Can-do vision is not beyond Oldham

THE FRIDAY THING: WHAT do I make of the blueprint (or purple, orange, yellow and peach print) of the new-look Oldham town centre?

Well, I think it is magnificent; the luxury hotel with its life-transforming opportunity of apprenticeships is a brilliant, unique concept and is a key development in the Civic Square proposal superbly imagined in the front-page artist’s impression in Tuesday’s Chronicle.

The public/private sector partnerships to bring about this transformation are already in place and, when rolled out to other, often-dismal corners of the town centre, promise a new-look, re-energised and revitalised Oldham, which should gladden us all.

The leadership of council leader Jim McMahon and chief executive Charlie Parker promises a can-do, will-do approach to the creation of a new-look Oldham and their sincere and visionary desire to form the partnerships that will bring about this stunning change is inspiring and will inspire hope in those Oldhamers with open minds.

However (there has to be a however, I’m afraid) let me sound a note of caution, not as a nay-sayer but as someone who has trodden this blissful path to the Elysian Fields of a new and glorious Oldham before.

I, too, have sat among the serried ranks of the great and the good (and the not so great and not so good) clutching a glossy, brightly-coloured brochure and watching on-screen images of the Oldham of the future, all sunshine and brightly-flagged piazzas with colourful echoes of Firenze, Florence Square, with its beauty, elegance and culture.

There were tree-lined walks, elegant water features, colourful shop fronts and lots of images of beautiful people enjoying the sunshine.

The brochure and the project which it illustrated was called Oldham Beyond, but in truth it should have been beyond Oldham, for that is what it was, a fantasy, an illusion that served only to rack up another disappointment, another dose of disillusion among the ranks of Oldham’s already disappointed and disillusioned.

Now I do not suggest that this latest vision of the future has anything in common with the Oldham Beyond debacle, except that it may create an epidemic of déjà vu that will only be cured when the buildings are built, the vision is realised and the town centre is re-born.

It is a tall order and a big ask, but nothing great was ever achieved by thinking small and can-do and will-do Oldham is certainly not thinking anything other than extra-large.

I wish Jim, Charlie and their business partners the best of support and the best of luck with their project and look forward to my first meal at our new hotel.



AT risk of being accused of coming over all religious, I can’t understand why Christians (a fast-disappearing breed, apparently) should not be allowed to wear a symbol of their faith in public.
Wearing a cross at work, at home, in the pub or on the bus should not be outlawed as though it was in some way shaming or likely to offend or upset anyone. It is a symbol of faith (and the Lord knows there is not enough of that about just now) and not a weapon.

Has anyone from another faith ever objected to a person wearing a cross? I know that some employers have, presumably if they have a cross it is probably hanging upside down on a wall of their office.

Religious freedom should be a given. There are lots of folk who wear items that identify their religion and while some people don’t like it or are suspicious of it, there has been no move — in this country, at least — to have them banned.

Now, heaven forbid, the issue is with the European Court of Human Rights, so anything can happen.



NOW this is so daft that even I couldn’t make it up. According to some legal eagle (or maybe he’s a stand-up comic in his spare time) parents will soon no longer be dads and mums, fathers and mothers.
Apparently, under laws to introduce same-sex marriages, mums and dads will become Progenitor A and Progenitor B HH, which is even worse than the ghastly “partner” that has largely replaced references to a husband or a wife, thanks to the PC brigade.

The change could be brought in so as not to discriminate against those involved in same-sex marriages who, of course, can never be mum and dad in the conventional sense.

Is it something they have started putting in the water, do you think?



FINAL WORD: Is there any point to being prime minister? David Cameron says that the Lib-Dems are blocking his every turn in his bid to introduce a Bill of Rights that will give us a say over our own destiny instead of being held to ransom by the European courts.
Surely he knew before he entered into a cobbled-together deal with Nick Clegg that the coalition partners are petty and preachy and have the word “no” as the mainstay of their vocabulary.