I wondered what starving people might think? Not content with this tirade on he went.
“These incidents would be deeply unacceptable at any time, but they are even more so as the country seeks to shine a light on and expose practices that are racially insensitive at best and racist at worst.”
What an enlightened approach and, if in any doubt, there’s always the “R” word. Shameful stuff indeed.
Comical Tells A Porkie
The challenges facing our high streets and outlying villages will be immense, sufficient to require new and creative commercial thinking. Livelihoods will depend on the policies adopted.
Local councillors in Baildon are arguing the case – see here – for a temporary cessation of parking charges.
Comical Alex – Head of Degeneration, Cycle Lanes, Lamp Posts and Car Parks – is having none of it. He said the lockdown had led to an “unprecedented drop in income”, including funds coming from car parks.
“To date, we have paid around £114.475 million to more than 10,000 local businesses in grant funding.
This is perplexing as the entire budget is only £362m; how generous of Comical and Co to give away almost a third! It is also misleading and should have been picked up by the journalist
The grant funding is central government money.
We Wanna Be Like Leeds!
Top of the list for Bradfordians to crow about is our stunning architecture, some of the most beautiful in the UK. Sadly very little of it has been built in the last one hundred years.
In fact we seem to have been intent on putting up ugly buildings from the Sixties blocks to the current proposal for a new office block. It will be called One City Park on the site of what could be…a park.
Comical is centre stage again with a PR drafted statement in the face of almost universal condemnation of this glass monstrosity.
In other words “we’re not sure there’s a market but we’ll build it anyway”.
Cllr ARS states a desire for flexible workspaces which is good as Bradford as more vacant office space than it could ever fill. Funding will come circuitously from the West Yorkshire Combined Authority with £5.2m allocated and £400,000 spent to date, presumably on demolition of the old Police building.
Soon Bradford Live will complement the Alhambra and the Town Hall. Who would stick an ugly glass temple slap bang in the midst of these?
Footnote
I emailed the WYCA to ascertain how much they were spending advertising a done deal re the election of a West Yorkshire Mayor in 2021. We will not be asked – the answer to that was a resounding “no” in 2012 – simply who we want from who we don’t want.
Here is the reply.
I can confirm that a total of £10,924 has been spent on advertising the consultation in local newspapers including the Yorkshire Post, Yorkshire Evening Post, Wakefield Express, Pontefract & Castleford Express, Dewsbury Reporter, Halifax Courier, Huddersfield Examiner, Bradford Telegraph & Argus, Keighley News and Ilkley Gazette.
We want to make sure that as many people as possible know about the consultation and are able to take part – particularly when other forms of engagement, such as drop-in sessions in local community venues, are not possible due to restrictions as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Local newspapers play a vital role in informing local people about the issues that affect them, and the media advertising we have arranged will create an estimated 1.79 million opportunities for people in the region to see the adverts, learn about devolution and have their say on this important change to decision-making and governance in the region.
Except we won’t be able to have a say…that’s devolution for you.
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