Is that you at your most convincing?

Didn't the Luftwaffe start the job anyway? Can't be many left.

I actually quite like Bradford. Don't really care what anyone else thinks.

With the big hole where Broadway used to be maybe we should be like one of these eastern places and call it the Holey City of Bradford? Or wait until the council have grassed it over and re-name it Bradford Garden City?

I'll second that. I feel the same and have done since I came here to uni nearly 20 years ago. Nowadays I encounter a fair mix of foreign volunteers who come to stay in Bradford for a month or more, and almost all are overwhelmingly positive about the place compared to their often sunny homes. Perhaps it's easy to be rosy-eyed about a place when you're only here for a short while, and I don't deny there are a lot of problems, but I think it's the warmth and quality of the people that impresses the visitors, and did to me too when I first came here. Sure there are problems, but personally I'd still rather live here than Lddds - or any town down south (where I grew up) for that matter.

If there's one thing I dislike about Bradford more than anything else it's not the bloody big hole in the ground, or the way the city and the council seem to choose to live in the shadow of its near neighbour, it's the way so many of its born and bred natives appear to have such a downer on the place. There aren't many other cities in Britain I'd choose to live in over this dirty northern town.

I'm not really sure that a bit of self deprecation or even a dose of realism is really out of order. I can remember the fifties and sixties when Bradford had everything that Leeds still has (and actually had a better shopping centre); I can remember all the little snips here and there which started the city's downfall culminating in the eighties, when our wonderful government decided to spend £millions of our tax monies on another city a bit to the East, but left ours to wither on the vine, which must be one of the worst acts of government sponsored vandalism on record.

Oh, I still have a lot of feeling for my city; pride even. I was born here; brought up on a Bradford council estate and educated here through the council run state system; I suppose, in truth, I even owe a debt to the place. I still do my shopping here and get everything I need (the internet's wonderful isn't it? sorry, I'm being facetious again), I still like the Victorian buildings (what remains of them), the moors on the edge of the city are still stunning, and of course I'll never stop watching the rugby team.

Is it just sadness over what it might have been, that people like me are critical about what we've become?