Population, parking and Darlo

Bonjour! I’ve just found out, I have a couple of readers in France, so I thought I would say hello. For the benefit of my overseas readers, I’ll remind you all that I live in the heart of England. The Black Country is a just North of Birmingham and includes the City of Wolverhampton, Dudley, Walsall and Sandwell.

The town in the picture is Darlaston that was absorbed into the Metropolitan Borough of Walsall, when we had that local government reorganisation fiasco in the 1970’s. Darlaston, affectionately know locally as Darlo, is an amazing place; it bloody amazes me.  Most of it looks like it’s due for demolition. The town hall looks nice, it’s Victorian, but of course it’s not used as a town hall any more. They have a modern library too, that was where I was going yesterday. I couldn’t park. The place is dead and I couldn’t find a bloody parking space. The parking is free though, which must please the local Tories. Free parking according to them brings more shoppers to the town centres. I might have done a bit of shopping after I’d been in the library if I could have found a parking space. I’m told there is an exhibition by local artists in the library. I was going to review it and give them a little publicity. Darlo doesn’t have an art gallery, they’re part of Walsall now and they have their new waterfront gallery in Walsall. You might remember I reviewed an exhibition there not long ago. That’s far too posh for artists from Darlo, they want the Turner prize in Walsall!

I went to Wednesbury art gallery and museum after that. I got a parking space there, probably because it was closed. That’s pay and display (40p). I suppose 40p to park isn’t too bad these days. You do have a choice, if you don’t like it you can always go to Darlo where it’s free.  I go to the Manor hospital  where it’s a pound every half an hour. I have to go for a scan next week, I ought to start saving up. Sandwell is going to build a new Metropolitan hospital, a new iconic building to match the Public and the new wave shaped roofed college. I’ve seen a picture. I don’t think I’ll be going there for my scans, even if they do have free parking; which they won’t.

The population of the Black Country keeps increasing. It’s alright saying how bloody wonderful it is to have it multi cultural, but we have a shortage of housing, parking spaces and we have to keep building new schools and hospitals. The councils have to print all their guidelines and policies in every bloody language on earth as well.

I’ve been invited to some event in a multicultural temple next week. I might go and take a few photos. There’s free parking!

The point is, can we keep on building new roads, schools and hospitals? We need to limit population growth before it’s too late. In China they are allowed one child to a family  in urban areas and China is a massive country compared to Britain. Maybe we could encourage people to have fewer children. If people had 2 kids, they replace themselves and so no population growth. Especially if we restrict people coming here to live. In fact with people going to live overseas and some people not having kids, the population would go down. I know some tosser from the Conservative club will ask who will pay the taxes in the future to keep him in his old age. If he could just think past money for a moment, he would realise that robots will do the work in the future. Then we could make serious plans for a sustainable future.

Anyway, I couldn’t park in Darlo yesterday, so I didn’t review the art exhibition or spend any money. I did get a good look at the dereliction and will try one day to go back and photograph it. Especially those shops marked J9. Is that some kind of mark meaning slum clearance?

Oh, well. C’est la vie as some of my readers might say… What would you say? Please use the comments box to say it. You can also follow me on Twitter.

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