Inequalities in Cambridge have reached such extremes…

Posted byCambridge Town OwlPosted inUncategorized

…that even communism is back!

I stumbled across their latest round of flyposting while picking up a few things on the way back from the East West Rail consultation on Cambridge East Station. (Nothing more to add to what I wrote late last year here)

Normally such posters rarely get this far out from the city centre (one of the advertising groups is a Cambridge University student society – and the event being advertised is located in one of the older colleges). Either of the two links below may be of interest.

Myself? I quite like a large community noticeboard with home-made posters and notices from a large range of community-based groups putting on things that make life more interesting. In cases like this, my main concern tends to be that it will incite someone from an opposite extreme to do the same – which if you look like me is all the more menacing.

Above – also in the vicinity of the Cambridge Leisure Park is the pot-holed bus stop, and the buildings in The Marque development going mouldy up top – a mix of poor design, poor construction, and poor maintenance.

And that’s some of the less-damaged road surface. A ten-minute or so bike ride down the road from that bus stop and you get to ARM’s headquarter’s off Fulbourn Road. And there’s nothing local or regional government can do to tax the excess wealth generated by the firms on the sci-tech parks to pay for the basic maintenance of transport infrastructure that their staff use. The local link between payers of business rates and the spending by local councils collecting them was broken decades ago. In reality it’s a national tax that is surrendered to The Treasury and redistributed nationwide.

“Local authorities are being asked to deliver more than ever before, but they have not been given adequate funding to allow them to do so, even with their ability to increase council tax.”

Above – The Funding and Sustainability of Local Government Finance, by Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, 23 July 2025

Nothing ever happens…

The sight of two large empty poster boards outside Coleridge Rec (Coleridge Road entrance) reminded me of this depressing number by Del Amitri from 1990.

Above – empty boards. Is nothing happening?

“”Gentlemen time please, you know we can’t serve anymore”
Now the traffic lights change to stop, when there’s nothing to go
And by five o’clock everything’s dead and every third car is a cab
And ignorant people sleep in their beds like the doped white mice in the college lab”

“And bill hoardings advertise products that nobody needs
While “Angry from Manchester” writes to complain about all the repeats on TV
Computer terminals report some gains in the values of copper and tin
While American businessmen snap up Van Goghs for the price of a hospital wing”

Above – Nothing Ever Happens, by Del Amitri

Nearly a decade earlier Dire Straits monologued to Industrial Disease.

“On ITV and BBC they talk about the curse
Philosophy is useless, theology is worse
History boils over, there’s an economics freeze
Sociologists invent words that mean “industrial disease””

Above – Industrial Disease by Dire Straits

Anyway, at least the new council housing on Fanshawe Road is coming on.

Not without controversy as yet again the private market homes element has been seen advertised abroad in a city that has a housing crisis – inevitably picked up by local residents and political parties.

Cambridge’s housing crisis will be discussed by former council leader Lewis Herbert on Cambridge Radio on Sunday 08 March 2026 from 12pm.

Elsewhere further east from here in Cherry Hinton, a big pension fund has bought out 139 ‘build to rent’ homes (note the lazy stock photo of the colleges, which have nothing to do with the story). A local government pension fund using its resources to ensure construction can go ahead, reducing the uncertainty that can often be a barrier to building in such a broken and volatile sector. I don’t have a problem with this. In a way I’m surprised more UK pension funds are not doing the same.

The sorts of changes and improvements that Cambridge needs are not something that will be resolved by the city council elections – the institution is too enfeebled to do that. With the creation of a unitary authority over the next couple of years, I think the next stage has to be debating what powers, functions, and duties that new unitary council has.

Cambridgeshire Unitaries Campaign‘s Annual General Meeting (AGM) for 2026.

That conversation should really start at the above-meeting. (If you want to go along, please let the organisers know)

I was one of the founder members of this campaign several years ago and was pleasantly surprised at how quickly the incoming Labour government confirmed it was going for a nationwide overhaul of local government in England, getting rid of the two-tier structure.

And for anyone free on Sunday afternoon, Queen Edith’s Community Forum has its monthly Community Cafe at Nightingale Avenue Pavilion from 2pm-4pm.

Above – Queen Edith’s Community Cafe – with free refreshments. See also:

Council meetings coming up

Community Infrastructure Levy

If you are interested in the longer term future of Cambridge, and on what happens at the local democracy meetings where decisions are made, feel free to: