Vision and bold ambition needed to revive our town

IS this the time to be investing £600,000 in up-market holiday lets at Red House, the former home of the Taylor family, and more recently of a much-loved historic house and museum?

Should a local authority be spending time and valuable resources on such projects?

If Kirklees is to make the borough a tourist destination, it needs attractions to draw in visitors and provide them with things to do.

Red House could have been one such attraction if properly sold. The opportunity to sleep under the same roof that once sheltered Charlotte Bronte is hardly enough to satisfy anyone but the most ardent fan.

Service industries and tourism have a role to play in re-vitalising the post-industrial economy and our shell-shocked town centres, but this will take more than a few holiday lets. What is required is vision and bold ambition, such as that of our Victorian forefathers.

They pioneered social housing, built and operated tramway networks, constructed reservoirs to guarantee supplies of clean water, ran gas and electricity companies for the benefit of the rate-payers, and in the case of Huddersfield, bought the freehold on which much of the town was built.

The Huddersfield and Dewsbury Blueprints address some of the issues faced by towns in the

21st century, but will the schemes go further than architects’ realisations in 3D, a portfolio of redundant and deteriorating real estate, and a few holiday lets?

Brexit toll continues

MR Schofield accuses me of ‘gleefully’ welcoming Covid to the UK I have no idea how he arrives at that absurd conclusion. Given that my father died last month how could I possibly think that. Perhaps he should apologise.

As to ‘integrity.’ I think mine remains intact. I don’t believe Mr Schofield has the slightest clue with regard to statistics.

Exports to the EU during January (the latest figures) fell by

40.7 per cent. The EU makes up 46pc of our export trade.

Germany, as one of 27 EU countries to which we export in the UK, is 10.2pc of the UK total and is our second biggest trading partner.

Japan is a 1.8pc. A not insignificant figure but small compared to the EU and Germany. Even so, the loss of jobs is bad news. Honda is now closing its Swindon factory with a loss of 3,500 jobs and potential 3,500 more.

The trade deal between Japan the EU (the UK deal with Japan is a poor copy of the EU treaty) means that it is cheaper and more convenient for the car company to export directly to the EU rather than via the UK. The Brexit toll

continues and will get worse.

Fairy tale figures

ANOTHER fairy tale from Martin Charlesworth

It seems his mathematics is as foolish as his logic. The figures provided by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) for import and export trade between the EU and the UK for January 2021 were in ‘billions’ not ‘percentages.’

Only the increase in trade with non-EU countries was given as a percentage. Does he know the difference? Perhaps he can explain his 60 per cent figure. I doubt it, but they do say that ‘ignorance is bliss.’