Tank's for nothing (From Bradford Telegraph and Argus)

Tank's for nothing

4:18pm Wednesday 13th August 2008 in News By Jim Greenhalf , T&A Reporter

Reports that criticise Bradford or some aspect of the city are not always wrong-headed, we shouldn’t make the mistake of being parochially defensive about criticism.

But the latest one, from the London-based policy Exchange think-tank, suggesting that a north-to-south mass migration from Bradford, Liverpool and Sunderland to Oxford, Cambridge and London is the only way to successfully regenerate the country, is a waste of time and money.

To begin with, the residents of those fair cities - Oxford, Cambridge and London - would not be the least bit grateful to be over-run by the North’s diversity of people. A friend who lives in Oxford - he was born in Keighley - tells me that every single application to build new homes is resisted tooth and nail. A proposal to site one of the Government’s eco-towns at Weston-on-the-Green, eight or nine miles north of Oxford city-centre was furiously resisted by well-heeled NIMBYs.

More than three billion quid of taxpayers’s money is wasted on think-tanks, consultancies and non-government organisations. "They are filled with pointy-heads and wonks in striped shirts who end up working for a political party and then get a safe seat.

"It’s a form of colonialism. These people are shipped into cities like Bradford at great ex-pense and come up with impractical ideas. Bradford should be left to solve its own problems. These people should be made to work in a factory for a while producing widgets," he said.

On second thoughts let these Hooray Henries and Henriettas and their assistant twerps continue to issue their self-serving reports - this one got a lot of lovely publicity didn’t it. Let the south think the north is a place to be avoided. After all the last thing Bradford needs is an influx of chinless wonders to add to the ones it has already got.