How have we ended up with so many takeaways?

They all have something in common with Rossendale’s five townships; they all look a little tired and frayed around the edges.

How have we ended up with so many takeaways?

And why do they always have to look so shabby and grotty?

It beggars belief that they all make ‘a do’. Where have all the roller shutters appeared from?

And why do they always look so unsightly? Of course it’s too late to do much about it now.

With the benefit of hindsight, councils should have had policies/protocols in place on takeaways and shutters years ago.

The problem is planning law, which is both complex and guided by national guidelines.

This very often means a council can reject an application, the applicant then appeals, and, because there are no firm, local guidelines following national guidelines in place, the inspector grants approval and another gaudy cheap and nasty eatery opens its doors.

Do these places have to look so awful just to act as magnets for ‘chavs’ with beer goggles on?

In Clive’s world, you would only be able to put shutters on the inside!

Drive down Bank Street in Rawtenstall on a Sunday afternoon and the place looks like a war zone.

Everywhere you look there is rubbish. I find it so hard to believe people act like such anti-social halfwits after a shandy or two.

In Rawtenstall the team from Civic Pride do such a fantastic job, but why should they have to turn out in their own time clearing up after thoughtless morons?

Street cleaning has gone backwards at a rapid rate of knots since the council decided – for reasons best known to themselves – to remove popular street cleaner Steve, who had to be the hardest worker the council ever had.

Stuart Drummond, the highly successful directly elected mayor of Hartlepool (The monkey man!) runs teams that focus on one area and they blitz it.

That’s the sort of thing we need to be doing in Rossendale.

But first you have to care enough to really want to do something about a problem. And therein lies the problem!