If you don’t build it, She will come

"Blackpool?!"

There are reports that work on the seafront at Blackpool will be halted in December. In addition, the Illuminations will be switched on out of season and the Council will throw money at the Winter Gardens to tart it up a bit. Some sort of bonkers new vision from Peter Callow? Nope, it is in advance of the Queen visiting for the Royal Variety Performance!

Today seems to be a day (perhaps like any other) where your comments on the subject are swiftly erased by overzealous readers so I decided to air my view here instead. Convenient, I know.

If you read my other post you will know that I personally believe litter, general dirtiness and allowing buildings to go into disrepair are the major issues in Blackpool and that I believe the Council are not doing an awful lot about it. In this case it seems the visit from the Queen has made the Council stop and think that it would be a good idea to clean the town up. It’s not for the locals, it’s for the Queen, remember.

Maybe HRH’s visit will be the catalyst for ongoing maintenance rather than this knee jerk, rushed, expensive cleanup programme after which a giant Council Tax hike will no doubt be imminent. I would much rather see the Council diverting serious funding towards proper proactive ongoing cleaning rather than allowing the town to sink over long periods of time into a quagmire of takeaway cartons, discarded food, serviettes, cling film and hypodermic syringes floating in a lake of urine before throwing big money at cleaning up afterwards.

In successful towns and cities you just don’t see this. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure it’s there, but you don’t see it.

Anyone seen a plot around here? I've lost mine, but check out my Marks & Spencer prepacked shirt and tie combo.

Looking at the ongoing construction in Blackpool the Council has cash burning a hole in its pocket. Great stuff, you might say. But has the town improved as a result? I wouldn’t have said so, yet.

I do like the new promenade (in particular the rubbish bins with BLACKPOOL stamped on them did give me a giggle) but the new area at St. Johns just looks out of place. This may well be because the surrounding buildings, including the Winter Gardens, look so bad though.

It’s been stated that the Winter Gardens will be tarted up and that an entirely new seating area would be constructed for use by the Queen and her entourage. Will Trevor Hemmings be paying for it? He should be.

I did hear that the Council would be funding some of the cafeterias around the St. Johns/Cedar Square area to give them a more continental frontage when the St. Johns resurfacing was done. I’m all for that. But giving money to a casino speculator because the Queen is coming? No, I wouldn’t go along with that at all.

As ever, on the Geazett’s website Sheepdog has been posting some great comments about this, utterly destroying the Council over and over. I’ll finish as he has on one of his comments (which will probably have been deleted by now);

“When the Queen sees all the burned out buildings & demolition sites on the way from North station or the airport it will be like reliving what London looked like in the blitz.”