We arrived back from Spain at 11:30pm. The booked taxi did turn up and we careered through the Yorkshire countryside, rolling around in the back seat. We fell 23 degrees C in three hours, down to a welcome of three miserly degrees above freezing.
Why are butchers always cheery? As I brought a couple of pork chops this morning he replied cheerfully to my comment that we had just come from the sunshine with, “It snowed here last week.”
For various very good reasons concerning tickets and cameras I wandered into Leeds city centre on a Saturday. It was all of 8 degrees and drizzling. If there were no other words to describe rain, drizzle would suffice for most days of the year in England. It was packed with flat Yorkshire accents, milling in the shopping centres with coats half open to reveal scantily clad midriffs and hairy paunches.
One has to hand it to Leeds City Council (Labour/socialist), they have always had vision and have managed to create a thriving city even in the midst of recessions. When I first came to live here in the early seventies, Leeds was a crumbling decaying city of failing or deserted factories and slum clearances. I remember in the recession of the mid to late 80s, that there were no less than 17 office blocks under construction on my route to work. I thought they were mad.
But Jon Trickett, elected Leader of the Council in 1989 and now Labour MP for Hemsworth (or Tricky Trickett as we used to call him for self explanatory reasons) obviously knew a thing or two more about it than me.
He created a commercial hub that blossomed in the 90s. He also had the ‘novel’ idea that city centres should be lived in, as they are in Europe. In came planning permission for loft apartments and office conversions. Leeds University became THE place to go to University . Why? The best nightclubs in the country of course. They even used to do special excursions up from London for a Saturday night out.
When Harvey Nicholls (very, very posh department store) chose the location for their only other branch outside London, they chose – yes, Leeds. I understand that it currently makes more profit than its southern branch to boot. When the GFC hit, the newest Leeds shopping centre (and there are already many) was still under construction. Unlike the rest of the shopping centres being built across Europe, this one was not axed but completed. And it is heaving. Leeds is now the shopping Mecca for the whole of the north of England.
I cannot but applaud politicians who are willing to take calculated risks. These days, in the western world, we live in an atmosphere of fear and appeasement, where faceless focus groups and opinion polls dictate self-centred policy, and the spin-doctors move the mouths of MPs like ventriloquist’s dummies. It is policy by consensus – not political consensus, but the consensus of people whose world is as small as the price of their house, getting the latest mobile phone and keeping everything risk free.
The result is bland, bland, bland, reactionary and stationary. Where would Leeds be now if Tricky Trickett hadn’t put his money where his mouth was – it’d be mouldering in the doldrums halfway down the Championship League with Leeds United, that’s where.
Salatheel 