Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

Urban Cash or Urban Rash?

MULE | 16.11.2009 09:28 | Education

UniLife, the less than critical in-house magazine of the University of Manchester, has heaped nothing but praise upon the Chancellor elected and installed last year, local property developer and chairman of the Urban Splash Group Tom Bloxham MBE.

Although, on second thoughts, “property developer” seems inadequate, implying as it does things like purchasing disused buildings, rebuilding them, and then selling them on for a profit. This is not what Tom Bloxham MBE does: Tom Bloxham MBE “regenerates”, wandering around the deprived Northwest Christ-like, replacing “problem areas” with “mixed-use communities” (if Christ were a multi-millionaire, that is).

But perhaps all is not what it seems. The radicals at the Architects’ Journal have put down their red flags, taken off their badges and complained about Bloxham’s company Urban Splash’s attitude towards development, noting that “no children, no families, no old people, no under or unemployed” are invited to join the “mixed-use community”. So did the Manchester Evening News, when they reported on the “gentrification” of Salford, a notable casualty of which were an elderly couple forced to move out of their home of forty years to make way for a demolition that never happened. They were given £10,000 even though the redeveloped buildings resold for eight or nine times that price – all in the name of architectural principles that the Journal calls “a fantasy of student life”, ignoring the needs of families in favour of the young, single and wealthy.

Speaking of which, how can an ambitious young student follow in their new Chancellor’s footsteps? He illuminates the way in an interview published in UniLife: “I also spent a lot of time in the Middle Bar and the Cellar Bar in the Students’ Union. I would encourage all students to enjoy their time here – and get as much out of it as I did. I just wish I’d got a better degree, but I was a mediocre student academically and in my second year I started up in business. By my third year, I was set in my ways – running my own business – and opened a shop.”

That’s right – drink, bugger off and set up a shop in your second year, and one day you could be a multi-millionaire regenerating Manchester by forcing old people out of their homes. Definitely don’t read books, as UniLife makes clear: “He got a 2:2, though the University gave him an Honorary Doctorate a couple of years ago.” Let’s not quibble over details, like the difference between (for instance) the word “Honorary” and the word “Real”: the mark of a man is how his mixed-use communities are enjoying their £50,000-£250,000 apartments. With a bit of luck, one day the poor will be regenerated all the way out of Manchester – unless Urban Splash’s recent inability to secure funds gives them some breathing space, during which time Bloxham would be advised to go back to the University and read those text books, some of which may even indicate why a property bubble that forces the young and low-waged out of the market is bound to burst.

But Bloxham’s virtues don’t stop at being a crap student. Unilife elaborates: “Bringing laughter to the hall, he later said: ‘It is daunting enough to follow either of the previous co-Chancellors, but for one person to be expected to match their joint contribution over the past four years is an impossible task. I was thinking I hope I can be half as good a retailer as Anna Ford and half as good a TV presenter as Sir Terry Leahy.’” We hope the laughter died down long enough for the elders who keep the university so ship-shape to finish clutching their hearts, safe in the knowledge that they’ll live to share appetisers with councillors and business leaders during at least one more fundraising dinner.

But enough gentle sarcasm. Of the two Chancellors who preceded Bloxham we all know about Anna Ford, but who is Sir Terry Leahy? That, precisely, is the point. Sir Terry Leahy is the CEO of emerging global superpower Tesco, and Anna Ford used to read the news. Ford brought people to fundraisers because they know who she was, while Leahy brought the university business because he runs Tesco. Some of this business came in 2007 when Tesco paid £25 million to set up the Sustainable Consumption Institute within the University, which seeks to “answer some of the fundamental questions about how to make a consumer society sustainable”.

Laudable, some might say. Cynics – the sort of miseries for whom MULE has absolutely no time at all – might say ‘laughable’ and suggest on the contrary that university students are simply analysing the consumption habits of Tesco customers and sending it back to the bunker in Hertfordshire, in an effort to greenwash a way of distributing food that is fundamentally destructive to the environment. Meanwhile, the undergraduate courses and their lecturers hemorrhage funding every year, even those departments that deal directly with the politics, economics and science of climate change.

But that’s old news – what does “Dr.” Bloxham have in store? The honorific hoarding

“Vice-President”, Vice-Chancellor Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell has “no doubt that Tom Bloxham, in his role as Chancellor, will be a hugely valued friend and ambassador for the University as it seeks to realise its ambition to become one of the top 25 universities in the world by 2015.” Considering the previous penetration of the business interests of a Chancellor into the university, this presumably means the students will receive a world-class education in shooing families from their homes and lugging bricks.

 http://themule.info/article/tom-bloxham-urban-cash-or-urban-rash

MULE
- e-mail: editor@themule.info
- Homepage: http://www.themule.info

Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech