Cod Almighty | Diary

All bathwater, no baby

20 November 2014

It's original/regular Diary day. It's helpfully defined by Wikipedia as "the day of the week following Wednesday and before Friday". It is, of course, Thursday – and this particular Thursday is day four of the Grimsby Telegraph's series of articles on the Mariners' new stadium at Great Coates Macaulay Street Peaks Parkway. Thursday is named in English for the Norse god Thor, and the club's chairman major shareholder John Shelton Fenty can be found in today's Telewag duly thundering about the wider benefits to the Xanadu community of his proposed stately pleasure dome. Hey, if they can mix metaphors, I'm sure as hell gonna mix mythologies.

So which benefits are those? Those are the bits where we've more or less given up on the democratically elected institutions of our nation to provide public services – what with Coun Fenty's Conservatives having systematically stripped the funding from predominantly Labour-controlled local authorities and everything – so that, to choose an example more or less at random, the schools don't work any more and people like that nice David Ross (a huge Conservative donor, but don't let that stand in the way) take over instead.

Alternatively, the local football club could do it instead – as Coun Fenty suggests today. The Grimsby Town Sports and Education Trust already does that, of course. North East Lincolnshire remains one of the most deprived areas in northern Europe, but if yer man gets the green light for Peaks P, well, then that "will provide opportunities to expand this activity".

And not only that – Fentydome II will prevent skilled and educated workers leaving the area to build a career somewhere else with better prospects. "It is important to look at why people are leaving," opines the man whose decisions took Grimsby Town into non-League football. "A stadium is fundamental to this."

Now I'm sure the education trust does a genuinely great job (and I'd like to know more about it). I'm even going to resist making cheap cracks about GTFC's worthiness to teach important life skills like communication and finance. So am I prepared to buy into the line that talented young people will return to the area after university to build a life, boosting the skill base of the local workforce and ultimately turning around half a century of economic decline, if only Grimsby Town Football Club get a slightly bigger stadium in a different area of the town?

Of course I am. As long as the slightly bigger stadium comes with some decent independent pubs and restaurants, a more cosmopolitan population base, vastly improved public transport, a more inclusive and tolerant local mindset, a substantial expansion of the independent retail sector including locally sourced food and craftwork, provision of attractive affordable housing, a complete renaissance in the local arts scene and the redevelopment of derelict dockland and waterside districts of the area as well.