Welcome to Arthur Street. It’s a perfectly servicable street of Victorian terrace houses. Very typical of much of the central Barrow area as it was laid out as a new model community in the nineteenth century. I wouldn’t be unhappy living in one of them. The only problem I can see is the blight of pebbledash that has struck in the last thirty years: painted brick was always the Barrow way.
The trouble is, it’s in the way of the money-grubbing schemes of developers, who want to put up a Wimpeyville of bland housing units, quite outside the character of the town. And they have enlisted the support of the local borough council; Tory-led for the last couple of years. Tories aren’t interested in the sort of people who live in Arthur Street, who like living in Arthur Street. No Tory represents the ward, but what does that matter? The council with it’s majority group of the ovine tendency that thinks and votes how it’s told to has steamrollered the scheme through, and thus people must be driven from their homes to make a profit for developers.
Does Arthur Street look like a teeming slum to you? No, of course not. If you think, as I do, that demolishing this community is a disgrace then you might like to tell our beloved leader, Cllr Bill Joughin. You’d be best confining yourself to words of one syllable though because poor Bill isn’t what you might call a towering intellect.
Posted by enitharmon 
