When all the students come back

Well , who is looking forward to the students returning to their uni towns? I will tell you who: university finance departments, landlords and ladies, Sainsbury’s. Once this list would have included bars and pubs, and local shops. Once it would be local residents looking forward to new trends in music and art, and even philosophical debates down the Royal Park Pub. Most, if not all university lectures can be online. Practicals obviously need equipment, but possibly students could to access that at a local home university. Quite this a drastic step I realise. This would involve cooperation between institutions, but hey, this is a global pandemic, but I say where there’s a will... It seems that the exasperated parents have already dropped off and got rid of the most determinedly antisocial partygoers, probably a thousand or so, given the reports we have from Moorland Avenue, Saint John’s Avenue, Hyde Park Road, Cardigan Road, the Norwoods, Victoria Road, the Broomfields, the Langdales. But many more thousands are set to descend on the city. We hear of one uni has actually asking students to come back early. Is to this ensure they will get their fees, or to get them inside the city boundary before lockdowns return? Hopefully these are students who have come here to study. Nonetheless they will have been looking forward to freedom, freshers week and meeting up with old friends. To have them all descend on Leeds at once is the recipe for an almighty spike and heaven help the students and the unis when they get the blame for Leeds’s first football game in the Premier League to be behind closed doors and when all the pubs get closed again. We suggest that the council and the universities get together, be creative and come up with an intelligent plan.

Open Letter to All Leeds Universities

Open letter to All Leeds Universities

As one university spokesperson wrote to us, indeed your students are not solely responsible for the situation. In many ways the students are just victims, collateral damage in a system, an infrastructure which which has evolved, consisting of entitled students and their entitled parents, lazy and unscrupulous landlords and ladies, and the criminal drug pushers who work for themselves at the expense of us all. (And of course it isn’t all landlords/ladies, it isn’t all students, but it is all druggies.) Let us also add in a council and a police force who either genuinely don’t realise just how bad the situation has become, or don’t have the will or the capacity to change it.

However, as far the students are concerned, they may not be solely your students, and it is not all students, but the party-goers are all students. And the students are only here because the universities are here. And this gives the unis both the responsibility and ability to do something about the situation.

Presently there are two distinct types of party-type antisocial behaviour. The raves such as the one that happened on Woodhouse Moor were not organised by students and were mostly locals and nearly all from other areas of Leeds. But in the late afternoon the organisers were conspicuously walking round the back streets round our way so presumably they were looking for students to invite. And students’ parents and the universities should be really worried about this.

 Only five years ago my daughter came back from work at the pub to find that someone had climbed the tree in our front garden and then dropped onto the pavement where she then died. Only later did we discover that she been persuaded to take drugs for the first time and, the very next day, was going away to university to do a post-grad course. How tragic this was was brought home when her parents came up from her hometown to see where she died and meet the person who found her. As they stood in the garden looking at the tree and described the life she had been about to lead we just felt that their daughter was our daughter or sister.

But this letter is not just about noise, parties drugs and alcohol abuse. Anti-social behaviour also includes incompetent  waste management. Students either don’t care or don’t know how to recycle and, for example, don’t realise or care that you can’t, in Leeds, put glass into a green bin, and that you should not leave bins out on the pavement. Also, on Leaving Day just wheeling mattresses and sofas out onto the street for someone else to deal with is the disgusting height [or depth] of anti-social behaviour.

Hyde Park Road Leeds

And then  there are few things more insensitive than parking in front of a neighbour’s drive. Obviously the council hasn’t helped by painting white parking lines down some streets (eg Moorland Avenue), but you would think that the presence of a parking area, especially if there is a vehicle in it would be a giveaway. The implications for anyone who has to drive to work [and arrive on time] are frightening.

In general the graffiti and the fly-tipping (apart from the aforementioned mattresses) aren’t directly the students’ fault, but by treating the neighbourhood badly you invite others to regarding it as a dumping ground.

Local residents who live here all round keep the area afloat - just. We keep the shops, the takeaways and the pubs (what’s left of them] ticking over. Without us the area would die altogether. So when the two entitled parents told one particular resident on two separate occasions within one week in July 2020 that she living in the wrong area, said parents should realise that without us, their children would not last the distance.

 

Landlordism 21st century in Hyde Park Leeds

There is more to the nuisance neighbours than the student neighbours themselves. They are almost collateral themselves as the unwitting agents of landlordism.

In pre-Covid times the student parties would reach antisocial heights shortly after exams then would continue until Change-over day, then we locals would be able to relax over summer.

But not exactly. With summer, come the letting agents, the builders and cleaners. The house owners don’t actually get their hands dirty themselves. In fact some of them don’t even live in Leeds

The un-builders, on the house owners’ orders, via the agents have quite dismantled and looted the beautiful Victorian buildings of Hyde Park Leeds. These houses were built by their predecessors from an age of the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists and said predecessors worked till they dropped to install all the beautiful banisters, architraves and ceiling roses. These days, with the removal of the banisters and the stairs themselves there is space enough to create another little flat in what had been the entrance hall, and is now just another money earner. And the age of Victorian architectural facades is exactly that today, not just looking at the difference between the backs and fronts of our houses, but the front exteriors and all interiors.

Besides the builders there is another subgroup which you could call cleaners but with a by-line in fly-tipping. The ex-tenants-to-be themselves start by leaving unwanted possessions in and around the bins. The fly-tippers take the rest and just leave them anywhere in the street. Most astonishing of all is that in our particular area they leave filthy sofas on St John’s Grove which is a private road and a cul-de-sac, where there is absolutely no passing traffic or trade. And there they stay until a local long-term resident neighbour calls the council. This has a knock-on effect on Moorland Avenue, the in-effect back street to Moorland Road and Avenue, being the street that outsiders dump their unwanted fridge-freezers in, as well.

There is a convention whereby, if you want to recycle some items you leave them at the bottom of your path or garden, and if they’re not taken within a few days you just take them to the tip yourself. But to leave rubbish of this size and unquality on the one street which no vehicles were supposed to go down and goes nowhere is mind blowing. And to think that is acceptable to drive to the through road backstreet and leave tall freezers ready to topple over on our 4 year-olds is sickening. Despicably dangerous.

Hyde Park - not a Student Village Actually

letter to papers June 16 plus 2020

So far we’ve had no known cases of Covid 19 in Hyde Park, but the students doing a Cummings seem to be trying their best to change that. In a backstreet only 1000m long we had no less than three parties this Saturday night (14 June) keeping ourselves and our children awake, presently almost unable to function as we face another day and week working from home, often juggling childcare with paid work.

25 years ago we had problems when the drug dealers chose Moorland Road and Hyde Park Road for some pitched battles with the police, and on July 10, 1995 we watched in dismay as the local pub went up in flames and our cars were torched, night after night.

After that local residents decided enough was enough and they created Unity Day (sadly cancelled for Covid this year), in which all people of all walks of life could come together as a community on Woodhouse Moor and take part in activities from dogshows to world music.

But here we are in Hyde Park, a quarter of a century later, many of us ex-Leeds University students ourselves, and the area is falling apart again. Graffiti is not just daubed on walls, it stays on walls, bins are all over the pavement, green and black with the same rubbish in them, regular fly-tipping saw two fridge freezers appear in our back street in the last two weeks [placed upright ready to fall on a child],  and then there’s these parties. And of course there’s drug dealers pulling up in the back street as we sit in the daytime with our kids and grandkids on their scooters and watch small packets exchange hands out of car windows. Sometimes the drugs are delivered to the door, only they get the wrong door – can be rather a frightening experience.

And despite the best intentions and best efforts of Noise Nuisance, they just don’t have the person power, the actual power or the PPE to stop them. The team attends, they leave, the music goes back on. The University Neighbourhood Helpline  knowledges the program the problem but can’t solve it.

We who have settled here have in effect become the protectors of the area, this part of Hyde Park actually being a conservation area, despite which landlords and ladies have paved over three back gardens [creating 8/9 spaces] in the last few months and charge non-residents to treat the street as a carpark.

But what is really keeping us awake right now are the parties. There’s no social distancing, not enough toilets, with partygoers stealing wood from some residents and treating the others gardens as toilets. And the party-goers spill out into St John’s Avenue. The morning after the street is littered with broken glass, vomit, condoms, beer cans, shards of glass.  

If there are police to guards statues of of 18th century racists, surely there’s police enough to stop selfish students keeping us from living our normal lives , and from spreading this virus as they do.

Yours faithfully

                                    [on behalf the Moorland Residents Group]

Hyde Park Leeds

Meanwhile back in Hyde Park, there has been a murder this weekend in Brudenell Road. Connected with some party in Ash Grove that was still going on at 8.30 am. Well, for a start, who on earth thinks it's a good idea to party while the rest of get the sleep we need for the day ahead. The students who come to live in Hyde Park because they think it's partyland need to realise that, besides the anti-social element to their activities, they put themselves at risk - from all types of predators.

This is a very sad event that tarnishes our community, and will put parents off letting their student-children from living here. Landlords, beware of how you sell this area, or you, too will be the losers.

Hyde Park. All Excited about Bins

Just in case you have tuned in for the next instalment of the West Park Saga, I am briefly returning to my roots here:

"not my problem anymore"

Went to the Community Forum at Woodsley Road Community Centre this evening. Got all excited about bins. If you read the papers you'd think it's all about how your own bins get forgotten - and once for four weeks running. Here's some pics of Moorland Avenue to that effect:

nicely lined up even after 4 weeks

But now I have met a dedicated [in both senses of the word] environmental officer with some ideas re bins and their collections.  Chris explained the different approaches to refuse collections that he and his department were experimenting with.

And now this is exciting.

I get really depressed when I hear the familiar clink of glass on inside of bin. There's a student house not a million miles, and after you've been kept awake by the imbibing bit, get irritated by the weeing in the streets, then you find the glass empties are destined for landfill.

"What pavement?"

Well, I'm thinking: it's the 21st century; recycling has been around awhile; there's bottle banks everywhere; we have a Green MP in this country. This lot must have spent ages at school, and  got 3 good A levels to get the redbrick that is Leeds University or the 60s concrete that is the Met. Were they too busy in the library to put out the rubbish? Did they all have servants for the after-dinner side of life? I do hope they are not doing economics and going to be the MPs of the future.

Well irritation is one thing. But how to educate the already over-educated? Round our table at Woodsley the ideas ran from information to prosecution. Someone suggested parking fines for bins left on the pavements [love that one]; another suggestion was making examples of a few. The maximum fine for not putting bins back off the street is £75.  I'm up for that one too.

What's really important here is not a few do-gooding locals and their war on people who don't recycle, but really the future of the planet. If you don't go to the bottle bank half a mile down the road to do your bit, then whatever else don't you do?