Bricks and Stones...

Protestors have set up a temporary camp of occupation on part of the biggest man-made hole in the ground in England, site of a proposed £300m-plus shopping mall by Westfield.

Bradford Council obligingly got 90 compulsory purchase orders to demolish a large swathe of historic Forster Square to accommodate a big shopping development. That was eight or nine years ago. Since then Westfield, commonly referred to as Wastefield up here, has blamed the recession for not starting work. Now they are blaming the protestors for deterring potential tenants. And so is Bradford Council and the local paper.

So the fault for nothing happening on this huge city-centre site lies with a handful of young people, some of them white collar workers - not the 'great unwashed' - who have taken annual leave to join the week-long protest. Doubtless protestors are to blame for the even longer comedy of errors concerning the former Odeon cinema, several hundred yards to the west of the hole in the ground. A hole in the east, an eyesore in the west, and a £24m-plus mirror-pool between them. Guess which one was publicly-funded?

Bradford's establishment only approves of protests that it can use to affirm its credential as a city of multi-cultural diversity. This was the case with the English Defence League demo of August 2010, when a couple of hundred nutters were allowed in to shout and scream, ringed round by 1,200 coppers with dogs and horses. Bradford told the world that this was the city's finest hour.

That EDL demo, by the way, was coralled in a temporary green-fenced park adjacent to the Wastefield site, which seems appropriate, though for the life of me I can't think why.

The protestors say they are there to highlight a public scandal that has been allowed to fester for far too long. Part of it has to do with the history of the site, which Westfield bought from another developer. Connected with that is the council signing away the leasehold of this valuable site without insisting on a compensation penalty clause if the developer failed to start work within a given time, say three years. Such a precaution, as I understand, is a commonplace of commercial dealing.

Not in Bradford, it seems. Deaf to anything else, the only question asked here is the supplicatory: 'But when will you start?' Anytime soon, Westfield reply. They've been saying that for three or four years. Telling is not doing, though; announcements don't necessarily mean bricks and stones. Heads seldom roll. The presiding geniuses in the council's planning and legal departments and their political panjandrums who master-minded this farrago have not been called to account.

However, gentle skimmer, don't for a second believe this state of affairs is a blip. For 20 years or more this city, once the wool textile capital of the world, has sought to reverse its decline with a series of multi-million pound private sector schemes - about seven in all - none of which materialised.

The most spectacularly stupid was a proposal by a man masquerading as an architect to design and build a £200m super stadium with a retractable roof in the south of the city, on the site of the home ground of Bradford Northern (now Bradford Bulls), the rugby league team. From 1992 until December, 1998, not a sod was turned, not a brick was laid, yet this scheme was the subject of a torrent of positive publicity - TV, radio, double-page spreads, front page splashes. The only question asked was: 'But when will you start?'

Those of us who warned that the scheme had no foundation in reality, eventually were told to shut up. Like today's protestors, we were accused of being Jeremiahs putting off potential financial investors. I even got a telephone call from the charlatan responsible for this great deception, which ended with him saying perhaps he should get some chaps to come along and see me. Sort me out, he meant.

History has repeated itself. The interesting question to ask is why? Unlock that door and all sorts of skeletons are likely to clatter out. There's the culture of professional incompetence that resulted in the Superdome farce. Personnel may have changed, but the pompous 'we know best' attitude that equates criticism with negativity, still permeates City Hall and others. How else explain the slackness of the contractual details of Westfield that has resulted in prolonged stalemate? There's political gerrymandering that goes back to the Nineties. And there seems to be something else as well, the consequence of, shall we say, dangerous liaisons.

In all that time, as though complementing the succession of failed schemes, Bradford has supported about nine different public cheer-up campaigns, from Bradford's Bouncing Back! to the current one, Positive Bradford. Nothing wrong in accentuating the positive from time to time - providing your enthusiasm doesn't make you deaf to other voices. And yes, Bradford does have the Brontes, J B Priestley, David Hockney, Edward Appleton, a thriving university and two UNESCO awards.

But this is also one of the places where John Poulson compromised willing Town Hall officials and politicians in the 1960s. Evidence of his handiwork is still visible. But as one wit wrote on the Democracy Wall on the fence surrounding the Westfield site: "Even Poulson built something!" The Wall was removed - either by ever-helpful Bradford Council or by men hired by Westfield.