Take pride in your home
OBSERVATIONS by ‘A Tourist’ (M.E.N. Viewpoints, August 23) about the shocking state of the area around Debdale Park are sadly true of many other parts of inner Manchester.
Recently I found myself driving down Withington Road through Whalley Range and wondered how such a once elegant suburb with its beautiful Victorian villas and wide tree-lined streets could have transformed in to the shabby, rubbish-strewn graffiti-daubed mess which it resembles today.
Visitors could be forgiven for thinking they’d stumbled in to some abandoned third world ghetto. It is frankly embarrassing. A stand needs to be taken, and fast.
But how could this be so only two miles from the city centre with its gleaming new towers, bijou eateries and high end shops? The answer simply has to be the people living there, landlords and business owners. It may as well be anywhere. And that is precisely the problem. People should have an obligation to make efforts to identify with and take a stake in society and areas where they live.
At its very basic this involves keeping the streets around homes and businesses clean and tidy – if necessary scrubbing off graffiti as soon as it appears and stopping rubbish from building up outside shops and on the street.
It shouldn’t all be left to the council, who these days haven’t got the money anyway. Instead, they should send in the litter wardens and inspectors to dish out fines, withdraw business licences and evict tenants as necessary to ensure standards are met and maintained.
Manchester has always had its poorer areas where people settled generations ago from Ireland, Italy, India and the like, but who importantly took pride in bettering themselves and their communities. After all, you don’t have to be rich to buy soap and a dust pan and brush.
It’s time to take back ownership and pride in where we live. B Ganley, Heaton Mersey, Stockport