An Open Letter From The Leader Of Blackpool Council
This letter written by the leader of Blackpool Council and published in the Blackpool Gazette has been discussed on the BBC.
I couldn’t resist penning a reply.
In 2011, to raise money for Cancer Research after the death of my wife and son from the disease, i visited all 92 Football and Premier League clubs alphabetically by public transport.
Of all the towns and cities I visited Blackpool was the worst and most visitor-unfriendly. Turn up at any station and try to get a bus to Bloomfield Road or even find a map. Compare the town to Bournemouth, where the public transport is easily understandable.
But after my experience of Blackpool, I kept asking people I met, within day trip distance, if they ever went to the town. A plumber from Wigan said that he never went although he had many times until a few years ago. But now if he wants a day by the sea, he’ll go to Liverpool or Southport.
Blackpool needs a real change of attitude and must look at everything it does to make sure that it does the best for everybody and every business in the town.
Incidentally, I’m an Ipswich Town supporter and travel to a lot of away games from London where I live. I’ve done Blackpool twice, but I suspect never again, when I can enjoy the friendly atmosphere in places like Barnsley, Burnley, Derby, Hull and Nottingham.
I’m also a coeliac, which means I must have gluten-free food. Last time in the town, all I found was a banana and a coffee. Compare this to the lovely meal I had in that noted holiday resort called Crewe.
As it is I think I kept it quite mild!
Do Advertisers Get Value?
I wanted to read a report on the Ipswich match at Birmingham on Saturday, so I typed “Birmingham Ipswich” into Google.
I got a few serious reports from papers as I expected, but I also got an advert trying to sell me a cheap flight from Birmingham to Ipswich.
I assume they meant Ipswich in Australia.
All very helpful.
Skyfall
I went to see it this afternoon. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s only about the fourth or fifth Bond film, I’ve actually seen. I saw the three early ones; Dr. No, From Russia With Love and Goldfinger, before I went to University.
Although C and I were together for forty years, I think we may only have seen one together and that could have been Thunderball or You Only Live Twice.
She wasn’t really keen on that sort of action film.
For many years too, whilst we were raising the kids, we rarely had time for the cinema and tended to go to the theatre or out for a meal.
I did see Quantum of Solace on the way back from Hong Kong, but does that really count as it wasn’t in a cinema.
In fact, I must be one of the few people, who’ve never seen a Bond film on the small screen. After all, Bond has always been on a channel with adverts and I don’t like intermissions.
I don’t think we even took the children to see any of the others.
So if my memory is correct, Skyfall was the sixth Bond film, I’d seen in the cinema.
I said that I enjoyed it and in some ways very much how I enjoyed the early ones. It was fresh and different with just the right amount of humour to go with the action.
I’ve read all of the novels, including some in French, and I think Sam Mendes has captured the exotic themes of the books. To someone like myself growing up in a London suburb, places like the Caribbean and Istanbul were very exotic to say the least. The choice of Hashima Island for the villain’s lair was the sort of idea of which Ian Fleming would have approved.
So in some ways the film went back to the 1960s for me.
As ever though, the computing in the film isn’t as good as it could be. But that would be my only major gripe. Although, the tube train is a deep-level one running between sub-surface stations. It’s actually because it was shot in the old Charing Cross platforms for the Jubilee Line, which turn up in quite a lot of films and videos.
A Chinese View On Peer-To-Peer Lending
I found this article in the South China Morning Post.
It would appear that peer-to-peer lending is taking off in China in a big way. Here’s an extract.
According to an unofficial source, there are an estimated 100 such Chinese lenders in operation, with projected total outstanding loans this year of 18 billion yuan (HK$22 billion)
That sounds a lot to me.
The Anonymous Widower 