Ilkley Rocks

And hypocrisy is somehow just too easy to spot. But could someone possibly explain how companies are being forced out of town because they’re not allowed to use the most elementary of security measures, while there’s not even a bleat from our civil guardians about this monstrosity that now dominates the car park. I mean, I know the shops in Ickley are struggling at the moment, but it hardly adds to the image, now does it?

Wonder how much of a back-hander to the planners this one took?

We don’t like to talk about it much, but just a smattering of comments from the streets (and in one case the spas) of our ‘fair’ town over the past few weeks…

“If you ask me, most crime’s caused by immigrants.”

“The only people afraid of ID cards are the immigrants”

“There’s too many over here already…”

and, I kid you not…

“There were a lot of things wrong with Mussolini, but he knew how to deal the immigrants”

It’s not the depressing lack of education involved. I mean, we accept this is a town dominated by Middle England values, where the Daily Mail is a top seller. And the result of having such a publication as our house journal is that the sort of views expressed therein (did the recent ‘Millions of Gypsies to flood the UK’ headline send anyone else into a reverie on the pseudo-Niemoller poem and the likelihood of the einsatzgruppen being unleashed in the Dales?) inform the way our local citizens think.

And we accept there’s a level of intolerance and pent-up anger in the town that’s seen the local public toilets destroyed because pravda suggested they ‘might’ be used as a cottaging venue, and had fellow campaigners for a better life hassled at their home addresses.

What really depresses me is that many (if not most) of the people expressing these views (if not filling the loos with concrete) are elderly. OAPS in fact. Now, they’re too young to have fought in the war, but I have to presume that their parents did. And, yet, they don’t seem to have the slightest idea what the war was fought FOR. Indeed, they tend to say things like ‘we didn’t fight the war to hand the country over to a load of foreigners…’

Now, both my Grandads fought in the War. And my beloved’s Grandad likewise. They might have held ‘old-fashioned’ views and not been quite correct in the words they used to describe people from different continents. But what really made them angry was racism. My Grandad fought in the desert and spent the rest of his life proclaiming the Palestinians to be the bravest of the brave.

Now, I’m proud to be British, but what I’m most proud about is our reputation for hosting refugees, protecting the weak, ending slavery and all those other good things we did over centuries. What I’m least proud about is that we didn’t do enough of it (and bear more than some culpability for the extended life of the holocaust).

The current politically correct view (that immigration is evil, and immigrants are too) stands unhappily with Britain’s past history, and besmirches the memory of all those who fought against racism in the last war.

That some people hold to these views in our happy little ‘burg is a less than happy thought. I just wish they wouldn’t litter the place up with their opinions.

So, we get used to the moody teenagers around town. There’s a fashion at the moment for the males to wear ankle-length leather coats, half part Matrix, half part Columbine killer. Some of the older residents seem to be disturbed by this trend.

Course, anywhere else, the coats would probably be plastic. Here in Ilkley, they’re almost certainly the real thing. So here’s one swinging around the conversed-heels of a surly post adolescent, slouching down The Grove, sneer wiped across his less-than-smiley face. He’s got something behind his back. Maybe a gun, maybe a club, maybe a whole trailer full of death and destruction.

But, no, he’s pulling a trolley with copies of the local free rag in it, encased in flourescent yellow.

Altogether now, ‘Aww, bless…’

If only Eric and Dylan had had a paper round, who knows how many lives could have been saved?

Time to find out how useful those camera phone thingies really are…imaging and shaming the murderous bad people that try and run down our skateboarding population at zebra crossings.

That’s if I can get the bloody cover off the camera quickly enough before they thunder into the distance.

The death of Brian Lynch, former editor of the Gazette (see, I can do no jokes). His column on Ilkley in years gone by was a delight (if only to note how long issues like the bypass and the skate park have been around).

He also helped Tim Binding with research when the latter was writing the definitive Ilkley Novel, ‘On Ilkley Moor’.

I hope the column will continue.

Don’t say that I didn’t warn you…

After setting up the ‘problem’ over the past few months by encouraging lawless behaviour, our junta have ‘found’ the solution. CCTV. Just in time for the erection of the immigration gates on Leeds Rd as well!

But quis custodet custodes?

And what’s the next step?

Will they be calling for TVs inside the homes of potential trouble-makers (anyone who might go to The Trav (and why is it called that when it’s Il Trovatore, NOT La Traviata??))??

And will that mean we get to see the inside of Machine-Gun’s Otley home, or is it simply to be a matter of Ann ‘Whitehouse’ Hawkesworth slobbering in front of a series of TV monitors, dissolving into her own bile at the (dangerously exciting) thought of such awful goings-on?

What is it Jello Biafra used to say? “Martial law is now in operation moor-wide…”

Look, it’s not that I want to make a fuss. But recently we’ve had a spate of letters to pravda complaining about people stepping out too quickly onto Zebra crossings. This, apparently, forces any car driver within two miles to brake sharply. Therefore burning rubber, and costing them whole pence at a time.

The problem with Ickley isn’t young skateboarders, isn’t strange people asking stranger questions while hanging about the station, it’s old people. Old people driving. Whether they’re failing to signal as they maneouvre into Cunliffe Road, hesitating for more then twenty minutes whilst hanging about on The Grove (thus stopping those all-important deliveries to Betty’s), or just sitting there in their pork-pie hats murmuring to themselves, old people are a problem.

The number of times I’ve been half way across a zebra crossing when it becomes obvious that the car approaching the lane into which I am about to step has no intention of stopping is too high to easily estimate. Being six foot ish and moderately fit, I tend to take a hefty kick at the offending vehicle, and having once enjoyed the ‘music’ of Test Dept., I view the resulting clatter as a cultural event. Others might not be so lucky.

But what really winds me up is people complaining about pedestrians. My beloved grandfather used to claim that 90% of accidents were caused by pedestrians, but he fought at El Alamien, drank a lot of gin, and this was therefore amusing. When Councillor Ma Brown does it, she’s clearly whinging to protect the homicidal tendencies of one of her friends.

(I would link to the original article, but the Gazette site seems to be broken on its archiving capabilities…)

So, just to remind her, motor vehicles are required by the Highway Code to look out for people who may be about to cross, and to take special care when the view is partially obscured (like by a bank). It is not a pedestrian’s fault if you end up braking sharply, it’s yours…you were going too fucking fast.

Wonder if our beloved Police force will be doing anything about it?

No, neither do I…

The only solution, frankly, is a cull.

More on Treacle Moon: full menus and so on can be found on Frazer Irwin’s site…

Just click here to start salivating…

my god this weather’s so cold… it’s cosy and all, but where do you get the energy to do anything?

Me going to hibernate… so tired, so confused… shoes or boots? shoes or boots… rain or shine, god bless 5star.

A look at the latest ratings, and this site has moved up to No. 12 on Google when searching for ‘Ilkley’, and has gone top ten with yahoo. It’s not hard to see why, given, with blogs, the number of times the title is repeated on one page. Soon to be No 1 on google, and then we take over the world…

However, what is very strange is the review of Treacle Moon being no. 1 on google when searching for, uhhrm, ‘Treacle Moon’. Given that it’s also the name of a very successful restaurant in Newcastle with lots of sites attached to it, you’d expect us some way down the line. Google is a bit screwed, or gives rather too much weight to blogs, methinks!

There’s long been a debate about the siting of the Roman Fort of Olicana. Most Ickley writers assume that Ilkley and Olicana are one and the same, but many alternatives have been suggested.

This adds more fuel to the flames. Olicana here is sited in Elslack, not even close to Ickley in Castleberg. It certainly downgrades the importance of the place.

But it relies on the suggestion that the origin of ‘Ilkley’ itself comes from a personal name, Yllica. Many writers make the more obvious linguistic connection with Olicana…Ollicley becoming Illeclei and so on. Take away the name connection and the evidence for Ilkley as the siting of Olicana is slight to say the least.

Which would rather blow a hole in all those local organisations using the name!