Why Bradford’s enterprising idea would never work

Although I do not always see eye to eye with David Ward, the Bradford East MP, I applaud his response to the snub to Bradford’s bid to house Leeds City Regional Enterprise Zone (Yorkshire Post, June 29). As though it could have ever been anywhere but Leeds.

Not a Bradfordian by birth, he has shown some of our traditional characteristics and is the only city representative who believes the city’s treatment has been abysmal.

Frankly, once the title Leeds City Region was adopted, the consequences were inevitable.

LEP chairman Neil McLean’s quote “that Leeds has to take the lead and other towns and cities would benefit as investment cascades down” is disingenuous.

Come on, Neil, we know where your sympathies lay. If you believe Bradford has ever benefited from Leeds’s success, then let me invite you over to revel in the decaying Odeon, the joy of the urban garden and other metropolitan delights.

In the absence of any bijou wine bars, we could discuss them on a bench in Centenary Square.

Rather ironically for this mock bonhomie, Ministers apparently are soon to unveil new plans.

Cities are to be encouraged to compete against each other by, among other things, lowering business rates which somewhat flies in the face of municipal “bed sharing”.

Surprisingly, or perhaps not when considering the apathy abroad in my city, the general response to Bradford’s downgrade to little more than a suburb of “Greater Leeds” has been marked by the general acquiescence of the great and the good.

Our city leader suggests there is nothing we can do. Members of Parliament and august bodies such as the Chamber of Commerce see it as progress. The best signs yet of terminal decline.

I am sure the city fathers who built this once great city would not be quite of the same persuasion, with “spineless and gutless” being almost certainly overused adjectives.

No doubt I will be attending Leeds City’s matches at Valley Parade in the near future.