A good Tory idea.

Newspapers and a bike ride gave me inspiration to write this blog.

Reading a lot of written press as usual, one of the proposals from George Osborne and Local Government minister Eric Pickles is to remove red tape and planning restrictions around building, notably so for public authorities, handing back power to regions, local councils in order to best provide and best distribute funding.

Reading this, naturally i was sceptical, being of Center Left. This scepticism is a bit of naivety on my i think, because having visited the regenerated areas of Hull, i can fully endorse the idea of allowing local Government, giving them the reigns, in order to allocate construction budgets.

It was a beautiful day today, and perhaps this somewhat maybe added to the serenity of it all, but i can confirm that i can picture fewer places of the Hull seafront on a day like today. And there as we looked out into the Humber, we discuss the regeneration of Hull. A local guy said that years ago Hull was branded as the worst City in the UK, and the local residents and council thought to do something about it.

And here and now, 2010, Hull is a pleasant place to be. The seafront of Hull has seen the best of the regeneration, where i had the pleasure of cycling around today, along the trans penine path which accompanies the humber river, down to sheffield and then onto Liverpool. There is a lot of good work down there, new houses, offices, marina and regenerated roads, adds to not just monetary value, but as Osborne mentioned today in the Budget, something more than just economic measures - happiness. It is a happy place to be.

This leads me to believe, that actually, local government might just know best when it comes to allocation of resources. Under Labour government did return to Westminster, perhaps part of a backlash that was Thatcher's government.

Reading today in The Guardian, we have a story about Middlesborough where there is discussion of redevloping the now derelict wastelands of Boro's steel and chemical industries of the past. The point here is local authorities do know what is needed, increasing land value, through regeneration, moving forward into a 21st century town, as noted in Hull, where because of the regeneration, all industries, but the fishing industry has pretty much gone, now we see much more office space than warehousing or industrial sites.

In Hull train station, there is a large sign, Welcome to the New Hull. I saw that today, and it really made my day. With these new provisions allowing more money to go into industry deprived areas, hopefully we'll see a wave of evolving towns and cities in the next 10 years.