Alternative York

I have mixed feelings today. Joy in the knowledge that the incompetent and arrogant crook, Steve Galloway, has resigned as leader of City of York Council, but a feeling of despondency as it has been announced that “Mr Piggy”, AKA Andrew Waller, is taking his place. This man is just as big a clown as Galloway and therefore our city will continue on it’s downward spiral.

Resignations in politics are often pre-cursors for some sort of scandal emerging. I wonder if there is something lurking in Galloway’s cupboard just waiting to come out and haunt him. Did he jump before he was pushed?

Anyway let’s look at Galloway’s achievements since he came to power in 2003.

• Selling the Barbican Centre, causing leisure facilities to be taken away from thousands of council tax payers, at a price far lower than originally offered. Great business acumen!
• Pushing through the destruction of greenfields at Osbaldwick and Fulford, despite the availability of many brownfield sites across the city, in order to line his own pockets as the brown envelopes came in from Joseph Rowntree Foundation
• Encouraging thousands of immigrants into York by supporting housing schemes that are unaffordable to native Britons*
• Introducing unpopular fortnightly refuse collections while leaving many council-tax payers with no recycling facilities
• An increase in anti-social behaviour and yobbishness on the streets of York
• Turning York into a magnet for beggars and homeless drug addicts and street drinkers by showing a complete disregard for decent folk and supporting the Arclight Centre and various other futile projects for wasters and scrotes
• Dirty streets as York Pride has been a complete failure
• Evening parking charges which caused hardship for many city centre traders
• No municipal firework display to commemorate Guy Fawkes in the city of his birth
• Ordering the demolition of The Peasholme Centre just so councillors don’t have the homeless on the doorstep of their new offices
• The hideous design of the new offices on Hungate
• Wasting public money to such an extent that council tax was almost capped in 2006

Please feel free to add any more “achievements” if you think I’ve missed something out.
Waller will bring nothing new to York, despite his blustering.

If there was any justice there would be a full election where the Lib-Dems could be booted out once and for all and probably be replaced with Labour and idiots like Blanchard.

God is there no hope?

See you soon…

(* story to follow shortly)

We all know the history of the Rowntree family, and their importance to York over the years, but I wonder how many of you would agree with me when I say that Joseph and Seebohm would be spinning in their graves if they knew what is about to be done in their name in eastern York.

Here are some photographs I took this morning while out walking my dogs. I found it very sad to be out there in the morning sunshine, as summer approaches, knowing that the time will soon arrive for the sound of the cuckoo to be replaced with the roar of the JCB.

Please pay particular attention to the shots of the hedgerows that were wilfully destroyed, on the instructions of City of York Council, before the decision not to award village green status had been announced. It further demonstrates the arrogance of these bullies for whom the pound sign is king.

Eerily “Post apocalyptic” hedgerows vandalised by City of York Council

A view of the vandalism from Sustrans, looking towards Osbaldwick

How many more times will the dogs be able to run free?

Do we really need to destroy this beautiful meadow?

Supporters of “Disasterthorpe” describe this as scrubland?

Do CoYC have no shame?

I hope these pictures fully demonstrate that the council’s motto, “If it’s green, build on it” is disgraceful, immoral and utterly shameful.

York needs Disasterthorpe like it needs another Lib-Dem run council. It’s all about green fields for brown envelopes.

Scandalous.

See you soon…

Check out this story about a man threatening a woman and then following her home and then tell me if you feel justice has been done.

According to my old friend Judge Stephen Ashurst, John Taylor was not justified in defending his wife. It is interesting to note that there is no mention of the aggressor, Barry Smithson, facing any charges for his disgraceful behaviour.

The sad thing is that this story isn’t a one-off in Britain today.

More rights for criminals than victims. It stinks.

See you soon…

One hundred years ago Walmgate was a slum. It was an overcrowded, filthy, diseased version of Gin Lane. Then, over the 20th century, the area was cleared and new housing built. Businesses started to flourish and the area became a nice place to live within the city walls. Now, wholly due to City Of York Council’s appalling disregard for the law-abiding residents of the area, Walmgate is fast on its way to going full circle and becoming a slum once again.

It all started when York Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders (YACRO) was, without resident consultation, thrust on Walmgate in the 1990’s. This started the domino effect of disaster for the area. Instantly there was an increase in crime. Street drinking, drug dealing, theft, car crime, vandalism and late night disturbances became the norm as the tracksuited masses gathered outside the One-Stop (which now only sells strong cider) and intimidated the locals as they went about their business. It can be no co-incidence that the terminal decline of York’s once finest pub, The Spreadeagle, began shortly after YACRO’s arrival.

I have lost count of the number of times I have complained about anti-social behaviour in the area. Yet nothing is ever done. Last night I overheard a youth on a moped discussing a drug deal he was about to complete. I have a scumbag living in my own block of flats. (I would elaborate further but there is currently a process going on to evict him and I would hate to jeapordise it). Two Saturdays ago I found a man sitting outside my flat smoking heroin out of tin foil. Most mornings there is evidence of car crime on the roads near my home. Youths constantly gather and cause a nuisance. Last Wednesday lunchtime two men were openly smoking cannabis on the steps to Medway House. Street drinking is rife, despite it being a no-drinking zone? Not forgetting, of course, last year’s bonfire night teenage rampage which, unsurprisingly, resulted in zero arrests and a burnt out flat.

So what do the long suffering residents get to make up for all this disturbance and reduced quality of life?

Well surprise surprise! Nobody could have imagined that approval would be given for moving Crime Reduction Initiatives (CRI), otherwise known as a drop-in centre for smackheads and other scumbags, away from its current home in “nice” Peckitt Street to “dirty” Walmgate, a street already awash with a multitude of lowlives and wasters. Of course, I’m sure the approval of the move has nothing to do with the fact that whilst the centre is on Peckitt Street there is a distinct possibility that tourists viewing Clifford’s Tower or taking a riverside walk along the Ouse may be inadvertently pricked by a discarded syringe or subjected to begging and abuse.

The final insult comes with the relocation of the Peasholme Centre for the homeless to Fishergate (so that Galloway et al don’t have to see these people out of their new office windows) from it’s current, perfectly fine location on Peasholme Green. The only people round here who will be happy will be the management of the Postern Gate Wetherspoons on giro day!

Have any of you got any idea how much provision there is for the homeless/drug addicts/street drinkers/offenders in York? You’d be surprised. As well as Peasholme and the new “Homeless Hilton” (AKA Arclight), there is the Melbourne Project and Orwin House (alcohol), Ordnance Lane, Crombie House and Howe Hill (single mothers and the lazy unemployed) and plenty of other hostels and freebies funded by taxpayers. What is there for the rest of us? What about the elderly? That will be charities like Help The Aged and Age Concern that rely on generosity from the public.

I am utterly sick of seeing York become a magnet for every scrounging scrote in Britain. I once read that, in Britain, you have a 1 in 10 chance of standing in dog dirt in the street every time you go out. In York you have a 1 in 5 chance of seeing a beggar or a street drinker instead. As usual I am going to be accused of being “uncaring” and “insensitive”. Well I don’t care! I thought we, as a nation, were getting away from the idea of a Welfare State and moving, inevitably, to a Competition State where self help rather than state support was encouraged.

If we are then there’s little evidence of it in York, especially Walmgate!

See you soon…

Well done to the York Press thought police who have, once again, upheld their tradition of suppression of free speech.

My legitimate thoughts and concerns about the re-location of a drug addiction clinic to Walmgate obviously didn’t meet with editorial approval.

Though I note that liberal, wishy-washy, points of view on the subject are allowed to remain.

What a joke of a newspaper. It’s a communist regime. If they had an election there would only be one candidate!

See you soon…