All white now

This is the former Port-Side restaurant that I posted a long while back. Then it's sole point of interest was the purple decor; now it's just boring.

Propping up the facade

Oh dear the scaffolding has gone up on the recently fire-damaged Lambert Street Chapel. The side walls have been knocked down by half and I hear the rear wall will have to come down too. Scaffolding means the facade might be saved, it could also mean a long, long wait. On Beverley Road scaffolding has been up on one building since 2011 . Hopefully the facade can be incorporated into whatever new building arises in much the same way as the old Cooperative Institutes facade which stood for decades in splendid isolation was eventually incorporated into a new apartment block on Kingston Square.

The Weekend in Black and White is here.

Timeless Hallgate

I thought I'd give Margot's photo of Hallgate an antique aged makeover to make it seem like was taken a hundred or so years ago. Apart from the TV aerials, satellite dish, multiple rubbish bins, the road markings and safety barrier for little Cottinghamites, neon street lights and the scar on the road left by the installation of fibre-optic cable I think I managed quite well. I honestly don't know how the old folks managed without all these boons to life.

Looks like the back end of a bus

This is not just any bus parked up outside City Hall, no this is a Beat the Street bus, a luxury coach for the entertainment industry complete with bunks, kitchens, every conceivable mod-con for the comfort and ease of the hard worked artistes. I think the artistes in question were a band known as Texas who come not from the USA but from Glasgow in the newly independent state of Bonnie Scotland.

To see the cherry hung with snow

I don't know if A E Housman ever came to the City of Culture but if he did I'm sure he'd have appreciated these loveliest of trees even if they are on Clough Road which is as far from a woodland ride as you can get.

Margot, who is quite possibly Mr Housman's number one fan, took this.

Perhaps Wendy Cope is a bigger fan.

I think I am in love with A.E. Housman,
Which puts me in a worse-than-usual-fix.
No woman ever stood a chance with Housman,
And he’s been dead since 1936.

Wendy Cope

Two car family

There's a fashion these days to turn your front garden into a car park. Of course not every household has two of these beasts lurking on the lawn or what's left of it. 

The traditional result

"They came on in the same old way and we defeated them in the same old way." ...

Arthur Wellesley, First Duke of Wellington

Well my election predictions were accurate as far the local constituencies were concerned. How was I to know that the rest of England, for this was an English phenomenon, was to swing to the Conservatives in such a way? So we'll have five years of  cuts to public services, increased privatisation of the NHS, tax cuts to the already rich, benefit cuts to already impoverished, probable exit from the EU, more devolution to Scotland (effectively independence). Oh how could I forget the future gerrymandering of constituencies to ensure 20+ more Tory seats in England. This is democracy at work they say. Well this is the votes of 37% of those who voted outweighing everyone else in this medieval, first past the post, crap shoot that passes for democracy in this country that has given us, yet again, a House of Commons that lacks legitimacy. This may sound like sour grapes but even with proportional representation the Conservatives would most likely have won. So Labour goes off once again to pick the meat off its bones and study its bellybutton, the Lib-Dems crash back to the position they were in fifty or more years ago (never, ever go into coalition with a right-wing party!), and the little Englander party, UKIP, learns the hard way that democracy in the UK is not about winning votes.

 *Here endeth the lesson*

" a traditional left-wing party competes with a traditional right-wing party, with the traditional result”.

Tony Blair