Provincial Blues
I am a Provincial. A hick. A rustic. I have never lived in London; instead dividing my time between Manchester and Birmingham - Englands two other great metropolitan centres.
The London based media is hideously insular. The Today program and the broadsheet newspapers especially seem concerned solely with what happens in a two mile bubble centred around the palace of Westminster. The London-centric attitude of many commentators (Johann Hari especially) is particularly sickening.
Therefore, any attempt by a major columnist to pierce the bubble and shine some light on the hitherto darkened provinces is more than welcome. Simon Jenkins has an excellent article today in the Guardian about how the political class completly ignores the country outside of London except for its pathetic and supine party conferences. The record of both the political parties when it comes to urban redevelopment has been nothing short of scandalous:
I like so much about Manchester that I hesitate to point out that, after Liverpool, it must be the worst advertisement for Labour caucus government that has dominated Britain's cities for a third of a century. The council's destruction of the inner suburban ring of Victorian properties in the 1970s (now being repeated under Ruth Kelly's "pathfinder" programme) was class-cleansing on a scale that dwarfed what Shirley Porter was doing in Westminster. The rebuilding of Hulme, described in Clare Hartwell's excellent city guide as "one of the most notoriously defective and dysfunctional estates in Europe", has had to be completely flattened. Moss Side is a testament to Jane Jacobs's thesis that architects, not people, make slums. Today these are among the worst places in Britain for guns and drugs crime, truancy and health service deficits. I wonder how many starry-eyed delegates bothered to visit them.
Manchester is littered with the carcasses of failed redevelopment projects - think especially of the awful 'Hulme Crescents'.
Urban planning is a tricky issue. Manchester city centre still has more character than Birmingham's, which is just a mess of glass and steel; and some of the redevelopment in the city centre has been a vast improvement on the 60's monstrosities that loomed before the IRA bomb. But unless something is done soon, Manchester will lose all its old buildings and be left looking like one big Bullring.
Unfortunately, Manchester city councils are notoriously incompetent. Just recently, they chopped down all the trees along my road because they were afraid of being sued when people tripped over their roots. The roots of these grand old trees had been forcing up parts of the pavement, creating bumps and humps in the tarmac. Naturally, instead of trying to save the trees, the council took the cheap and easy route and chopped them all down; planting some sad little saplings in their place.
London may be the countries' economic powerhouse and a 'world city', but Manchester and Birmingham are great too. They (Manchester especially) have as much rich history and culture to offer as London. Their historic buildings should be protected and cherished, not smashed and burned and replaced with perspex monstrosities that look like something out of 1984.
It's probably too much to ask of the London media bubble, but paying mroe attention to the provinces and bringing their issues and anecdotes to national (and international) attention would be good for Britain.
-posted by Adam
