A call for accountability at Bradford Council

Dear Mr. Hopkins,

I am writing to complain about the undemocratic and unrepresentative decision taken by the Regulatory and Appeals Committee on 23rd September of this year to demolish the former Odeon cinema building on Prince’s Way and to grant planning permission to the proposed New Victoria Place development. I now realise that I should probably have written earlier, but I had come to believe that there was no further recourse available to save the building, and was hoping for further legal guidance before submitting my complaint.

I sat though almost the whole of September 23rd’s lengthy meeting, returning for the late session and enduring till the bitter end to witness the committee’s disappointing decision. Particularly infuriating was the moment when it became apparent that the committee were ready to vote five to two in favour of saving the building and so were removed from council chamber to receive private “legal advice”, only to return and vote for demolition. I’m afraid I did not make a note of the name of the council’s legal advisor, but I am sure he acted in good faith and within his remit. What disappoints me is the lack courage on the part of those councillors who changed their vote, unwilling to support what they know to be the will of the people who put them into office.

Another detail I did not make exact notes of was the number of letters the committee had received on the issue. I remember it being somewhere in the region of 2000 opposing demolition, and a figure in support of the proposal that was so small it could be counted on the fingers of one hand. A hand with at least two fingers cut off.

The gratuitous amputation of irreplaceable assets seems to have been a recurring misfortune for Bradford. The former cinema is the last truly iconic building in the city centre. It’s imposing frontage, distinctive domes and red brick construction set it apart from it’s surroundings such that it is not just a beautiful building in it’s own right, but actually symbolic of the heart of the city. In UNESCO’s only City of Film, and opposite the National Media Museum, it seems absurd that a council should entertain a plan to demolish the last remaining 1930s super-cinema. Properly maintained, this building should be an asset to the city: a valuable cultural centre, and a landmark of Bradford’s cinematic history. This is not some building that deserves to be saved because of an adverse affect on the neighbouring Alhambra theatre. This is the only building left which can symbolise Bradford in the same way Big Ben does London, or the Eiffel Tower Paris.

Under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 the local planning authority is required to pay special attention to the desirability of preserving or enhancing the character or appearance of the conservation area into which the former Odeon building falls. One need only look at a map of the conservation area to see that it was clearly designated specifically to include this building, jutting out as it does from the Thornton Road/Prince’s Way junction. On conservation areas, Planning Policy Guidance 15: Planning and the Historic Environment states that the general presumption should be in favour of retaining buildings which make a positive contribution to the character or appearance of a conservation area. It was evident from attending the meeting on 23rd September that no presumption in favour was shown. Instead councillors allowed themselves to be dictated to, accepting a plan that neither preserves the character or appearance of the area, nor can be said to enhance it.

As a fig-leaf to cover their shame, the Regulatory and Appeals Committee wore a single letter from English Heritage, as though this were some objective measure of the building’s value overriding the views of 2000 local people. In truth, of course, the very idea that such value could be measured objectively is clearly a nonsense, and this is a call which PPG15 and the 1990 act empower the local authority to make. The Regulatory and Appeals Committee have clearly shrugged off this duty.

Bearing in mind the above, I would ask that Bradford Council do three things:

1. Serve Yorkshire Forward and Langtree Artisan with a building preservation notice, preventing them from demolishing the former cinema or altering it in such a way as to affect its character.
2. Hold a vote of no confidence in the Regulatory and Appeals Committee, removing them from office at the earliest opportunity.
3. Hold a fully-open meeting of the whole council, at which the two applications approved on September 23rd be reconsidered, taking proper account of public opinion, the building as an iconic symbol for the city, and it’s historical importance in the UNESCO City of Film.

I am aware that various people within the city have presented compelling evidence for the physical health of the building as being fit for use, and I would also ask that such evidence be given it’s due weight in any future debate on the issue.

Update 22/11/2009: I’m glad the version of this that I actually sent to my elected representatives didn’t include the links that embellish the above version. I’ve discovered an asbestos survey that seems to provide the proof that the above linked Mr. Nobel had indeed been negligent. I’ve started a thread on the Save the Odeon Facebook discussion board in the hope that someone can provide futher information.

My few words on Question Time

John Walker wrote a blog post over at botherer.org earlier this evening that pretty much echos the kind of thing I’ve been saying to anyone who’d listen for quite a while.

Leaving aside for the moment the fact that what one of Walker’s commentors calls the “Getting Off Your Backside And Voting system” in this country is thoroughly inept and only serves to encourage the kind of infantile political debate John describes, I think today has been a deeply troubling day. Not because I don’t think Griffin should have been there—he had every right to be—but because of the effect it will likely have. I suspect Jack Straw’s assertion that this will prove a bad week for the BNP will itself prove a sad misjudgement. Griffin’s target audience will have seen a man who’s views resound with their own shouted down, laughed at and bullied by five of the liberal elite; two of whom don’t even belong in Britain anyway. They will have seen themselves forced to stand and justify themselves before a crowd of Jews, Muslims and foreigners, and they will have asked themselves why the hell they should have to do that in their own country. It’s not a picture they’ll’ve liked. We’ve all had an entertaining evening and patted ourselves on the back for making a fascist look a fool, but Griffin’s base will have grown as a result.

It is a fundamental paradox of democracy that allowing free speech means allowing people you don’t agree with a voice, even if those people would seek to remove your own. A free democracy should allow its members always the option, but never the desire, to vote for its own abolition. Until we find a more sophisticated level of political discourse than was seen tonight, that desire will not be challenged on a meaningful level.

A difficulty with claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance

Dear Mrs Holdsworth,

I have just come off the phone from discussing my claim for Jobseeker’s Allowance with one of your advisors. From what he was able to tell me, it seems that your staff responsible for processing my claim are either incompetent or persistent liars. Over the last month I have gone through an absurd process of bureaucracy in an attempt to get reinstated my claim which was cancelled in error from 10th June. I am now told that there is no record on your system of any attempt cover the missing weeks.

Upon attending my regular signing appointment at Westfield House Jobcentre on 10th June I informed my advisor that I would be unable to make my next signing as I would be at the Glastonbury Festival with a ticket purchased prior to the start of my claim. I had hoped to be able to rearrange my signing for the day before, but expected to be told to sign off and start a new claim on my return. Instead I was told that I was entitled to ten days of holiday that I could take any time during my claim. I was given a form to fill in giving details of my holiday within the UK, and told that provided I returned it to the Jobcentre before leaving for the festival everything should be fine.

I believe I returned my holiday form to the Jobcentre on 22nd June, two days before my next appointment was due. The staff on the front desk were helpful and friendly, and gave no indication that I was doing anything incorrect or unusual. They told me that I should come back to the Jobcentre on 6th July, the first weekday after I got home, and tore a reminder slip from the holiday form that I was told to present when I returned. Other than that I was given no receipt or acknowledgment of the form I had handed in.

I duly presented myself at Westfield House on the required date, and turned over the reminder slip I had been given. My appearance clearly caused some confusion, and it was some time before I was called forward to see an advisor. I was finally called to a desk where I spoke to one man and one woman who told me that the holiday form I had brought in prior to my departure had been lost somewhere between the front desk and the team who should have put it on the system. My claim had been cancelled as I had, the system recorded, missed my regular signing date on 24th June. They advised me to return home and phone the helpline, asking to make a rapid reclaim, and to request that my claim be backdated to the date my earlier claim had been cancelled in error.

Following the advice given by the Jobcentre advisors precisely, I returned home and called the helpline. I asked to make a rapid reclaim, and was put through a process that could not by anyone be reasonably described as rapid. The gentleman I spoke to appeared to have no access to the details of my previous claim, and was unable to look up basic facts you would think might help in a “reclaim” process, such as the date my prior claim had been cancelled. Nor was he able to simply duplicate the details of my claim, and I was forced to answer a tedious volley of irrelevant questions, the answers to which you must already have had on your system, as not one detail of my situation had changed since my previous claim.

At the end of that call I was instructed to attend Westfield House again, for a starting interview, on 10th July—by which time I had been without income for one month. At this interview I was told that the only way I could hope to have this outstanding period covered was to complete another form requesting that my claim be backdated. I spoke to another helpful lady who, unlike the telephone advisor I had spoken to before, was actually able to look up the details I needed to complete the form accurately. She again admitted that my claim had been cancelled in error by the Jobcentre, and told me that there were notes to that effect on my record. She informed me that my case would need to go before a specialist decision maker who would have authority to issue the JSA covering the missing month. I wrote out in full on the form what had happened to my claim, and how I had been repeatedly told to expect that money. The advisor said she would also give full details, officially recording for the benefit of the decision maker that I was owed the money due to a Jobcentre Plus error.

Prior experience has shown me that one can not expect to receive anything in JSA before your first regular signing date after the initial interview. So I waited until after my next signing on 22nd July before expecting anything further. On 27th July, I finally received a payment of £156.16. I waited a little longer, expecting to hear something by post that would state the result of the backdating decision, and how much regular benefit I could expect going forward. As of today I have not received any written acknowledgement of this current “reclaim”. Slightly bemused as to what period that £156.16 was supposed to cover, I rang today to ask for clarification and also to ask what had happened about the backdating decision. I was told that the payment was to cover the period 6th–22nd July. Before my claim was erroneously cancelled I was receiving £64.30 per week, so that works out correctly. However, I was also told that there is no record on my account of any attempt to claim for the period 11th June–5th July.

Clearly, this should not be true. I can therefore assume only that either Westfield House have lost a form relating to my claim for the second time in as many months, or that I have been repeatedly lied to, and that none of your seemingly helpful staff ever had any intention of passing my documents through the relevant channels.

Ultimately, I assume, this is probably a failure of the system rather than of any specific individual. I am told that you do not have protocol for the restoration of a cancelled claim. This is patently absurd. I can not be the first person ever to have suffered a claim being erroneously shut down—people do, after all, make mistakes. It does leave me rather angry that a month after discovering the error I appear to be back at square one. I hope that, following this letter, you will be able to take some action to expedite my receiving the missing month’s allowance.

Can someone explain economics to me?

I’ve just been reading an article on The Register slating New Scientist for a lack of understanding of basic economics (it’s fairly old, but I was away when it was published). Now, I’ve never claimed much understanding of economics, but clearly I’m dumber than I thought, ’cause to me The Register’s argument looks like nonsense.

The Register is attacking the classic green anti-capitalist myth that a system built on economic growth is fundamentally flawed because it requires an ever increasing consumption of finite natural resources. It may well be myth but, if it is, I’m going to need the reasons why explained to me in a little more depth than Tim Worstall gives here. He uses sand as an illustration for his argument, pointing out that a quantity of sand converted into computer chips will add significantly more value to the economy than the same quantity converted into wine bottles.

As a basic illustration, that’s fine, but extrapolated to a larger scale it doesn’t seem to hold much water (or wine). Economic growth is fine in this model as long as you assume a nation to be a closed system. Britain’s resource consumption doesn’t have to increase in line with GDP if we use our sand to make microchips. But building microchips will not reduce the demand for glass. All we’re doing is offshoring glass production, whilst continuing to double consumption of sand. If we all become singers our GDP per capita may increase while our sand consumption goes down, but we still want microchips and glass. In fact we probably want more microchips and more glass because we’re now all so rich from singing that we have more money to spend. Total sand consumption has increased again. The fact that it’s mined and processed abroad won’t negate the impact on our environment. We can not live on singing alone. Or, as put by someone wiser than me, how can you have money if none of you actually produce anything?

Is the 360 worth it now?

I’ve never bought a 360, on the basis that all the interesting games come to PC eventually anyway. But I might have to rethink that attitude on the basis of Natal. It’s going to be many years before there’s a combination of hardware and software support that can deliver that kind of functionality on the PC. I’m not just talking about Milo (there’s no way Molyneux can deliver on what he appeared to show—however good Milo’s facial recognition is, he can still only have a limited range of responses). I’m thinking of the potential for 3D, and movement tracking in 3D worlds: using head tracking to peer round corners, that sort of thing. I’m not at all surprised to see from Johnny Chung Lee’s Procrastineering blog that this is what he’s been working on at Microsoft. From the brief description he gives of the sensors it’ll easily do more than the amazing Wiimote demos he posted in the past, so it’s pretty exciting seeing it come to reality.

I’ve not watched the Sony show yet. The live stream was too choppy to make out, so I’m waiting for someone to post it. It’ll have to be pretty spectacular to top this.

PC World really on the ball

Taken today in PC World Bradford. Do you think they'd give me my money back after I got home and found I couldn't actually play it?

It's the Zombie Apocalypse. Bring Friends.

So, today’s the day for celebrating the resurrection of the dead.

Walking back from the dawn service at Undercliffe Cemetery, with central Bradford appearing as scene from the zombie apocalypse. I was reminded of two things: First, how beautiful my city is at dawn on a bright Sunday morning, and that I should make the effort to see it more often. Second, that somewhere between the three church services I’m going to today, I need to find a couple of hours to try out one of the two campaigns I’ve still not played from 28 Days Later, the videogame.

Happy Easter.

No news is good news

Ragnar Tørnquist has posted “no news” about Dreamfall Chapters that got me more excited than any actual gaming news I’ve heard in months. Lots of promises to live up to here. The Longest Journey series is one of my favourite in gaming, and I hope the next instalment can summit to the potential the last didn’t quite reach. I’d love to see a game that finally gets the action/adventure blend right. I’ve never really understood why it’s not been done yet. The MMO interface is now so ubiquitous, and to the casual observer would seem perfect for such a task: a blend of full 3D movement with point-and-click for world interaction, in a fashion that many millions of gamers are instantly familiar with. Going back to Dreamfall after WoW the restrictive camera just seems infuriating. I want to look around the beautiful world, but I’m not allowed. It rather breaks the immersion. I can’t help feeling that the mini-games he mentions would too. He does say he wants to make The Longest Journey 2 as well as Dreamfall Chapters though. That’s got to be good news, right? I have faith.

Tornquist also says that Dreamfall suffered massively from piracy, despite the fact that it came with one of the most hated DRM systems ever. I assume he saw the news about Spore being the most torrented game ever. I would actually prefer to buy the game(s) online, and to have them validated online, as long as that means Steam, not SecuROM. I’d also like full SteamWorks support, including achievements and saves synced to the cloud. And I’d like a Steam client for the Mac, with all my games portable between the two formats from release day. I’m a dreamer.

Unsurprisingly, John Walker of Rock, Paper, Shotgun got in quickly with the definitive commentary on this story, but I couldn’t resist adding noise to the signal.

Ecological Economic Recovery

Dear Mr. Brown,

You know, back when Mr. Blair finally left some of us had high hopes. You’d talked a lot of good talk over the years and some of the initial signs were even pretty good. But, as with all these things, it didn’t take long for the dream to die. Now everyone’s talking about crisis and the world just seems to grow a little more gloomy and a lot more doomed every day. I guess it’s in times like these that leaders really get tested. But I’m sure you’ve thought that already.

I’ve been out of the country a while, and I’m still finding my feet back in the UK. I don’t really feel qualified to comment on much that’s going on here. But I got another of those round robin e-mails asking for lobbying on some important issue or another and, today, I’m just disillusioned enough to care.

Apparently there’s some big meeting of European leaders happening this weekend, where you’re all going to gather and talk about how we can get more idiots to borrow more money they don’t have to buy more crap they don’t need because that’s what’ll put us on the path to economic recovery. I enjoy foreign travel as much as the next Prime Minister, but I’m not convinced that’s the way.

Among other things of late, I’ve spent some time in India, studying Gandhi. I know you respect leaders with the courage of their convictions, so you probably know much more of him than I do, but I found some of his values really struck a chord. He was all about building a new nation that wasn’t just independent of Empire, but which valued integrity, and where values he saw as traditionally Indian formed the basis for a society with lasting strength.

Personally, I tend to think that the morality of compassion for life and respect for the world in which we live has far more global roots. Sadly, politicians these days don’t seem to like to talk about morality. Maybe it’s because it’s too reminiscent of “values voters” and the “religious right”, ’cause Lord knows we don’t do God in the UK, or maybe it’s ’cause you’re all too afraid of the morality trap catching the proverbial residents of your wardrobes. But aren’t we all a little more grown up than that? Don’t we have a little more integrity?

Maybe it’s because it’s impossible to talk about morality whist at the same time asking for months of detention without trial? Maybe it’s the paying civil servants to sell arms for private companies? Maybe it’s the forcibly making people destitute as a tool of public policy? Or maybe, just maybe, it’s the rehabilitation of usurious practices that created this whole mess in the first place.

I guess it may not sit well with your calvinist background calling usury immoral, but a strong sense of morality was the one thing that some of us thought you had over your predecessor. Coupled with a little integrity, that could take you far. Maybe even the rest of us too. Take a look at who’s benefiting from all the stimulus packages, and ask who they’re helping. If it’s making the rich richer and the poor poorer, it’s probably immoral. And if you find yourself arguing that it’ll help the poor in the long term, that’s probably just the coward’s way out. Ask yourself why you really wanted this job.

Maybe you could start by putting a fraction of those rescue packages not in the hands of the institutions that failed us all, but with those who have creative solutions but no finance. Maybe people who have ways to make our way of life more sustainable in the long term. Maybe some of the new jobs could be creating renewable energy. Maybe you could put that as a challenge to some of these European leaders you’re meeting on Sunday.

Maybe I’m being too optimistic.