Bradford City Centre

I remember going back to the 90s, millions wasted on absolute madness like the transperience tram park just the tip of the iceberg. People need to get this idea out of their heads that city centres have been decimated the last 14 years just to suit an agenda, its been going on for decades. What you have to understand is an area has to have the ability to change, areas like Liverpool have transformed due to clever innovation and use of areas like the docks. Same with Leeds around the river and canal basin areas. Bradford simply doesn't have any defining feature to be able to redefine itself.

 

Despite the fact that every Labour government has paid off billions in government debt racked up by preceding Tory governments. Before the global banking crash we had the best NHS we’ve ever had, reduced crime rates and people had money in their pockets.
Look around you. Nearly 1.5 decades of Tory cuts, privatisation and general economic incompetence has decimated our health and social care services, police, public transport, post office, education, you name it. Businesses going bust. Galloping inflation. Lowest real wages in living memory. Nothing works anymore. How much more evidence do you need, FFS?
The economy has consistently underperformed compared to our economic equivalents. If you’d deliberately set out to completely feck up this country you couldn’t have done any worse than what the Tories have been doing since 2010. Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and now Sunak. Totally useless, the lot of them. The myth of Tory economic competence compared to Labour is precisely that - a myth.

 

And yet for all that, which I agree with, there is a very good chance that Labour will fail yet again to gain power at the next election. Why? What is about Labour that people just can't trust? Are they so permanently trained as a party that the country needs a new type of opposition?

 

We’ll have to see. Most polls are predicting a comfortable Labour majority at the next General Election. But we’ve seen them snatch defeat from the jaws of victory too often in the past to take that for granted.
Don’t forget that, a) most people are pretty ignorant when it comes to economics; b) most of the press is lined up against them and c) Labour’s core support is concentrated in a smaller number of large areas whereas the Tories’ support is spread more evenly over a larger number of constituencies, so it’s always harder for Labour to achieve a majority under first past the post.

 

There has never been a more apt song than Bradfords a shit hole I want to go home. It's a disgrace. I've lived in other places in the uk and the one thing that is noticeably different is that the people in other places ive lived actually take some pride in their city. I deal with certain parts of the council for work and they are an absolute nightmare. They are generally rude, arrogant and put so many unrealistic obstacles in peoples way (under the guise of representing Bradford residents too) that it makes it nigh on impossible to get anything done. Whats even worse for me they take great delight in doing it. Most of them wouldn't last a month in private industry the wasted money is appalling. As for the city centre when I was younger I'd go to Bradford for a night out I wouldn't even think of doing that now.

Leeds on the other hand are still tough but they are realistic and generally accommodating where they can be. The only way it will get better is to attract private investment. Like it or not that means making it attractive to investors with reduced red tape and attractive rates its just reality. Yes they will make more money and become wealthier but so will others around them.

 

Another potential nail in the coffin of the City centre. M&S have announced that they're closing the store in The Broadway.

 

You can't beat demographics. No matter how much money you spend you'll have a crappy city if it's inhabited by crappy people who don't give a damn about the wider society. People have warned about this in Bradford for 30 or more years so we are where we are.

I walked through town for the football on Saturday for the first time in ages. Walking past Fattorini's was an absolute shocker to me. A once well respected and high class jewelllers now stacked high with bog role and £1 clothing where they haven't even bothered to change the signage.

Then up past a fella in a wheelchair whacking out unrecognisable tunes from a speaker and onto Petergate. Once the home of Moss Bros and M&S is now a mess a jumble sale hovels.

Broadway has sapped the life out of the actual centre (as people thought it would) and the council have wasted millions on trash (as people thought they would) but I can only blame that so far. You can't walk around the city and think that investment came then people would appreciate it, people have tried over the years and all have failed.

 

It's ok mate, city of culture will save it, just you wait for that lasting legacy spending 10s of millions of taxpayers money will bring.....

 

They had a chance to redevelop a part of town for future generations, open up the area between the cathedral and little Germany and the old post office HQ. Instead they shoehorned a grotesque non descript shopping centre in despite all the trends showing people moving away from high street shopping. The council bang on about the Odeon but it was the will of the people that saved the only real chance of bringing revenue back to the city centre on a regular basis, the council would have pulled it down if they'd have their way.
I'm sick to death of people with no idea being able to shithouse their way to vastly over inflated salaries in local and central government without delivering anything to justify it. These folk would not last two minutes in the private sector with similar paid roles.

 

As much as i despise the Tories, i could never see myself ever voting for Labour. If i were to vote it would be because i believe in something passionately, it would hypocritical of me to vote as i don't believe at all in the only opposition who could be realistically voted in due to numbers voting. How can anyone trust a party to lead when even the members of that party don't trust their own party? Sadly, due to my own views on the country and society in general i'm pretty sure there will never be a party i could fully believe in.

 

Started a job on Manningham Lane the other month. I didn't realise how bad it's gotten in and around the area. Had the police in the office checking the CCTV - someone had been stabbed outside the building. People fighting outside the Tesco Express opposite VP, people constantly going through red lights and driving poorly in general, and people chomping on food and throwing their litter straight onto the patch and road.

Nothing beats seeing a woman walking down a side street swinging a dead rat though. What a city.

 

For a City of our size to not have a bus station or even a toilet let alone a shop between BOTH our train stations combined is nothing short of a tragedy.

 

I had a nice interaction with the regular beggar out side the Barclays bank on Market St yesterday.
After hurling abuse at a woman who resisted his advances, he asked me for change, no, I said, I haven't got any to which he shouted paedo, paedo at me as I walked away.
Was sorely tempted to go and give him a slap, but thought better of it, no doubt I would be the one in the wrong.
A horrible excuse for a human, the sort who plagues Bradford nowadays.

 

Many years ago there was a scheme that was going to bring the canal from Shipley along Canal Road via Bolton Road and right into the heart of Bradford City centre, my cousin who worked for Arnold Lavers told me all about the grandeur scheme and how it would have come through Arnold Lavers timber yards, old man Laver was rubbing his hands in anticipation but for whatever reason it did not get off the ground.
We could offer Leeds Road up as Bradfords answer to Santa Pod Raceway, then again you could use many roads in Bradford for that sort of event.

 

Tenuous link here, my dad's old joiners shop was an old canal building where the land rover garage is now. It ran at the back of the property. I watched them take out the spinkwell lock , the remains of the last one.

 

Ah yes, the 3 mile renewal of the Bradford canal costing many millions leading to precisely nowhere.
Anyone who thought that would actually happen needed their bumps felt.

 

I moved to King's Road in 1976 when Spinkwell lock was still there, I wish I had taken some photos of it
I remember there was talk of it being rebuilt into the car dealers that was built on top of it, never happened though.
I wonder where all the stone went

 

Would love to know. It was about 1994 if my hazy memory serves, brings back happy memories.