David Parkin on what greets visitors to Leeds and Richard III’s final resting place
MOST people are aware of the new developments that are opening in Leeds this year. The Leeds Arena is just months from opening while there was plenty of brouhaha and razzamatazz around the opening of the new Trinity shopping centre last week.
Now why don’t the powers that be look at what greets visitors to the city when they arrive?
The marketing bods behind Trinity have done little to inspire interest with a series of brightly coloured billboards that are banal.
Leeds united? Says one pink and yellow billboard poster bearing the Trinity logo next to a major road into the city.
Several others are so poor I can’t even remember them.
In comparison I saw a TV advert for Manchester’s Trafford Centre the other night and it literally beckoned me to leave the snow behind and cross the Pennines for a great retail experience.
Arriving in Leeds by train or car fails to get a visitor’s pulse racing. Make the mistake of walking under the railway station under the ‘Dark Arches’ and you get subjected to a bizarre set of noises and a badly lit pavement which some arty farty maniac must have been paid a fortune to create.
With a bit of creativity and not too much money, I bet the city could really excite visitors.
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THE battle for the bones of King Richard III looks like a fight between whether they should be buried in Leicester or York.
Descendants of the monarch – the last reigning English ruler to die in battle when he was killed at Bosworth Field in 1485 and whose remains were recently discovered buried under a council car park in Leicester – are campaigning to have him buried in York and are now seeking to judicially review the decisions authorising the exhuming and reinterring of his remains in the East Midlands city.
The Plantagenet Alliance, spearheaded by 15 of Richard III’s relatives, has recruited a team led by Matthew Howarth, from Yorkshire law firm Gordons, to challenge the right to bury the last ruler of the House of York in Leicester Cathedral.
King Richard III, although born at Fotheringhay Castle, Northamptonshire, grew up in Middleham, North Yorkshire. Known as Richard of York before his coronation, he visited York several times during his 26-month reign and funded part of its medieval gated walls.
There is no evidence he did any day trips to Leicester.
Apparently an online petition on the direct.gov.uk website calling for the remains to be buried in York, has attracted almost 26,000 signatures whereas one in favour of Leicester has only been signed by less than 8,000 people.
Now this is where my opinion might annoy people. No surprise there, I suppose.
My view is that York has already got lots of reasons why tourists from around the world would visit it – the Minster, the medieval walls, the races and so on.
But what has Leicester got that will bring bus loads of Japanese tourists flooding into the city?
Not a lot.
So let’s leave Richard with them.
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Have a Happy Easter break and lets hope spring will soon be here.
