Paying the price for others’ follies

3:49pm Thursday 20th March 2008

What a cruel twist of fate that those of us now in our 60s, who spent our childhood years in post-war households where money was scarce, could after a lifetime of work find ourselves growing old in similar financial circumstances.

There seems little doubt that even if the money markets manage to pull back from the brink of collapse, all our lifestyles, whatever generation we belong to, are set to be adversely affected by the events of the past few weeks. Prices of essentials such as energy and food will continue to rise, the value of pensions will fall, savings won't be as secure as we'd hoped, the value of our homes will slide, public services will be cut back even further as the Government gets deeper into debt And all because of the greed of grossly overpaid fat cats in the world of banking who failed to acknowledge the obvious: that if you lend mortgage money that you've borrowed from someone else to people who aren't in a position to repay it, sooner or later you'll be in trouble. Because of their stupidity, we're all paying the price. And they've got away with it.

Looking at it from a "grey generation" point of view, for most of us there have been some good years in between the late 1940s/early 1950s and the present disturbing downturn. And many of us can remember what it was like to live in a rather grey make-do-and-mend world where a little money had to go a long way and where we learned about household economy from our parents.

So I suppose a part-return to those days won't come as such a culture shock as it will to younger generations who have never heard of scrag end of neck of mutton, wouldn't have a clue how to turn it into a nourishing meal, and never experienced the family share-out of a Mars Bar cut into slices.

The people poser

"What a nightmare!" declared the lady reader, going on to explain. Walking up Ivegate, which sadly isn't Bradford's most upmarket thoroughfare, early on a Thursday afternoon she'd encountered a police car slowly coming down the pedestrianised street while several disreputable-looking groups of people hung around watching it.

It made her feel uneasy, as though something was waiting to happen.

Marks & Spencer's, where there was a sale on, she describes as being "like a bazaar" with cut-price clothes tightly packed on rails or lying on the floor and customers milling around.

Heading up to North Parade, Bradford's poshest shopping street, she'd heard a mighty roaring sound originating from the direction of Cheapside and growing louder. The source was two off-road, three-wheeler motor-cycles, apparently minus exhausts, which raced up Upper Piccadilly and along John Street before vanishing up Westgate leaving a lot of startled, deafened pedestrians in their wake.

Abandoning the North Parade plan and retreating to the lower end of town to get the bus home, she bravely challenged two teenage girls who had dropped their Greggs bags on the floor, pointing out a bin only a couple of yards away. Fortunately she didn't get a mouthful of abuse or a knife in the ribs, which seems to be the fate of many people who challenge teenagers these day. Instead, she faced the girls down and eventually they picked up the dropped bags.

And then in Market Street she witnessed a fight between groups of youths who shouted and swore as they pushed and pulled eachother about at the corner facing Centenary Square, running into the road as they did so.

This is what Bradford Centre Regeneration are up against in their attempts to revive the fortunes of the city centre. How are they going to simultaneously regenerate a large chunk of the population who frequent the place?

Such a silly woman

What planet does Heather Mills live on? The woman who was awarded more than £24 million as a divorce pay-off after her four-year marriage to Sir Paul McCartney went on to complain about the fact that their daughter Beatrice will receive "only" £35,000 a year on top of having her school fees and nanny's wages paid for by her father.

"She's obviously meant to travel B class while her father travels A class," whined Heather.

The poor little mite. What hardship! Does the Mills person not realise that there are people in places like Bradford earning half of that £35,000 a year, and struggling to bring up families on it?

What a very silly woman.

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