I spent 18 years in the area before I left for higher education and eventually a fantastic opportunity to work with one of the greatest energy companies in the world today.

I have now made a home in Coventry for more than four years.
Coventry is a wonderful, racially diverse, thriving modern city that is undergoing some truly great redevelopment.

Then I visit my birth-town.

A once great Roman centre, a once great medieval centre, once a great trading city, beautiful yellow sandstone buildings giving a hint of the past wealth that flowed from the dreams of people long since forgotten.
All I see is despair and filth.

The entryways to the city for visitors make you want to leave immediately.

Don't get me wrong, here, there are nice places, very nice, and some of the best people you could ever meet, but what strikes me as the cause for the perpetual hole and rot that seems to have existed since the early 60s, is the council.

Ever since I can remember plans for regeneration (such as the fantastic opportunity to reopen the 'Northern Reaches' of the Lancaster Canal, Morecambe Bay Barrage, telecoms, yacht club 'shed', etcetera) seem to become a pit into which truly massive sums of money disappear (your money by the way) in 'feasibility studies'. Nothing ever, ever, gets done. When it is complete, well, it hardly ever makes you good people proud does it?

Why is there hardly anything to show for countless millions into projects?

Why do you have a road to nowhere? It's not funny. It's not quirky. It's not something to be proud of.

Send your councillors to Coventry.

Send them to learn how to make the people they represent proud.
Better yet, see for yourselves. Then they can't pull the wool over your eyes any longer.

Graham Moss
Coventry