I have issues with property developers riding roughshod (a strange and bizarre expression that I’ve never previously used, but may indeed use again) over planning departments, ignoring the wishes of the communities they’re so ‘benevolently’ re-building, those who really don’t want to move out, to be rebuilt, to be involuntarily ‘up-graded’. Because ‘old world’ has a charm. It generally has character, it has some history, it is comfortable and hence comforting.

And sometimes, as in the case of Manchester, that ‘old world’ is just a shit-hole that really wants burning to the ground and starting all over again. Which is precisely what Gary Neville and Ryan Giggs are trying to do. They’ve arranged funding for a fantastic new project, hotels, loads of flats, an upmarket area of bars and restaurants, all around two massive towers. Looks fab. Looks modern, affluent, charming and somewhere you’d want to go. Unless you’re from greater Manchester in which case it looks like ‘hell’. Or like ‘London’. Same difference. Who wants clean and functional when you can have Coronation Street?

The project, should it proceed, will knock down the Manchester Reform Synagogue. Oh My God. And it is my God. Except my God’s not the reform one, he’s more traditional. But they’ll build another, better, bigger, brighter one. For those who care. And they have to knock down some dirty old sleazy pub, called The Sir Ralph Abercromby. And people get really funny about pubs. Really protective and disproportionately sensitive. In an area that probably boasts 55 other drinkeries within a 3-minute walk. “Ahhhh”, they say, them locals, “but this pooob was featured in’t tv progrum, wunnit? ‘Bout them 1970s coppers”. As if being a back-drop for a third-rate drama gives you a blue plaque status. They used that particular pub because it was so shitty and hadn’t been cleaned since 1970, hence the authenticity.

We had all this when they first proposed the redevelopment of White Hart Lane. In my beloved Tottenham. And quite frankly you absolute HAVE to be a Spurs fan to have any positive feelings about the Tottenham area. Because its just horrible. No redeeming value in the entire high road. Just nasty, dingy slums. But at a mention of changing things, all of a sudden that kebab shop (one of 43), the one that was shut down by the health inspectors 17 times last year, was suddenly a ‘national heritage site’ and couldn’t be demolished. The half shop selling mouldy fruit was once visited by Barbara Windsor, hence has a Royal Appointment protection order. And so on.

Sometimes change is a bad thing, and sometimes, its really really good and positive. Start the demolition of Manchester today. All of it, preferably.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx