“WRONG” SAID FRED - PENSIONER FIGHTS EVICTION FROM HOME OF 41 YEARS

16-07-2006

Pensioner Fred Grove is a bewildered man. He's facing eviction from the canalside cottage he's lived in for 41 years but no one can give him a good reason why.

Fred, from Vauxhall in Birmingham, is the subject of compulsory purchase order cooked up by his local council and a bunch of developers.

They have a grand vision for the Eastside district of the city and it doesn't include him.

“I'm not against progress, “ Fred told us. “But why shouldn't I be part of it?”

What's especially galling is the knowledge that if the CPO is successful and Fred is booted out, his house won't even be demolished.

It has local listed status and is ina conservation area.

No, it's not the house that's in the way - just it's vulnerable and elderly resident.

“They tell me that when the area is redeveloped there'll be too much work going on and all the noise and disruption will affect my health” said Fred.

“I don't know about that, but I tell you this. The way they're going on at the moment is already making me sick - with worry.”

Ironically, both Birmingam Council and AWM talk of “sustainabilty”, the current bullshit buzzword of urban planners.

As local architect and campaigner Joe Holyoak puts it: “So sustainability means throwing an old man out of his house?

“Not in any definition of sustainability that I know. It's a distortion of the term; at best negligent, at worst cynical”.

The Stirrer shares Joe's contempt.

We recognise the scope for improvement in a partially rundown (though in many respects vibrant) inner city part of a great English city.

What we can't accept is that it should be at the expense of local people who - more than any bricks and mortar - give the area its character.

So here's a simple challenge from The Stirrer to the planners.

If your motives really are to improve life for ordinary people and not just make a fast buck for buy-to-let speculators or build loft apartments for yuppies leave Fred where he is.

Once the redevelopment is underway, find him a suitable short-term dwelling if necessary, then allow him back home when the work is finished.

Otherwise, forcing an elderly man out the house he's lived in for decades and where his family grew up has the rancid stench of opportunism.

The Stirrer says it's time to make a stand - we're campaigning for Fred to stay exactly where he is for as long as he wants.

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