Bradford Degeneration Correct but not Politically Correct

Not that we are exactly surprised by that - it's easy not to worry about throwing a 79 year-old lady out in the cold when you are sitting on your fat well paid arse in Ilkley. The Toothless and Gutless reports. Incidently one of our favourite members of the social services mafia has found a job as Strategic Partnership Officer at BCHT - more when this project fails under the reverse-midas touch.

There is always a danger that when you post something like "X's interest is the demise of Leeds Rhinos" that X will scream blue murder.

Context is of course everything and the above could either be said by a Leeds fan sad at the poor performance of his team or by a Bulls fan wanting to see the end of a rival team. Understandably a Leeds fan who thought I implied the later would contact me cursing swearing and wanting a caveat adding that he was a Leeds fan. If, however, he was a Bulls fan working at Leeds he might also be unhappy at his prejudice being revealed - he would probably complain to the ISP knowing the post would be removed to avoid the hassle of proving facts to someone who complains to the ISP before explaining to the blogger why he is wrong. If you think anything on this .blog is wrong then register and post a correction or email me at bahtat@bradfordvision.co.uk . If there is something true you would like removed then complain to my ISP that it is slander - I'll then remove it because I'm not arguing with you by proxy.

Kaiser JP

Changes in the T&A archive mean that some links to stories about the regeneration disasters in Bradford have been lost. I'm trying to locate the original stories to pop up links but in the mean time we have:

The Manningham SRB - comments of the Manningham Housing Association in evidence to the select committee on the Office of Deputy Prime Minister link "Not successful because of the scale of the programme (£9m over seven years) and purely economic training and jobs. Little or no visible impact in the context of a poor physical environment and a lack of community and social facilities."

In addition there were numerous allegations of fraud along the way Link although the police investigation was ultimately dropped Link. In this context I have somewhere an exchange of emails with Margaret Eaton (then council leader) regarding the systems for reviewing grants which did not detect forged supporting documents. You will note the comment in the final paragraphs in this Link which refers to this matter.

and Regen 2000 which could be revived and extended following dismissal of the entire board. Link, Link2

The council report on the scrutiny of these various schemes can be found here

Unfortunately there is little I can do about the way newspapers periodically re-arrange their furniture, copying the stories verbatim would be breach of copyright.

How else can one describe the attitude of North Bradford Community Housing Trust whose Directors think providing mice infested properties for the lower orders is perfectly adequate while they park their fat bottoms in nice Ilkley homes and pocket £100,000 plus per year for making people live in squalor.

A list of the fat-cats in question can be found here. However don't bother looking on their website to find out how much money they are sucking out of the poor because they try to avoid having such embarrassing figures exposed to the public - only summary financial information is available and guess what? Yep you've got it how much they are paying themselves isn't included. I do bet though that you'll need over 4000 £25 mouse treatment fees to fund the chief exec which perhaps explains why they insist on charging for basic services like treating for mice, cockroaches and fleas.

No doubt in their defense they will explain that the treatment is by Bradford Council and the trust is separate .... of course it is that's why the former director of housing for Bradford council was eased into the position of Chief Executive with a nice pay hike. Plus of course they only let their properties via bradfordhomehunter.co.uk which is strangely owned by Bradford City Council so I don't think the defense stands up.