Independent minded citizens of Sheffield will be familiar with a collective attitude commonly found within the city council and shared by other public figures and institutions. It is characterised by a serious dislike of any criticism and a touchiness about bad news related to the city. This probably dates back to the days immediately post war when Sheffield was fighting off an appalling image of smoke and grime, probably the very worst place to live in Britain. Having heroically pulled itself out of that and into a new cleaner era of smokeless zones it had a job to promote its new clean air and its fringes of green countryside; many in distant parts needed persuading that this 'new' Sheffield was really any better. It genuinely was better. But the defensiveness of the natives remained.
In more recent times Sheffield has taken to blowing its own trumpet to an alarming extent, not wishing to hear anything that could run counter to the positive image that the city's corporate bosses wish to promote. Anyone appearing to tell things as they really are is in danger of being seriously sidelined, castigated as congenitally negative. This kind of culture is dangerous because it leads to a disconnection with reality. Most who come to Sheffield from other parts of the country will recognise this from their own observations.
PR is unfortunately rife the world wide and no place is immune from the curse of absurd OTT positivity in which the tiniest achievement is overblown and serious flaws are played down. But Sheffield City Council has its own take on this - a culture which amounts to putting a gloss on problems in the hope that they will go away (and all complainants with them). Today's Times newspaper has an article about a murder in Sheffield which highlights this complacency.
At the murder scene, a senior police officer told reporters there was no gang culture in the city. “We have heard rumours regarding gangs operating in the area,” he said. “However, gangs are not prevalent in Sheffield.” Privately, South Yorkshire Police officers admit that the statement lost them credibility. If people had been frightened to speak to the police before, they just laughed now. The police, it seemed, could not see what was going on, so why should people risk their lives to help them? Burngreave and Pitsmoor are on a steep rise north of the centre of Sheffield. At the bottom of the hill, the city's political bosses seemed content for the problem to remain at a distance and, despite the best efforts of the local newspaper, almost unspoken.
Sheffield promotes itself as “the safest city” in England and does not want that image tarnished. Both its universities use the catchline in their efforts to attract the sons and daughters of respectable families. Strenuous efforts have been made to attract new investors and businesses to the city - including firms such as Boeing and Rolls-Royce.
Despite the recession, there remains a sense of affluence about the city centre. Construction sites bristle with cranes, grand municipal buildings have been refurbished and decorative water features adorn the pavements. Whatever was going on up the hill in Burngreave, the city that the outside world is supposed to see is the one that gave us the Arctic Monkeys and Jarvis Cocker, and was represented by high-profile national MPs such as Nick Clegg and David Blunkett.
So the city pretended nothing was happening and the gangs proliferated. They boasted of their drug wealth, brandished their weapons and taunted each other on Bebo and YouTube.
For the full article follow this link.
Not all examples of Sheffield covering its eyes and blocking its ears to what's going on are as serious as murder. But it's hard to walk about the city or work in it without getting a sense of it in usually fairly trivial incidents or overheard conversations. And sadly it can distract from the genuine good things about the city by destroying credibility. The relevance of all this to Blacka is not hard to find. Council officers and councillors too seem to be unable to grasp the facts, or see the evidence of sheer incompetence in the work carried out here. When concrete examples have been pointed out a glazed look comes over their faces.
See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil:
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