Increasing parking charges could kill off Hanley

I got angry the other day.
I was reading the Daily Mail at the time, so it's perhaps no surprise.
And the reason for my fury? A so-called 'think piece' by that condescending toff A N Wilson, who was writing about the sad demise of Wedgwood in Stoke-on-Trent.
It seems he spent part of his childhood living in the city because his dad worked for the former pottery giant when it was a big Staffordshire business. His memories and commentary were fine - until he got to the part of his ramblings in which he described Stoke as a 'dump'; a wasteland with a failing university; a city full of immigrants.
Now that got me mad. For what it's worth, Staffordshire University has had more than its fair share of successes (though perhaps gender-neutral toilets in its nightclub is not among them).
And Stoke-on-Trent might have its problems, but why does the national Press insist on continually describing it as a dump. That got me mad too.
In fact, I resolved never to buy the Mail. Again.
Then I went to Hanley. On the bus. The city centre on a wet Thursday morning...
And after trudging round the shops, I realised I perhaps shouldn't be so angry with A N Wilson. Because it seemed to me that he's right. Stoke-on-Trent is a dump.
I don't know why it hasn't dawned on me before, but Hanley is dismal. Derelict buildings everywhere; vast swathes of land on which factories once stood; the old Woolworths store standing empty.
It was depressing and in desperate need of some serious investment. Fast. Some movers and shakers in the world of regeneration reckon it can become a shopping destination to rival Manchester and the like. Yeah, right.
City councillors and quango bosses with vision and the determination to see plans through to fruition. New jobs. Big high street names. That's what's required.
So imagine my disbelief when I read that Stoke-on-Trent City Council is planning to increase parking charges in the city centre by 45 per cent.
It's part of a drive to bring in extra money to help tackle an overspend which has seen one department go £12m into the red.
This would be all well and good if Hanley was a thriving, bustling, successful city centre. But it's not. It's far from it.
And we're in the midst of a recession (yep, it's official now.) Will people whose credit has been severely crunched be prepared to pay over the odds to park in a depressing city centre with limited retail appeal? I doubt it.
And that can only mean bad news for those businesses already struggling to make ends meet and turn in a decent profit. The council must realise there's a serious risk of more Stoke-on-Trent redundancies if this strategy is pursued.
(There's also the added issue of the Potteries' remaining five towns - Stoke, Fenton, Longton, Burslem and Tunstall - all trying to pull in punters too.)
I just hope somebody on the council sees sense before this proposal is rubber-stamped. Otherwise, those who vote in favour of it could simply be hammering another nail into Hanley's coffin.

Alton Towers protest is so short-sighted

Call me unsympathetic to trees, but have parish councillors on the patch where Alton Towers operates lost their marbles?
If they haven't, perhaps they took one too many turns on the theme-park's Corkscrew ride before it was dismantled last year.
Because some of these parish representatives are apparently opposing plans for a new rollercoaster to replace the iconic yellow one, which was pulled down before Christmas.
Parish council chariman Tony Moult says the scheme will "encroach" on woodland.
Is he mad?
In an ideal world, the trees would be left alone, and residents living near Alton Towers wouldn't be disturbed by this attraction which provides Staffordshire jobs for thousands of people and brings in millions of pounds to the local economy.
But we're not living in an ideal world. We're living in a pretty dismal one at the moment. Just ask the poor workers from Wedgwood, JCB and countless more big business names who have lost their livelihoods.
There's a credit crunch on. No. Let's be honest. We're in recession, and anything that can safeguard jobs, or create new ones, should be welcomed.
I'm all for close-knit communities and people standing up for what they believe in.
But sometimes - as is the case with these whining councillors - you have to forget parochialism and see the bigger picture.

Has Hanley got the X Factor? Nope!

I've heard some claptrap in my time, but this takes some beating.
Stoke-on-Trent is apparently "a beautiful place".
Who says? Laura White, who got booted off ITV's X Factor amid considerable controversy.
Now I consider myself a Stokie. I love the people and I love the place. There's bags of heritage, owing much to the city's former status as the centre of the pottery industry. Once-thriving companies like Wedgwood, Spode and Royal Doulton are to thank for that.
But they've gone - or what remains of them is going. And "beautiful" the city is not. There are some beautiful buildings, but it's largely a post-industrial ruin; a place where there's been plenty of talk about "Stoke-on-Trent regeneration"; plenty of public consultation; plenty of "vision" and artists' impressions.
But it's a dump. And until organisations like Stoke-on-Trent City Council, the North Staffordshire Regeneration Partnership and Renew North Staffordshire pull their fingers out, it will remain as such.
However, describing it truthfully probably wouldn't help Laura White flog any records. And the Lancashire lass will be desperate to do that, after being kicked off X Factor amid claims from her fans that it was a fix.
That said, she went down a storm at Liquid nightclub in Hanley last night. She did a turn as part of a tour, and she's now hoping to land a record contract and see her name in lights. (Personally, I preferred that Spanish sizzler, Ruth Lorenzo, but what do I know?)
Despite Laura's rather disingenous description of Stoke-on-Trent as "beautiful" (God knows how she'd describe the Taj Mahal or St Mark's Square), she is actually a rather likeable character.
She did a video interview with The Sentinel, my local newspaper, and she seems down-to-earth and more than pleasant.
I hope she does well... and has a look around Hanley in the daylight. She'd be groping for another word altogether to describe what she saw then.

Anthea Turner's foreign pots gig? Just smashing!

It looks like the fragrant Anthea Turner - she of 'Yeah, I'll promote a chocolate bar on my wedding day' fame - has been rumbled by an eagle-eyed resident of Stoke-on-Trent.
For the former Blue Peter beauty, who is said to be fiercely proud of her Potteries roots, has been busy earning some dosh... promoting pottery from nowhere near Stoke-on-Trent. Allegedly.
According to a correspondent who wrote to my local paper, The Sentinel, it seems "our" Anth has been plugging ceramics made abroad for Matalan.
Which is a cracking way of showing loyalty to your home city in these credit-crunched times. Spode? Remember them? Well they've gone under after hundreds of years at the heart of life in Stoke.
Wedgwood, one of the region's other big names, are making more people redundant. And Royal Doulton... Royal who? Yep, they're just a distant memory in the town of Burslem, which they once so proudly called home.
So I imagine there might be plenty of former potbank workers who'd like to throw more than a pot in Anthea's direction, given her Matalan gig.
And who could blame them?