Nonsense, you support Dundee

Horrid, but funny

With that good fortune I hope you do the lottery.

The biggest problem has always been that, whilst other towns and cities are allowed to have retail backed stadia built by the private sector/council, Bradford isn't. Even when we organise a sports village, the powers that be organise a big recession/banking collapse just to ensure it won't happen.

Paranoid? Moi?

Imagine how dominant the side we'd started assembling in the late thirties would have been. They had to go and organise a World War to stop us.

Et moi, mon ami.

Pies, Stains, Wire all get a new stadium on the back of a Tesco superstore development, including non-retail, sufficiently far from the respective town centres to surely be a threat to those town centres?

Bradford were NOt able to get a similar Tesco-backed scheme through. Even though Tesco were subsequently allowed to massively expand their Canal Road store with a huge non-food component, as well as build a new Extra store up Great Horton Road. Oh, and Uncle Ken was allowed to have a Matalan store on his Mayo Avenue site, and the Co-op - one of the principal objectors - shut their flagship city centre department store (which not developing at Odsal was supposedly to help protect) not long after the Odsal scheme folded.

One day someone will be able to explain all this to me.

Simples. Bradford has been slowly destroyed over the past 20 years by greedy self-interest.

Possibly a little too 'simples' Roofy, though I wouldn't doubt there has been a bit of that going on.

Bradford lost out for many reasons over the years, from being a main line station to becoming a wayside halt on a network centred on another city a bit to the east, the road network ditto. On top of this remember how the government of the eighties (no doubt sparked by accusations of southern bias) decided to grant development area status on some city (presumably pulled from a hat) and decided on that same city which was already the centre of the transport links in West Yorks.

Not that Leeds (for that was the city) didn't have it's problems; Gipton, Belle Isle Osmondthorpe, just to pick a few, show it certainly did, but to pretend that Bradford didn't, and even worse, to fail to realise the knock on effects of giving Leeds the development status would have on neighbouring areas, was to my mind, criminal. Still it got Maggie re-elected, so all turned out well didn't it, or perhaps not,or maybe I really am paranoid.

I would argue that for Wigan, the Central Park site is probably as near you could have got to the town centre to build a large supermarket.

I know the 'enabling development' argument was accepted by the inspector who oversaw the planning appeal for the Warrington stadium (don't quote me on that though!) and I do believe the Tesco site at St Helens is much nearer to the town centre then you could compare Odsal to be. Also, in days gone by the planning process for retail had a lot of emphasis on demonstrating need. The applicant had to show that retail development could be accommodated, looking at the potential expenditure in the catchment area. This is still a consideration today, but with less emphasis. I suspect the Tesco scheme at Bradford may not have had sufficient 'need', but I don't really know!

Leigh now has planning permission for a supermarket adjacent to the stadium in the name of enabling development (even though the stadium has already been developed), I think the new stadium for Brighton and Hove Albion is enabled by a retail development. Didn't work for Everton at Kirkby though!

Some good points though about the Bradford retail scheme though, don't know too much about how the proposal never happened - maybe I'll look into it on another day!

I've always thought that Bradford was effectively a one trick pony, and when the wool/textile trades died, so did Bradford.

Maybe it's because Leeds was under Labour control during the late '80s when the Urban Development Corporations came in and Bradford was under Conservative control. Where as, at the time, I would think the areas such as Sheffield, Teesside and Manchester were solid Labour country and maybe the Govt saw urban Development Corps as a way to try and get Labour out of dominating local government in these areas.

As said though, Leeds still has significant areas of deprivation and Urban Development Corporations only served to widen the gap between the have's and have not's in these cities.

I'm too young to remember, but I imagine the river front area of Leeds, where most the Urban Dev Corp money was focused, was pretty grim in the 1980s and was seen to have massive potential - where as the opportunities in Bradford may have been more limited.

We got planning permission for the Superdome though at least!

Found these architect's drawings on the planning public access sitehttp://bit.ly/gTCf8zrl

Nowt like a bit of Wednesday night planning geekery.

So you don't remember (for example) what used to be a very big engineering base in Bradford then? Like International Harvesters and GEC?

Bradford was no more a one trick pony with the Wool industry than Leeds was with the ready-made clothing industry. Both lost their key industry. And both lost most of their engineering industry (examples like GKN's Kirkstall Forge spring to mind).

The difference is that Leeds replaced what it lost, and more, with banking, financial services, legal and a host of other office-based service jobs. And of course the NHS HQ.

Bulliac is spot on IMO about the impact of granting Development Area status to Leeds in the 1980s. At the time, Leeds was a run-down dump in many areas not leas the city centre. When I first came to Leeds, in 1977, you went to Bradford to do your shopping. The development area status, and other initiatives, significantly contributed to the dramatic transformation and now look what happened.

Other factors at play too, including Leeds already being the regional transport hub and local demographics, but there can be no doubt that government policy in the 1980s and beyond made a major contribution. Leeds owes a huge debt to Thatcher; Bradford most certainly does not.

But the joke was actually on the Thatcher administration: they thought that by pumping money into Leeds from central government rather than through the (labour) local authority, they would end up with a load of grateful local people who would change their political allegiance as a result. Yet in the event it seemed to me most folk gave the credit mainly to the council and did not fully appreciate the role of central government. As a result, a policy that I reckon was aimed at least in part at winning over labour voters instead just further entrenched the labour council and local MPs. As I saw it, anyway!

Funny old world?

Of course, Leeds Council has to be given credit for a lot of enlightened decisions too (unlike our lot who have always seemed incapable of delivering on anything) - like providing very serious inducements to Harvey Nicks to open a store in Leeds. Why? So the senior guys in Whitehall who needed to be persuaded a move to Leeds could convince their wives that they would not be abandoning civilisation as they knew it because there was even a Harvey Nicks there...I jest not!