Monday February 8th 2021 – About the only thing the pandemic has been good for has been the re-emergence of political graffiti.
It’s everywhere – the angry, the conspiracy theorists, even satirists are having a go. They’re all a bit rusty but it’s coming along nicely.
Here at Catshill Junction, just on the bridge, some disaffected soul has expressed themselves. Blunt and to the point.
Generous offer but I’d rather not, cheers.
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Monday January 3rd 2021 – Back to work, with the country seemingly in limbo, with a government unsure whether to put us in full lockdown or not. Another year, more dire politicians.
I came home on a wet evening along a very wet canal, and hopped off the towpath at Anchor Bridge. As I rounded the corner onto the High Street, it occurred to me to try a photo of the canal – another semi-regular night photography muse I hadn’t tried with the new camera.
I love how the colours are strong here at night, and never really fade. It’s one of those timeless views I guess.
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April 23rd – Something odd is happening. Well, lots of odd things really with the current pandemic that has seen changes that just six months ago would have been unthinkable.
But what’s interesting me is small, almost unnoticed shifts in national opinion.
The outpouring of wholly justified love and respect for the NHS is one such case in point. Rewinding that six months, I bet lots of folk in love with it now would have been at best ambivalent towards out state healthcare system back then..
Years of attrition from some political quarters had let to our National Health Service – something that’s saved my life on three occasions and I have always been a staunch advocate for – being treated as a Cinderella, and something to be improved or that was inadequate, or failing.
In a heartbeat, that’s all changed. Pro-NHS sentiment and memes are spilling off social media into real life. The UK is once again, painfully aware of the value of what we have and what we need to protect.
Here at the old Duckhams Bridge near Stubbers Green, an anonymous hand is echoing a love we all now share.
At a stroke, some political positions have become untenable overnight.
If nothing else about this awful time is positive, this new found regard for those who work to care for us and the service they work within may well be.
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November 15th – It had, at least, stopped raining. I arrived in Brownhills to overcast skies but thankfully, for once, dry.
I stopped to re-tie my lace at Ravens Court, the derelict, abandoned shopping precinct in the middle of Brownhills.
Beyond me in the heart of darkness there are no longer any shops in the place, and it sits, gently decaying, unloved and beyond the reach of anyone who cares to sort it out.
One day it will be gone, and this sad place will no longer be a focus for that which ails our town. But until then, it makes for a very eerie night image.
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January 24th – There is a madness afoot in the country, and possibly the broader western world in the last 10 years or so, and I can see no solution in sight.
Governments come to power on the promise of austerity and cutting spending, yet close used and needed public facilities that took decades to be obtained – in a flash. And so we lost the police station in Walsall on Green Lane, built in the Brutalist period of the 60s, which was closed in response to spending cuts in 2016. Police now have to take suspects to Oldbury when arrested, which is impacting officer availability and causing great inefficiency.
The building itself – an unremarkable modernist structure – was sold to developers and is currently being demolished.
We will need a police station again. The situation as it is is not working.
And it will cost us far more than closing this one saved to sort the mess out.
And when some politician grasps the nettle and does it, they will be derided for financial profligacy.
But the real crime is cutting things communities need, in the interests of short term political gain.
It takes years to build communities, and days to destroy them with cuts. The recklessness seems in the axe-hand to me.
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June 24th – A shellshocked day, really, and the nation was politically in turmoil following the EU Referendum result. A Prime Minister resigned. Disarray in the opposition. Uncertainty about the future.
In Tipton, dodging the rain on an errand, I spotted this. Sometimes the most British answers are the best ones.
A Cuppa Tay is always best.
February 14th – Also caught in the sunset was the M6 Toll, Britain’s toll motorway, recently put up for sale by it’s banker owners, presumably because this botched, badly conceived project isn’t making enough money.
Frequently next to empty, people never flocked to use it as the tolls were considered too high, and the whole misadventure – which was at one time to be the future of such roads in the UK – does little except illustrate the folly of a country where we can no longer invest in anything for the common good.
When everything – even the most basic infrastructure schemes – have to turn a profit – then this is what we end up with. We need to stop thinking about price and get back to value.
January 26th – Passing through Kings Hill in Darlaston whilst nipping into Wednesbury, I noted that the former Servis factory site – nothing but a pile of rubble for a few years now – was subject of a planning application for 250 homes.
Which is good, really, because we need them. But…
Servis was a big employer in Darlaston for many years, and was originally part of Wilkins & Mitchell, who made power presses and other machines. Servis stuff wasn’t great quality, and they didn’t modernise, despite pioneering electronically controlled washing machines. In the 1990s the company ran into trouble, and was bought by Italian white-goods giant Merloni, themselves crashing in 2008. Since then, the brand has re-emerged under a Turkish badge-engineering parent company.
The factory was razed, and lay pulverised as a testament to the economic rough seas Darlaston was enduring; as the factory was carried to dust, Councillors and regeneration wonks pronounced this site would very soon see a retail and leisure renaissance.
There was soon to be an election, and one must suspect this was the usual electorate-buttering bullshit; the rebirth never came, and like the Exidor factory up the road, it’ll now become homes.
Kings Hill – once the beating industrial heart between Darlaston and Wednesbury – is slowly becoming reclaimed by housing.
March 18th – Empty for months now, the former Rushall Mews care home for the elderly was built and operated throughout most of it’s life by the local authority, Walsall Council. It was a well loved, modern facility built in the 1980s, and was a fine thing indeed. Sadly, it has been a victim of the cold wind blowing through local government, and it has been closed, like most such council provision.
Councillors and ‘change managers’ waffle on with weasel words and forked tongues about ‘increasing choice’ and other such worn-out cliches, but the closure of lifelines like this and other units like Narrow Lane in Pleck and Short Street in Brownhills, coupled with the loss of daycentres, is purely a money saving exercise. Like the rest, this good quality building – still more than fit for purpose – will be bulldozed for private housing.
The service users and the cost of their care didn’t create the problems, but most don’t vote, so they’re an easy target. Meanwhile, the politicians and money men who did cause the problem walk away unscathed.
It took decades to get facilities like this for our aged and vulnerable. It has taken but a few short years to wipe them out. The social care system is hard to assemble, but tragically easy to take apart.
I pass this empty place often, and the site of it fills me with sadness.
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