Stoke on Trent Councillor Brain Ward has this week has criticised the people of Stoke on Trent in a Birmingham based newspaper, saying he was “disappointed” that not one application had been posted to hold a street party on the day of the wedding in the City.
He didn’t express his disappointment to the local press, but in a publication that many of us would be unaware existed (well if not for the magic of Google). The Paper quotes Mr Wards Frustration with us common and unpatriotic Stokies as saying:
I am very surprised that nobody has come forward
I don’t think people are as patriotic as they used to be, and communities just don’t seem to get together as much as they used to. It’s a real shame.
Local communities used to be organised round the working men’s clubs and pubs, but in many areas these have closed down.
Mock up of how Brian could be dressed when celebrating the wedding.
Surprise
I’m surprised that Mr Ward is surprised that no one has come forward.
Royals
Are Stoke on Trent lavished with lots of Royal Attention? Do the Royals visit our land, boosting our cities morale? A morale, that has also suffered so greatly at the hands of our Councils with all of the recent Cuts, of which Brian Ward sits on the cabinet that has been responsible for where the cuts will and will not fall.
Do we ever get to be made to feel special? – Charles and Camilla visited last year, but not to meet the people of Stoke, but to visit some tossed away trinkets from a bygone age.
Mr ward also tells us that we are no longer patriots, when in this day an age we no longer know what it is to be English, where Britain gets even more fractured and Europe looms bigger.
Communities
Mr Ward then goes on to talk about communities. Communities in Stoke on Trent again have been shattered, and divided and no longer feel complete. Communities no longer meet in the work place as they used to, and information spread. The very reason I started MyTunstall was because I didn’t feel like I belonged to a community.
I’ve discovered since that that isn’t true and Tunstall alone has many great community meeting places such as Tunstall Pool, Library, Market, Childrens Centres, Pubs and so on. Each and every one under threat at the minute in the form of council influence in the short or long term or by economic variables.
The Problem Is
Mr Ward can see to the heart of the problem.
I also think that people are unsure of how to organise these things. Local councils need to make it that much clearer and hopefully then we will have a rush of applications.
Bad Communications
The answer is simple. Stoke on Trent City Council and the Residents of this CIty set up these marvelous thinks called Residents Associations. Through them many people in a area come together to do work for other people.
Maybe the answer would have been to approach these to spread the information as they already have a network of people who work together already and then have a line of communication into the people of their groups area. But no one in the council offices thought to do this.
Probably because the people that communicate with these RA groups will now no longer have jobs, or will be in a different job. What about the city mag? Our council with it’s wonderful and expensive our city magazine might have posted some information in there. It’s what the mag is meant to be there for, so why not use it to infomr us of what we should be doing with our Bank Holiday firdays.
Lastly the point about how to put a street party together. On most estates, people are probably already organising them, themselves and are planning these events, unaware that council permission is needed. Or that the people of Stoke on Trent should be checking the Stoke Gov website daily for articles relating to street parties for one press release that will put them off than inform how to go about it.
Have a look at the Stoke Gov Website for putting in planning permission. http://www.stoke.gov.uk/ccm/content/et/highway-network-management/royal-wedding-street-parties.en
Source: My Tunstall
Is Mr Ward seriously expecting Stokies to celebrate the wedding of two pampered parasites who – it must be remembered – ordered their commemorative ceramics from China as opposed to Stoke-on-Trent?
On your bike, old son. And take the royals with you.
What “local communities” ? is he talking about the ones where everyone knows their neighbours and everyone watches out for everyone else ?
I remember them but can’t say I’ve seen much evidence of them lately. Thanks to the slash and burn policies of our beloved council all our neighbours are now strangers – no one knows anybody else and, to be honest, a street party on a council estate would probably require security to keep out the louts, idiots and random pitbulls that would run riot through the middle of it all while some opportunists looted the houses from behind.
Sorry Cllr Ward – to have community events you need first to have a community………
zero applications? what not even Cllr Ward has applied.. Off with his head
So Cllr Ward….
You’ve organised one in your street then?
Everybody’s invited!!!! Marthorne Road, Blurton!!!
Top Bloke Brian!
I thought you guys would be have an all expense paid do at the civic with the best large screen tax payers money can buy
webby.
They probably will.
But if you check – I never go to those events – precisely because I don’t believe that the taxpayer should pay for beanos.
Cllr Ward, bottom line, from a chairperson of a RA, we do not live in 1981 or 1977, we have moved on 30 or 35 years, and seen another side to the Roaly’s, and not a nice side at that. At my last RA meeting, I asked if there was anything anyone wanted to do for this wedding lark, I was met wth a resounding No.
I don’t dislike them, but they are not in anyway important to me and the way I live my life, kick them out tommorow, and we would just get on with it. They are just not important anymore.
Just winding you up
I know you are.
Thats why I don’t come on here very often now. Its like a feeding frenzy.
Lol
Why are all my comments moderated now?
Because you are special?
Cllr Barnes. You been away too long.
But least you come on along with Roger n Shaun
Maybe if more took part. Communiicayef even answered question. There would be less sniping for the truth
Went to one in 1977, not bothered about royals but it was a good opportunity for some fun. That alongside going to science lectures at the royal institution, attending talks and discussions by united nations youth and students association, CND, protests against wars around the world and to stop apartheid in South Africa, starving elsewhere in Africa etc. etc. Difference now is going from young and naïve to old and cynical but otherwise not changed much. I somehow thought that life being fair and people being nice to each other made so much sense it surely must be possible to achieve. How wrong could I be. What’s changed? Science still fascinating. Less belief in the UN. We’ve still got nukes. People are still occupying other people’s land, interfering in other people’s business and generally promoting wars and blasting hell out of each other. More suicide bombers and more maniacs running around shooting and stabbing each other nowadays I think. Apartheid ended but still plenty of varied oppression. People still starve in some parts of the world and stuff their faces in others.
As for the here and now, a better reason for a street party would be to leave it until a little later and celebrate getting rid of a certain councillor.