We are number two. We try harder...

(Apologies to Avis...)

Take that East St Louis!

Wolverhampton shares very many similarities with Bradford.

IMO Bradford is on the verge of becoming a "failed city".

How do you define that?

I think Bradford's got big problems but we need to be careful about bandying terms like that around.

Bit like a "failed school", I'd suggest. Come on...it just is not working as it is, is it? Inward investment looks to have all but dried up, as the report says the city centre is increasingly abandoned by those with alternatives, the only developments of note outside of the university etc seem to be...near the strategic road network. And Bradford is increasingly seen as a place to get round or through on the way to getting somewhere else.

Its a bloody travesty, given that when I first got my entry visa for Yorkshire in 1977 I lived in Leeds but its centre was a depressing place and I went to the vibrant Bradford for shopping and the like. As I'm sure you'd agree? Then someone gave Leeds "Development Area" status but not Bradford, and a few other gradual but ultimately fundamental changes took place, and look what happened? And the biggest joke of all was that the party that awarded Leeds DA status thought to obtain electoral advantage in Leeds by so doing, when instead all the credit in the minds of the public accrued to the their political opponents who controlled the council. Dumb and dumber...

And the solution? Surely the same as for the "failed school" analogy and also for the Leeds precedent...parachute in a new management and a shedload of central funding to incentivise inward investment and restore some sense of hope (if not yet pride) in the people of the district?

But, and mindful of what happened to the Tories in Leeds, how likely is that while the local authority remains controlled by the opponents of the governing party nationally?

I agree it's not working in Bradford but if you put a label like "failed city" on the place it'll never attract any investment. I know what you're getting at but I think "failed school" is a just a "catch all" term given by the media whenever a school is placed in special measures or has a bit of a bad reputation. As far as I know only Hull and maybe Donny have had the equivilent treatment for local authorities in this region. Once you start dishing out the labels it's harder to get rid of them. Nobody prints or broadcasts positive news if there's something more hard hitting around.

Maybe I'm just a bit sensitive but I know how bad publicity can spread about a place. For example, the student profile at Bradford Uni has changed massively in the past 10-12 years. Nowadays the place is mainly made up of students from Bradford itself or from abroad whereas up to about 98/99 it was mainly made up of students from elsewhere in the UK. This change came about over small number of years since the riots.

The riot coverage and the fact the the city was associated with rioting in the media every five minutes caused a massive shift in how the city was perceived from outside. That in turn had a big negative effect on the local economy.

I just don't want to see us giving out labels like "failed city" as they're likely to be seized upon and once it sticks that'll be the end of it. Sure, the city has some huge issues to deal with and it has been in decline for the best part of 50 years. It could do with the kind of boost that Leeds got in the 80s but it'll never have the chance if we're not careful.

Hopefully the next govt (likely to be Dave and Co the way things are looking) may be able to help given the current make up of the council. It needs a canny person on the side of Bradford to persuade the tories that it'd look very good if they could turn Bradford around and show it as a tory success story. It's about as an unlikely scenario as I can think of but you never know!

Couldnt Woverhampton reduce its vacancy rates by knocking down the empty shops.....?

Is that you at your most convincing?

Do you think we'll be put on a government investment programme like Leeds in the eighties?

Oh dear, should have read your next post!!

SSHHHHHHH, that's what we did.......................

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?