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| Looking towards Brighton from Seven Sisters. |
Is it fair to suggest Brighton's problems are self-inflicted? And what turned it, despite those of us who moved here for its oddness, into a city obsessed with appearance, shopping and weekend tourism? While lending developers money to build the i-sore, the council allowed the rest of the seafront to decay, subside and erode. Far too late a campaign is trying to preserve the beautiful Madeira terraces which the council would probably rather demolish with the excuse they're too expensive to repair - an excuse you'd expect from a shark-developer but not a council with such a unique heritage. There used to be a 1930s saltwater outdoor pool near the marina. It was demolished. Now someone wants to build a new one.
When bankers were given bonuses for crimes against the rest of us, Londoners were buying houses off Elm Grove over the phone. The council allowed family homes to be turned into eight and nine bedrooms and let by shark-landlords. The enviable crescent of council houses opposite Brighton university on Lewes Road is now almost exclusively student housing - privately rented. Landlords make £700 a month for each room, often let individually rather than as a share because there's more money that way. So by 2014, Brighton had become the fourth most unaffordable place to live in the UK - house prices rose 42% in just seven years since 2007.
I stand chatting to the woman and her small daughter who may have to go to a school stranded between an out of town suburb and a village that has nothing in common with Brighton other than a coast road.
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| Produce from March to October this year, with kale, parsley and leeks through the winter.... |
The allotment's been giving all summer, the freezers are both full, I've used up most of the jam jars. I've dried herbs and made raspberry flavoured vodka. This has been a fantastic year for growing most things. Garlic's not been brilliant, but I grew cucumbers. In a damp couple of weeks the slugs ate all my new lettuce seedlings but up until then I'd had salad until it bolted.
None of this has anything to do with the woman and her petition other than where I was when I signed it. Except it does, because this year I have started to be afraid for allotments. My fear is like a secret I don't want to share. It began with a Green council that did nothing with the unique opportunity it was given by the electorate. It continued with Labour councillors who betrayed socialism.
So I worry that a commitment to ordinary people isn't part of our local politicians' thinking anymore and that they have been seduced by retail, stag and hens, bar and coffee culture, by landlords and that word economy which they pretend helps locals but in reality means our kids have to move back home or to Worthing and beyond. I worry that individuals growing food (despite Jeremy's passion for his allotment) doesn't feature as strongly in Brighton's credentials as a World Biosphere Region, as a private company promoting expensive green roofs. I worry when the council implies it is encouraging children to walk or cycle to school and in fact it is doing the opposite. How else will it shaft us?