Fiddling while Bradford Burns

The Big Plan from a Little Man

Well it is finally out in the open, the Toothless and Gutless is reporting Konsumptive Kris's latest folly (no not another attempt at romance you fool!), The Big Plan from a Little Man.

Of course it doesn't actually state his real plan which is to maximise good publicity for himself in Keighley while watching Bradford burn. Konsumptive Kris of course wants to replace that hammer of all things asian, Anne Cryer, as MP for the white chavurbs of Keighley.

The hilarious details of the council discussion in which even the dimwit councillors realised it was a steaming pile of bullshit can be found by clicking read more

I knew Bradford Centre Regeneration was full of nutcases

But I never thought they would deliberately expose Bradford to ridicule at a major event like MIPIM (strangely in Cannes so champers and expenses all round please) by letting the nutjob Bjorn Lomborg onto the Bradford platform. This is what comes of having tory nutjobs and scots housing officers running the place.

For those who don't know Bjorn Lomborg is the favourite apologist of the climate change deniers and poster child of the oil companies. He's also completely utterly wrong and will give the impression that Bradford is under the control of people who can't see a nutjob when he froths at the mouth in front of them. Who is going to invest in a city that gives a platform to crazies?

Loonborg is too nuts for me even to bother refuting but others will.

The Toothless and Gutless describes this idiot as "high profile" well I suppose he's a high profile nutjob.

The other three speakers are some TV tart, the ex-chief commisar of the Soviet Republic of Sheffield and some loon from a long forgotten soviet-era fashion chain.

Daily Mail accuses Education Bradford of competency.

How else can you interpret their assumption that the fact Serco have lost track of 33 children means they have been dragged off into forced marriages (note there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest any of the 33 are from cultures that might occasionally arrange sensible marriages for their children rather than let them get pregnant at 11, married at 16, divorced at 17 and dead from congenital stupidity and being a white chav at 18)?

It is absolutely laughable to think Bradford Education is sufficiently competent to keep track of children in their schools - for a start they try to kill them annually with the winter vomiting virus, then they hide the under achievers somewhere they don't affect the league tables and use the disabled kiddies as excuses to demolish the Odeon.

Given that Kris Hopkins is more concerned about counting fat chavs visiting the gym to help him get elected in Keighley than anything else I would venture that these figures are more down to incompetence than the mythical forced marriages the right wing loonies keep ranting on about.

True there might be the odd bad 'un among the village people in Bradford's non-existent ghettos but do you think that Bradford Schools would manage to have the information to say so - I bloody well don't.

Olympics come to Bradford

According to the T&A the Olympics are coming to Bradford with various locations being offered as training facilities.

Presumably freestyle stabbing throughout the city, relay races with the parcels of crack and heroin in all the usual places and car torching on Oak Lane are among the suggestions.

Bradfordvision is dead, long live the gravy train

The new Local Strategic Partnership meets tomorrow to read the last rites over the body of the Bradfordvision* and will present the ever bumbling Kris with a dilemma - does he spend the money where it is needed or simply divert it all to Keighley to support his hopeless campaign to outflank the BNP on the right (something previously achieved by the ever lively Anne Cryer) and gain election as MP (no doubt he'll join the merry band employing his relatives)

* given that one of its supporters believes "there are no ghettos in Bradford" it was bound to live up to its Blind Smiley logo. This fatuous statement was made by Kersten England sometime Director of Policy

I wonder whether Kris shares this numbnut view with Kersten along with their mutual love of fellwalking

Avenue pull the plug on Odsal Village

Another decades old council pie in the sky crashes in flames as Park Avenue decide that their future can't wait for a bunch of serial incompetents. They're to up sticks and move to Thornbury.

Add this to the Broadway disaster and apartment prices plummeting faster that the investors jumping off the balconies and it doesn't look good!

But Maud is still there and Kris is continues taking out his marital frustrations by wrecking the entire city.

If Bradford pays Mad Maud

over £100,000 a year for creating the "Hole at the Heart" (aka the Rubble Zone, aka Broadway undevelopment) then how much did this lot pay her to stay away from Scotland?

So really she's no a regeneration expert merely some jumped up council housing department official (bit like all the overpaid senior executives at BCHT I guess) with a taste for holidays in Cannes at the taxpayers' expense.

The other Bradfordvision

Yes the one that's closing next March. It seems that the workers are a little demob happy and are spending time writting skits on their position. A number of word documents are attached.....

I presume these are loosely based on BV .... or perhaps not . Whatever they are mildly amusing in the context of the meltdown of the social services rejects employment project.

Council tells Rubble Zone developer - "get on with it"

....but admits it can do sweet fa about it due to incompetence in drawing up the deal. Not even take the site back without extensive legal action and enormous expense.

The sensible decision would be to surcharge all the councillors involved in this disaster, immediately terminate Maud Marshall with no compensation (grounds of gross negligence in relation to Broadway I would have thought) and move the City centre park to Broadway where it would have better surroundings than the downmarket drinking dens that border Centenary Square.

The T&A has an interesting editorial as it begins to sink in that if Broadway collapses so will the rest of the house of cards and no £4m from public funds will be forthcoming to finance the relocation to Leeds of the T&A printing operation.

Maud's Bane

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We have a new image gallery Maud's Bane which in due course will contain all the images of the Odeon I have available - some patience will be necessary as uploading the original images (some are 4Mb in size) is a little slow.

Just how much money has been wasted

On the rubble zone. This case gives some idea of the amounts sloshing about.

Is Bradford Bankrupt?

One might get that impression given the sudden activity from the usually comatose Kris Hopkins. In the space of a week he has killed off Bradfordvision (although I am told that the CE of that useless talking shop knows more about about frustrating his wishes than he knows about shutting it down), removed a number of senior council posts (no doubt as a result getting a horse's head from the Social Services mafia that has a stanglehold on anything worthwhile) and to add to the previous ditching of Party in the Park the Bradford Festival has also been put to the sword. It seems that all this activity has been prompted by loose cannons suggesting he might not have a job come 4th May.

How many I wonder of these useless staff will be foisted onto BCHT like the former head of the Manningham and Girlington Regeneration thing (you know the chap whose life's ambition was the demise of Bradford City Football Club).

The other views is that he simply needs to get rid of staff because the new payroll system can't cope with the concept of paying people.

Wasting money as only Bradford can

I'm amazed to find that Bradford has an "Education service for New Communities and Travellers". Given that they don't seem to be able to civilise the existing community enough for them to travel on buses without spitting out of the windows at passers-by (avoid the route of the A17 to St Bedes for example) it seems overly ambitious. Especially since the travellers aren't subject to the same laws as the rest of us (for example they never get prosecuted for flytipping in the road at the side of their Laisterdyke site, despite it being clear they simply throw things over the fence). Anyway this waste of money is wasting even more by getting involved in celebrations of the fatuous European Neighbours Day. Mind you given the way our european vistors reportedly live (9 to a terrace house in West Bowling according to reports of the recent Polish murder) they find their neighbours so much closer than we do - in the next room rather than the next house!

Darn me I sound like Nick Griffin, where's that BNP membership form?

The Odeon has to go so the mirror pool can be built

So it seems according to information from "Odeon Crusader" who reveals that the slime filled mosquito trap is to be feed from the Bradford Beck opening at the Odeon site (where the consultants hope "odor" won't be a problem)

I spilled the beans last week about the scam behind the proposed £4M purchase of the T&A building and Perry Austin-Clarke's involvement in the decision to regenerate St George's Hall... However, here's another fact that the Council and BCR would like to remain hidden...

In 2004 BCR commissioned Ove Arup to undertake a detailed study of the Odeon's structural condition... or so we thought! A feasibility study presented by Ove Arup skimmed over the Odeon's condition and declared that the steelwork of the building was corroded, whilst admitting that a detailed study had not been carried out due to asbestos in the building fabric. I say that the report skimmed over the condition of the building because once you read the report it is apparent that Arup were actually requested to look at the feasibility of opening up Bradford Beck, which runs under a corner of the Odeon.

Remember that consultation in the T&A in Autumn 2004 where we were asked to vote for one of these three options:

* Demolition of the building, but retaining the towers within a new
structure

* Demolition of the building inc the towers, but new towers or a similar reference points to where they once stood

* Demolition of the building inc the towers, and a completely new building to be built with no reference to the Odeon towers

Those three options are recommended in this report to BCR by Ove Arup, but the following sentence tail end is repeated within each optionbox: "making good site including opening up Bradford Beck"

In other words, the opening up of Bradford Beck would have provided Alsop's original lake vision in the BCR masterplan with its supply of water...

During a meeting with Maud Marshall and Marc Cole of BCR, the Bradford Odeon Rescue Group challenged them both with the statement that the Odeon had to be demolished to allow the beck to be opened up. BCR responded by asking where on earth they had heard such a ridiculous suggestion. When BORG stated they
had actually read the same feasibility study on BCR's website, BCR responded by removing it immediately from their site!

Fast forward two and a half years and the Alsop lake idea has now been reduced to a Mirror Lake in the City Park... Bradford Council's executive member for regeneration, Andrew Mallinson had this to say in the T&A on March 1st:
"The Odeon building has not been in use for many years now and from a regeneration perspective, it is restricting the future development of a crucial part of the city centre."

Although he has not come out with the truth, he is basically saying that whilst the Odeon stands the Mirror Pool scheme is being restricted...

So sadly, the Odeon supporters out there who have also pledged support for the City Park scheme during the current public consulatation are unwittingly signing the Odeon's final death warrant!

Like the T&A/St George's Hall scam - we are being misled and conned again!

The petition to retain the Odeon can be found here and the Bradford Odeon myspace site is here

So Maud does speak with forked tongue

These pictures prove that the Odeon is in much better shape that she claims. Then again she's being paid £120,000 a year to lie so I guess she's only following orders as they said at Nuremburg just before they got hung by the neck.

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