Plan has rooms for improvement
10:16am Monday 3rd March 2008
It would be a comforting thought that, if you so wanted, you could buy a house and live in it all your life, even if you became infirm and needed to use a wheelchair to get about and a stairlift to take you up to bed.
That's what the Government wants to happen, which is why it's planning new laws which would see builders in a few years producing all homes with stairs wide enough to accommodate stairlifts, downstairs bathrooms, and room for wheelchairs to turn.
This shows a commendable concern for the welfare of an ageing population. It also adds to the building conditions which will in turn add to the cost of housing and make it even harder for first-time buyers to get a foot on the ladder with a new home.
Would it not be more practical to have a compromise policy, with a set proportion of these specially-designed homes on every new development and many more sheltered-accommodation schemes for those who need a bit of supervision as they grow old and infirm?
You can't help think that it's a lot easier for the Government to swing the financial burden on to the building sector and its customers rather than putting more funds into cash-starved social care, which is surely an equally helpful way of assisting people to stay independent.
And you can't help but be puzzled at conflicting signals coming from the Government. On the one hand it wants all houses built with space to accommodate wide staircases and doors, while on the other it encourages builders to construct tall, thin houses on at least three floors to cram as many as possible of them on to the available land.
The two don't seem to sit together, somehow.
A note of caution...
It's tough being a sceptical, killjoy Bradfordian who can't find a pair of rose-tinted specs that fit. You tend to miss out on a load of rejoicing.
Take the announcement that six chain stores - Topshop-Topman, Evans, Dorothy Perkins, Burton, Miss Selfridge and Wallis - have signed for space in the proposed Broadway shopping scheme, joining Marks & Spencer and Debenhams.
That's good news if it means that construction work on the Westfield project gets started sooner rather than later or not at all. Isn't it?
But a still, small voice inside this Bradfordian will insist on whispering thoughts that have also occurred to contributors to T&A website Forums: "But don't we already have a Topshop-Topman, and an Evans, and a Dorothy Perkins, and a Burton in the centre of Bradford, and sections devoted to Miss Selfridge and Wallis in the Outfit store in the Forster Square retail park? And don't we already have a Marks & Spencer? And aren't the Debenhams stores in Leeds and Harrogate currently home to sections featuring clothing fromwell Evans, Dorothy Perkins, Miss Selfridge, Wallis, etc. So will that be the same here?
Are we likely to find ourselves blessed with at least two branches of each of these retailers in central Bradford along with a miraculous inrush of spending power to enable us to support them? Or will openings in the Broadway project mean closures elsewhere, with the shopping centre of gravity moving down the town? And if that happens, what will happen to the middle and the top of the town?
Awkward thoughts, I know. But ones that a sceptical, killjoy Bradfordian lacking rose-tinted specs can't help but ponder.
Despair I can't imagine.
Being a teenager has never been much fun. Throughout the ages, and particularly since they were identified as a separate social group in the 1950s, youngsters passing through puberty into early adulthood have had a struggle making sense of the world and have often felt alienated from it.
In the Welsh district of Bridgend at present, to be a teenager must be unbearable. What on earth is happening down there? You hardly dare open a newspaper or switch on the news for fear of learning that yet another youngster, apparently happy and carefree when last seen, has been found dead.
We in the media must be careful when discussing this. After all, we've been accused of aggravating the situation by reporting it. But you can't ignore it, can you?
There is either some sinister plot behind it, or a collective madness among a group of loosely-linked people, or an epidemic of despair which by coincidence has driven an above-average number of teenagers in the same area to the conclusion that the future isn't worth having.
Doesn't it make you feel like weeping when you see their photographs: cheerful-looking lads and pretty girls who should have had everything to live for.
What sort of a mess have we made of the world to cause them to decide that they're better off out of it?
Insult to the rest of us
Again, a senior politician has been shown to have his snout buried deep in the trough of public money, with £4,280 claimed in a year for taxi journeys taken locally by his wife and £75,000 claimed over six years in allowances for a Scottish home on which he has no mortgage.
And this senior politician - Michael Martin, the Speaker of the Commons - is currently chairing an inquiry into MPs' expenses and allowances!
No-one has suggested that Mr Martin has acted illegally. But it does show a contempt for taxpayers to take advantage in this way of the perks available for those who choose to claim them.
There needs to be a searching inquiry leading to a root-and-branch reform of the system, with less money put in the trough and more restrictions on who has the right to stick a snout into it.
Those who suggest that Mr Martin perhaps isn't the right man to head such an inquiry do have a point. And those who have sprung to the Speaker's defence, suggesting that he's being picked on because of his working-class roots, should stop being so silly.