I like the Victorians. They had drive, they had energy, they believed in progress. I know that there was poverty and disease and huge discrepancies in wealth but look around at any North Staffs town and you can see obvious signs of their desire for improvement. Local towns were building their own gas works, they were organising their own water supplies, and they were building their own town halls. And this was done at speed look at the 30 years it took them to build the railway system, look at the drains under the streets of many cities in the UK. I wrote this on the day that Burslem Town Hall was put up for sale. I came across the opening ceremony for the Town Hall in 1857. It was obviously a moment for pride and followed 6 years later by the Wedgwood Institute opened by Mr Gladstone.

I also came across more modern examples of public works in my work today. Jez Moxey breezy stating in 1996 that the new Britannia Stadium would have ” ample” parking and why o why was it built next to a railway line without a station? Anyone who has studied the history of the last 30 years in the area must conclude that modern politicians are big on building castles in the air, but unlike the Victorians not very good at doing the actual building.