The View from Cullingworth

Up here in the gentle valleys of the South Pennines folk like to think life travels at a different pace. It's not that we do things differently - it all seems much the same most of the time - but that views are held more firmly, more definitely than down there in the City's bright lights. There are still fights in the pub on Saturday nights but you see the same two lads drinking together on Sunday as if nothing untoward had taken place.

I'm a long term visitor in these parts (not being from 'round here') and have been trying to give a voice to Cullingworth people - and the good residents of the other villages that make up Bingley Rural - since 1995 when I first sneaked onto Bradford Council by just 15 votes. Since returning to live in the village just before Christmas 2004, I got still closer to the locals and have come to share their anger at the way we're treated by public authorities, politicians and those poor deluded fools who think city life is mighty fine.

Representing these villages isn't as simple as some think - "defend the green belt" some cry! But what about the farmer who wants to get better use from old stone buildings? "No more house building cry others"! Without asking where the sons and daughters of Cullingworth people are going to live when thet grow up and want to live somewhere, raise a family and contribute to the continuation of the village as a real place rather than a dormitory. "Close down those noisy, smelly or unsightly businesses" is another call made without thinking of the consequences.

People complain that the pubs are closing but never use them. That young people are badly behaved but campaign against encouraging those youngsters to use the rec. And that people should not be allowed to do something or other because it's against some planning rule or other.

If this first post is about setting the tone, I would like you (assuming vainly that there is a you reading this) appreciate that keeping Cullingworth - and thousands of other great villages across England - is not about rules, banning things, employing enforcement officers, beefing up the strategic planning infrastructure or any of those grandiloquent wonderments so beloved of us politicians. It's about allowing people to rub along together, to row and fight, to sulk in the corner, to cry, to sing, to smile. Allowing people to make the place without interference from bureaucrats, experts and the paraphenalia of modern intrusive government.