Sabrina & the Nature of West Mercia

Although many people will know Sabrina as the TV Teenage Witch, in West Mercia she gives her name to the River Severn whose “course” has determined much of our region’s history. In times of flood, like now, she is indeed awesome, reminding us, in this media-obsessed, and, frequently, unreal, age that the realities of Nature remain transcendent. Hopefully, new generations may understand this better than the present powers that be.

The Problem of the Provincial Psyche

I often wonder why planning proposals of positively gargantuan daftness (see below) go relatively unchallenged in places like Worcestershire, aside from some small whimpering from the local opposition MP.

Worcester : Proposal for Major Inland Port !

Yes, in the mid-1940s – 1947 also saw summer floods – planners proposed that Worcester should be developed as a major inland port and transhipment centre between Bristol and Birmingham. The Diglis Docks area (now largely re-developed for housing) would have been the focus of this development, which would also have involved the construction of a new rail freight link from the Cotswold line, through what is now the suburb of St Peters. Perhaps I’ll recommend that this proposal is revived.  We seem to have the right conditions for it – the Severn is well swollen today – and what’s the demolition of a few hundred houses but government policy for some urban areas !

Worcester has No Space for Homes Secretary*

*Housing Minister with Cabinet status Ms Yvette Cooper, or Mrs Ed Balls : Ed is sometimes known as the Schools or Children’s Secretary (also a Cabinet position)

Since 1985, I’ve been working for the good causes of sustainable area regeneration and environmental limits to growth. I mention this for two reasons :

• My previous blog referred to my laid back (ie leisure) life in London
• It qualifies me to criticize this Government’s planning policies

Now Yvette Cooper is without doubt a very hardworking woman, but the saying that “all work and no play makes Jill a dull girl” might be extended in her case to “a daft woman”.

For daft is precisely what this Government’s housing growth agenda is, and Ms Cooper is it’s Cabinet champion.

Let’s take the implications of government policy on Worcester (a “Growth Point”), for instance. The West Midlands Regional Assembly recently assigned around 10 000 new housing units for an expanded city in the period 2006-26. This is alot of houses !

However, this week the Government told the region it wanted places like Worcester to accommodate even more “growth” , and our daft local MP and the Minister for the West Midlands (also for Immigration !) said in the press that this was a good idea.

Do all these politicians live on another planet ? Their announcements happened to co-incide with yet more major flooding in Worcester and surrounding areas (also earmarked for large-scale house-building programmes). I wonder if they happened to notice !

London is No Place for the Home Secretary !

Readers of my blogs may have noted that I’m more generous to some politicians than others, and Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has been one of these…until today.

Now Ms Smith – along with her protege Michael “Worcester Wimp” Foster MP – are amongst the few New Labour politicians I’ve encountered in person.  I “knew” Jacqui Smith 25 or so years ago when she was a contemporary of mine at university.

When I finished my full-time education in 1983, I headed first to London and then to Australia via Manila in the Philippines.

Ms Smith, I believe, returned to the West Midlands after her studies to train as a teacher before embarking upon her political career.

In Manila, I saw the impact which corruption has on development planning, noted that many men carried openly carried guns (wild west style in a holster), and also saw some of the problems of poor land management, including floods.

After nearly a year working my way around eastern Australia (city, town and Outback), I helped crew a yacht en route to the Solomon Islands, but was put ashore by the owner (a British criminal !) in Milne Bay, Papua New Guinea.

The locals were exceedingly friendly and helpful to me, and also spoke of their deep concerns about the link between between political corruption and land development. After a time, I made my way to the capital city of Port Moresby.

Here most white folks were afraid to walk the streets and lived behind barbed wire compounds. However, I felt no more intimidated than on the streets of inner London where I lived for most of the time between 1985-2001, keeping “all hours”.

If Ms Smith had lived in London during this period, she might have shared some of my experiences : being a near neighbour of  the Broadwater Farm riot in Tottenham, narrowly missing the Kings Cross Underground fire, and at least one IRA bomb.

However, I can honestly say that my life in in London was generally laid back and the streets friendly, most of all late at night.

Indeed so positive was my experience, that on the one occasion I was assaulted (by a school-age girl in broad daylight, shortly after New Labour came to power in 1997) I was not too greatly upset ! I did, however, note the syncroncity !

Now, if the situation in London today (and particularly by night) is different, I put the blame squarely on the policies of New Labour. In short, if Home Secretary Jaqui Smith feels unsafe there, London is no place for her, and her party should not be in power !

Ringo Star : Talking about Regeneration

In a BBC Radio 4 Front Row programme interview yesterday, Liverpool City of Culture leading man Ringo Star criticised plans to demolish his old neighbourhood in Toxteth. Although there is a proposal to relocate the old Beatles man’s onetime home to another site, he rightly doesn’t approve of the demolition programme, noting that similar neighbourhoods (ie late Victorian terraces) in the surrounding area (Liverpool 8)) have been successfully regenerated. Should Ringo Star be Liverpool’s Regeneration Tsar ?

Accused of assault by man with Rottweiler

Yes, it’s true, I’ve just been accused of assaulting a man (younger and stronger than myself !) with a Rottweiler. Needless to say I didn’t bite said individual, but tapped him on the shoulder as I thought he was becoming hysterical, and, worse, choking his actually rather nice dog ! Canine mismanagement really concerns me just now !

So what will the West Mercia Constabulary make of this one, I wonder, if the Rottweiler man has the police out to arrest me. Of course, I hope it doesn’t come to this. On the other hand, perhaps I should contact them with my concerns about the Rottweiler’s welfare. The problem is that we human animals aren’t always the best keepers of the other sort.