Thanks to my dear friend Dorian, I found they work for you which brings together various feeds covering Parliament. It allows one to search on Hansard, etc.
Most importantly, it brings together the voting record, latest speeches, latest travel trips and register of members interests for all our beloved representatives. Check it every so often and see that they’re being good. Our local MP, Ann Cryer’s is here.
Democracy works better when you know what they’re up to!
Note that the front page story in the Gazette refers to The Box Tree as a ‘michelin starred restaurant’. It, of course, isn’t…it deservedly lost its star last year.
I wanted to continue the post of a couple of days ago on the future of the town. Given the development of The Crescent into a strange mixture between a country house hotel and something designed by Ian Schrager, it strikes me that there’s an obvious gap in the market for any business-person willing to take the risk.
Ickley is a spa town. It’s also full of the modern version of spas, beauty salons. It’s also already a successful holiday resort. But the last proper spa closed down decades ago, and the symbol of the town’s wealth, Ben Rhydding Hydro (by then a ‘golf hotel’), was pulled down in the 50s.
What Ilkley needs is a new spa. Something like Champneys, or, more impressively, Seaham. Somewhere for the middle classes and the idle rich to escape to, somewhere to be pampered rather than subjected to the Robinson couch (which has always looked like the prototype for the Le Corbusier chaise-longue I’ve got in my front room).
But somewhere with steam rooms (and even compressed air chambers), and relaxation and all the mind-blowing guff of new age-ism. It’d make a bomb.
It just takes a Hamer Stansfield to organise the cash side. Only I’m not sure stuff merchants still exist.
I’m getting over 200 hits a day currently. 80% of these (unfortunately) are about dogging and cottaging. Indeed, I currently seem to come quite high in google’s search for such tings.
So, just to repeat…’nothing to see here guys, nowt much to do in Ickley…move along’ Buy yourselves a life on the way out…
The full story of Jimi Hendrix’s one and only appearance in Ilkley is told over on Fraser’s new blog. And an excellent piece of research it is too.
Wonder if Smokie’s annual appearance will; be treated with such reverence in 35 years time?
There’s an interesting interview in The Guardian this week with Julian Cope. The Copester, famed for some of Britain’s most entertainingly surreal pop, is of course also an expert on prehistorical sites of interest. His book, The Modern Antiquarian, is a classic.
The point he’s making is that the past cannot be preserved in aspic. More important than the actual placement or composition of particular sites is the intent with which they were constructed. He also calls for more modern equivalents of standing stones. Which doesn’t mean sticking up boulders in fields, but creating places that develop a sacred sense of space. The Angel of the North is a perfect example.
What this suggests to me is that rather than trying to preserve Ickley as a chocolate box Victorian town (something that anyway is a little difficult given the roar of non pasaran’s roadworking teams), we should keep the ideal of the place whilst allowing it to move forward. The recent strange screams about the possibility of wind turbines on the moor neglects the fact that a place like Chelker Reservoir has been imbued with a strange and almost mystical beauty by the installation of three turbines. Looking from the top of the moor, one can just see the fungal growths that make up NSA Menwith Hill–a place I violently object to for what it does, but which adds an elegaic other-worldliness to the view.
So, rather than following the town’s unelected minority in the Civic Society, who appear to want everything from their phantasy of what Ickley once was to remain for ever, we should be accepting that we live in a modern town with a fantastic heritage, preserving what needs to be preserved, but developing with spirit what should be developed, maintaining the sense of the wild which surrounds us.
Which doesn’t mean, of course, continuing to fail to do anything about the appalling state of the Panorama Stones…Ilkley’s genuinely internationally important pre-historic rocks currently abandoned to vandals. Those really are worth protecting. And the ICS is doing what to help?
Good to see the efficient use of the security guard at Ilkley station. Quite what is it he’s been employed to do? Seemingly his only purpose is to make the u-l-t-r-a-s-l-o-w man in the ticket office (you know thoe one I mean) look positively speedy.
Certainly he’s doing nothing about anti-social behaviour (such as it is). I spent a happy ten minutes yesterday watching a track-suited scutter wanabe (though probably a very nice kid from Ben Rhyding) going from schoolkid to schoolkid selling dope.
Unless that explained the polis filling the station later in the day? Perhaps we’re meant to think he’s a slow, fat, underpaid waste of space, but actually he’s a remote controlled camera being used by the Keighley force?
After wondering for a month or so what was happening to the beloved old Box Tree, we’ve finally got news that Simon Guellar has bought out the lease from Madame Avis. It’s where he started out, of course, and he’s done a few recent stints there.
Madame Avis has presumably decided to maintain her investments elsewhere in the town.
We await with everything bated to see what he does with the place.
What with this, Greco’s changing hands, India the elephant opening and The Crescent with its sub-airport revamp, there are exciting times ahead.
No, I really mean that.
Heart-warming story in pravda…at the end of a ‘Pop Idol’ type contest, “Naomi Murray won the Wharfedale Festival of Performing Arts Search for a Star for the second year running.”
And the title to the piece?
“Natalie is pop queen in night to remember”
Oh dear. Someone shoot that sub.
I note from the talented chatiry another tale of Ickley corruption…a councillor attemtping to gain entry to a concert by using his position. Now, this really doesn’t surprise, it’s the sort of petty corruption people in the town get used to.
At the other end of the scale, I was amused to learn that when filming his now infamous Silsden piece, Gordon Ramsay’s people had phoned up Tubby’s asking for a table for six. ‘No’ was the short reply from the always unhelpful and argumentative Robin. Ten minutes later they phoned back, ‘did you realise this was for Gordon Ramsay?’
‘The answer’s still no…’ Came the reply.
Rather ironic given Ramsay’s own decalred hatred of queue jumpers….
I should have predicted it, but the mention of dogging earlier in the week has really boosted my stats.
This’ll probably do likewise.
I still haven’t received my voting form. Angel got hers last week. Same address, same council tax bill, but nothing for ilkleyrocks.
Is it a conspiracy I ask? How can I now exercise my vote (which has always sounded like taking it for a walk)? Am I still exercising my vote if all I have to do is sit in a sofa and fill a form in…perhaps the very term should be changed?
All these thoughts and less have been passing through my mind.
It’s been a long time coming but finally we have India, the Restaurant opening in Station Plaza, where the much missed Condotti’s used to turn away potential customers on Sundays ‘because they’d run out of food, and were having to make a special trip to Tescos’.
Like the venue of Greco’s, this site is turning out to be rather cursed for eateries. It’s not even as if Ilkley needs another curry house–it’s got three proper ones already and another couple of take-aways. Surely a good pizzeria (like Condottis but with ingredients), a Mexican, or even something a little more off the beaten track, would fill a gap.
But, no, another curry house it is. But, judging from first impressions, India the restaurant (useful helper that descriptor–just in case you thought India the sub-continent had decided to relocate itself from the Himalayas to beside the Skipton line, which would obviously be an easy mistake to make) is not going to last very long. Okay, it looks nice, with the waterfall and so on. But the service is already starting to attract opprobium…within a week of opening, I’ve already heard three tales of parties waiting over an hour for service, being ignored when trying to pay (a fairly basic mistake), and bookings being lost. There’s more over on ilkley-more.
The best way of describing the staff would be ‘ignorant’. Something to do with thinking they’ve already impressed through parking up the Mercs outside. Maybe they’re taking Ilkley for granted, assuming they have to do nothing and they will still make money. A waiter at another Ilkley curry house described being asked over for an interview. When he arrived, he was completely ignored by the people who’d asked him over. It became obvious that they (the staff) were also ignoring the customers when one of said customers wandered over to ask said waiter from competing curry house for help.
Hey, personally, I find that if people don’t want to take youor money, the best thing to do is just leave.
