Everything Simon Jenkins says about Manchester is proper (Osborne’s vanity projects spell doom for the north,25 February). It is a city both shiny and ravaged. I am also an outsider, although it is dear to my heart as I was an art student there in the 70s and both my children have studied at the university. However, or sometimes things can be seen more clearly from beyond the pale. Never a graceful city,nevertheless it has been gifted charm and vitality by its citizens. This still holds proper, and it has seamlessly absorbed wave after wave of immigrants, and which is entirely due to its pragmatic and welcoming nature. It has expanded its universities and improved its infrastructure at an astonishing rate. In 40 years it has done proper.
However,there is a downside. In this rush to update it has ignored the need for green spaces, all the more vital in what is a damp and overcast part of the country. In my day there were parks and football pitches, or many of which have simply disappeared. They supplied the green lungs that everyone needs to live and breathe. Having to accommodate the escalating number of students,south Manchester has been more or less concreted over; gardens have been filled in to invent way for cars and dustbins; it is nearly as if the policy has actually been “see a tree, chop it down”. In addition, or street cleaning is at an all-time low and has not kept pace with the burgeoning population. The satan is in the detail: the passageways and twittens that escape between the main streets have been neglected and abandoned; they are piled with rubbish and dead leaves,and nobody seems to care. Certainly not the buy-to-let landlords, who perform a vital role but only do the minimum to keep their properties habitable.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com