Within a five minute walk from where I live there are a couple of cinemas, a dozen pubs, all sorts of factories and workplaces and so many churches, chapels and collective spaces catering for every imaginable type of ideological/social/political persuasion that you could spend a full life here without ever having to stray into the neighbouring postcode.
Trouble is they are nearly all shut. Closed decades ago and now mainly in a state of abandonment and neglect.
The lucky few repurposed as cheap business premises.
The unlucky, Mike’s Carpets.
I’m not sure what you’d call what’s left but I’d struggle to brand it a “community”. As it says on the tinned up windows, all items of value have been removed.
Inevitably this sort of cultural devastation has social consequences. If you live in a tip you treat it as a tip.
So I was a little perplexed yesterday to find the local paper urging “readers to reclaim their communities for themselves”, regain “community values” and “unite in civic pride.” What is this all about?
Well, it seems the YEP could “reveal” the vast amount of littering, fly-tipping, dog-messing and generally loutish behaviour that the hard pressed, put upon tax-paying citizens are “forking out” millions “to help clean up.”
The authorities have had enough. Crime and grime are no longer the remit of “city bosses” the city bosses have revealed to the YEP. It’s time to take a “no-nonsense stance” and prosecute the people responsible. People who live in places like this.
And so “today, the Yorkshire Evening Post reclaims the debate.” Get a grip on the grime, it demands; “A LIFE OF GRIME IS A PLAGUE ON ALL OUR HOUSES.”
Apparently it gave them “no pleasure to publish our ‘name and shame’ type list of Leeds’s most blighted neighbourhoods, compiled from detailed statistics we have obtained about the amount of public resources and money that goes into cleaning up after those irresponsible few.” But publish a name and shame type list they did, more in sorrow than in anger. Hold your nose, it’s a bit of a stinker.
Hard working taxpayers are forking out most on cleaning up after irresponsible, anti-social, uncivically minded sods in the following neighbourhoods: Gipton and Harehills; City and Hunslet; Chapel Allerton; Burmantofts and Richmond Hill; Armley; Beeston and Holbeck; Hyde Park and Woodhouse; Middleton Park; Farnley and Wortley; and Kirkstall. Shame on them! Let’s hope when the government repeals the Human Rights Act we can reinstitute public stocks in each of these noisome and nefarious cesspools of corruption and immorality. I’m sure YEP readers would be at the front of the queue armed with a righteous cabbage and a rotten tomato or two.
The YEP alarms its readers by repeating the vast amount of money “Leeds taxpayers are faced with forking out every year” (£8m!!!) in cleansing our neighbourhoods of “entirely avoidable problems”, and then reassures them by repeating the sentence about “city bosses starting to take a no-nonsense approach.” These facts bear repetition. A slap on the back for those hard-nosed city bosses. It’s good to see our city bosses finally taking no shit. Literally.
Obviously the YEP doesn’t want to insult our intelligence by investigating the common link between these ten neighbourhoods. Or by asking why these areas attract such wicked people who are a “blight” on their own neighbourhoods and who cost the rest of society so much. These are irrelevant distractions when the point is to “change some people’s behaviour and entrenched attitudes” and “try and embed a sense of civic pride.”
I can’t wait to read today’s “Yorkshire Evening Post for more on how council bosses are pledging to work with communities.” I could use some enlightenment about how to build a sense of civic pride where I live.
Much to agree with in this one, Phil.
Blaming the victim – totally agree with this one. The run down of areas is more to do with social and economic change than the behaviour of individuals as you correctly suggest.
Obviously victim blaming is of course very widespread today so people who don’t have a job because there are none inevitably become benefit scroungers and people who are ill through no fault of their own or who are simply old are accused not doing enough to protect their health.
Council’s misguided policies opting out of their responsibilities to the poor – who mostly live in environmentally poor areas and passing the blame onto local residents – I agree with this too. By basically trying to spread the declining cake too thin across the city as whole whilst bigging up the fruitless ambition to be the “best city…” the council is effectively leaving areas like the one you describe to rot. The one stat that matters to me is that “this great city of ours” is the fourth most unequal in the UK.
Not sure if I agree with this one though – “If you live in a tip you treat it as a tip” – I think within certain limits and obviously not to the extent that the YEP and the council suggest – people can look after their patch. What are you advocating here Phil – zero tolerance and “no broken windows”?
You’re beginning to sound quite
Sour
Most of the broken windows and dumped rubbish around where I live (one of the ten named and shamed neighbourhoods) is in non-residential places, generally behind large fences. It’s not the fault or responsibility of individual residents.
Take a look at the yard of the Denso factory, which I noticed this week has just got planning permission (and I only noticed it because both the notices were around the back on the fence along the narrow ginnel behind the prison – where only the curious psychogeographers frequent.) Full of discarded containers. Or the shut school in New Wortley – a total eyesore, but not anything to do with the locals.
So, no, I’m not arguing for zero tolerance for individual anti-social behaviour. I would like to see the people responsible for the real mess in these neighbourhoods held to account… and the council can do something about that, surely?
I wonder when the YEP will “reveal” the culprits or tell us how much local tax payers are “forking out” to allow it to happen?