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Rod McPhee: The arena of a phoney war
IN the course of a conventional, happy life a person shouldn't ever have to think someone as puerile as Sheffield MP Clive Betts, but since he's hell-bent on wrecking plans for a Leeds arena, it seems we must.
Oh, to climb inside his head and uncover why, exactly, he's heading up a bid to torpedo one of the most important projects this city has ever pursued.
He says that the 18m pledged to the scheme by regional development agency Yorkshire Forward shouldn't be handed over because the money wouldn't benefit the county as a whole.
Which must be the most disingenuous, fatuous stance ever adopted.
Let's put aside for a moment the fact that, in a county where five million people are spread across such a vast area, it's virtually impossible to ensure that every penny of money spent can benefit everyone everywhere.
Let's humour Clive. Let us, for the purposes of conjecture, entertain his argument that a Leeds arena wouldn't benefit Yorkshire as a whole. Consider, for example, the 600,000 people who live in North Yorkshire (NB, more than live in Sheffield) who would benefit massively from having a venue on their doorstep.
A Leeds arena would stem the tens of thousands of concert-goers from that corner of the region who currently find it just as easy to go to arenas in cities other than Sheffield.
Just consider the 50,000 people who live in Scar-borough or the 75,000 people in Harrogate, they're probably not much further away from Manchester or even Newcastle.
And since Betts is so concerned about the interests of all Yorkshire folk does he not care about people who live in places like Richmond, Northallerton, Ripon, Thirsk, Whitby who currently have to travel anything up to 100 miles to get to Sheffield?
That's before considering the two million or so people in West Yorkshire, a large chunk of whom probably already travel across the Pennines to see artists in Manchester.
Why do so many go to Manchester when Sheffield is only 30-40 minutes down the M1? Because Sheffield's arena-in-the-hinterland isn't accessible by train, whereas Manchester, around an hour or less away, has its arena a few minutes walk from a city centre train station.
Poison
So a Leeds arena isn't about stealing punters from Sheffield – which is another argument bandied around by Betts et al – it's about regaining the punters we're currently losing to other parts of the country.
That's the real financial argument for seeing the project through, that's the core of the pro-Leeds argument the government should now be considering, not the poison which is currently being dropped in the well.
Talk about cutting off Leeds's nose to spite Yorkshire's face, if Betts really cares about the county as a whole he should be backing our arena plans, not trying to kill them.
Which brings us back to the question of why he and his band are so vehemently opposed to us getting an arena. Well, aside from the obvious answer that we would take trade away from Sheffield, I also think they're picking a fight in the deluded belief that, whatever the outcome, they'll win.
If the anti-Leeds campaigners succeed in blocking the Yorkshire Forward cash they'll be heralded as heroes who toiled to preserve the interests of their home city, if they fail they'll still go down in blaze of glory as valiant defenders. They're waging a phoney war and one which, in reality, Leeds can only win.
People of Sheffield take note: their pseudo victory is the most hollow imaginable, because if Leeds City Council leader Coun Andrew Carter can deliver on his promise, we will still build our arena with or without the money.
So when the people of Sheffield and Leeds see our shimmering new venue finally built in a few years time they'll barely remember Betts's bid to block it – but I'd wager a few of his political counterparts in this corner of Yorkshire will never forget.
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Weather for Leeds
Sunday 12 February 2012
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Temperature: 0 C to 5 C
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