Yorkshire Almanac 2025

Unedited excerpt

The excerpt in the book is shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.

The comprehensive schemes of slum-clearance and rehousing adopted by the Leeds Corporation is causing some uneasiness to cautious persons in that city, but it may well be that in ten years’ time it will be recognised that the Corporation in thus boldly adventuring has taken the most economical as well as the most imaginative course. In providing for the present it is providing also for the future. In six years 80,000 houses are to be demolished, and substitute dwellings provided. That is unquestionably desirable. But Leeds does not consider it enough merely to destroy slums and provide houses; those houses must also be habitable ten years hence in accordance with the standards of living ten years hence; and they should form part of a township or suburb which has adequate transport facilities, central baths, schools, and markets. Should such desiderata be provided now, when they can be fitted into a general plan from the start, or later, when there will be a clamour for them, and second-best expedients have to be devised? Leeds will no doubt make many mistakes in its bold efforts. But it is setting an example of municipal enterprise in getting rid of the remains of a discreditable past, and building up a civilised city worthy to be prosperous. And its latest experiment, the grant to its transplanted tenants of facilities for acquiring beds and bedding (to replace their old and probably verminous possessions) on easy hire-purchase terms gives evidence of both humanity and imagination.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

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• City of Leeds (3) W/G ·
• Leeds City Council (34) W/G ·
• 📌Leeds (249) W/G ·
• Public housing (3) W/G ·
• Slum clearance (5) W/G ·
• Slum (4) W/G ·
• The Spectator (4) W/G ·

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

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Similar

18 February 1934: Leeds Labour triggers the first rent strike against a council by announcing higher rents for well-off tenants and the prospect of free housing for ex-slum-dwellers

23 August 1933: John Betjeman witnesses the opening of the Leeds Civic Hall

2 June 1867: Dr Clifford Allbutt tells the Epidemiological Society that the market will not provide decent housing for Leeds’s poorest

12 April 1924: The Bloomsbury Group’s Amabel Williams-Ellis finds little art for art’s sake in Leeds

7 November 1959: The last tram scheduled in Leeds, no. 181 or 187, runs from Cross Gates to Kirkgate or Swinegate

1 February 1893: Alderman Herbert Bramley (Liberal) can’t see why Sheffield, on the 50th anniversary of its municipal charter, should want to become a city

24 November 1988: John Battle, MP for Leeds West, visits a constituent who had lived near the J.W. Roberts (Turner & Newall) asbestos works in Armley

24 July 1926: “Leeds Corporation’s clean air strategy focuses too much on buildings and not enough on people”

12 April 1875: The Times says that the ventilation tubes patented by Martin Tobin, a retired Leeds merchant, have ended air pollution in the borough’s police court

11 March 2020: Abigail Marshall Katung, Labour councillor and future Lord Mayor of Leeds, explains to the National Crime Agency how in 2015 she obtained a £360,000 house deposit from Nigeria

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

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The incoming government in 2015 under Muhammadu Buhari campaigned on an anti‑corruption platform, and after the election authorities such as the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission began to investigate and indict high‑level officials from the previous ruling party. However, there is no evidence, and it would be outrageous to suggest, that the house purchase apparently agreed on 1 April 2015 was in any way related to Goodluck Jonathan’s concession of the election on 31 March 2015 – studies of capital flight in Nigeria (and more broadly) show that the major determinants are macroeconomic, such as interest‑rate differentials, exchange‑rate instability or depreciation, poor domestic economic performance, investor risk perception, and weak financial markets. The vendor, Mansoor Hussain, subsequently forfeited most of his property empire following a NCA investigation, but I know of no evidence that Hussain was aware of the investigation at the time the sale was apparently agreed. Here’s a profile of Andy.

AMK was last seen speaking to the Money Advice Liaison Group:

Opening speech at the MALG conference this morning is the fabulously passionate Cllr Abigail Marshall Katung #malgconf2025 #debtadvice pic.twitter.com/hdKfYHYWHH

— Financially Included (@FinanciallyIncl) November 13, 2025

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