What's "faux" about it? It is what it is.

What it is is a tent.

So is half of Munich at a certain time of year.



I like to think [url=http://i.imgur.com/8MGWa.jpgthis[/url is in a tent.

Well written Bulliac, but here I will be most un-PC like and say, also one of the main reasons the city centre has died is that now in Bradford we have a huge population of Muslim people and Eastern Europeans as well, and they tend to shop in their own area's and ignore the city centre if they can at all possibly do so. Plus also a lot of them are on the City council and they tend not to vote for anything unless they have a direct say in the proceedings...eg. the Sporting Village at Odsal.(or get something out of the votes for their own community).look at all the Mosques going up and the Churches coming down..I wonder if that means the indegineous people are moving out and leaving a vacumn behind to be filled with other Non-Bradfordian people who are moving in? Anyway, I hope I've not ruffled too many feathers by this..I do wonder about the Sporting Village though, Maybe never built? hope it is one day soon..but will not hold my breath about it..

Well, my tent never looked like that

Bradford City Centre is a dump that's why nobody was going to the German Market, simple. Also the loyal shoppers that did go to Bradford have lost patience and go elsewhere, e.g. Halifax, Huddersfield, Leeds. Bradford City Centre would have to do something radical at the very least to have a small chance. Personally I do not think Bradford City Centre has a future and my opinion will get worse. I do not like saying that been from Bradford but it would be hard to prove me wrong. Only thing I could suggest to the people who run Bradford are to be realistic. For example: Westfield: Why build a massive shopping centre when there wasn't demand for that many shops on the 'old' Broadway anyway and that a lot of focus has transferred to Forster Square Retail Park.

Fair point. I always think of them as giant halls or cellars where Nazi's plot to overthrow the Weimar Republic.

German Chistmas Market?

I would have pointed readers to the web site of CB Productions, the organisers, but understabably it went down today. But managed to print out all of it.

"CB Productions is a leading German Market Organiser who is interested in staging a large Traditional German Market in a major UK town or city"

Its pantomime season again folks.

Ta Ra !! enter Bradford Council as the naive unwordly Jack. Yes I'll swap

my valuable cow for a magic bean.

Abe Lincoln said that you may deceive all of the people part of the time, and part of the people all of the time, but not all of the people all of the time.

150 years later we have to add - but you [umight[/u deceive all of a council all of the time.



The selling blurb that the Council seemed to believe was that the market would include: Wooden carved nut crackers, Hand knitted garments made from home spun yarns, lambskin shoes, Hot chestnuts, Apple dumplings, Hand twisted pretzels, Blown glassware balls for trees, Gingerbread biscuits know as lebkuchen and another 21 exotic examples.



The Entertainment would be : Magicians, UM-PA bands, Folk singers, Face painting, Brass bands, Mime artists, Classical musicians, Hand bell ringers, Children's entertainers, Local school choirs, Carol singers. and a few more.



The Booking Terms for stalls incuded : "All products offered for sale are to be authentic and traditional i.e. hand made Christmas decorations, hand crafted toys, woollen ski hats, traditional winter clothing and food products.

Mass-produced items will not be accepted"

We have to be careful that a sound argument and analysis of the plight facing Bradford does not descend into racism or xenophobia. so here is my tuppence worth:

Bradford centre, and some of the surroundong areas, have always been a place where the latest immigrant populations live. as they become prosperous, they move to the suburbs, leaving the cheapest (or most undesirable properties open, whichever way you want to look at it).At least for the last 150 years or so anyway. Irish Catholics came to the city during the great famine. they brought the Catholic CHurch back to Bradford and lived mainly in the slum areas. Look at where ST MAry's, St PAt's and St Joseph's churches are. now mainly asian areas and two of them no longer used as churches.

The german traders came over at the height of the textile trade adn therefore we have a German church and a synagogue located near the Alhambra, and Manningham respectively. Both are threatened with closure, as people have dispersed. between the wars and immediatley after the war, people fled the Soviet communist threat. Peoples from Ukraine, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and HUngary came over, worked mainly in the mills in Manningham and other industrial areas. they built churches and social clubs, which are just about surviving as their numbers fall as the first generation pass away and their kids move away.

People from commonwealth nations were invited here after the war to rebuild the countries economy, so we have large communities from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, from the Caribbean etc... again, ing on industry in the poorest housing in the least desirable areas, and building their places of worship and cultural centres.

this cycle continues today as people flee Iran and Iraq. and our involvment in the EU allows unlimited numbers in from other states. The poorer EU country's citizens are now here, Czechs, Slovaks and Rumanians. the only problem now is that the jobs for these people do not exist, and the black market method of trading and illegal activity is rife. Have a look at courtfile in the T&A and you will see that most of the cases dealt with by the magistrates courts involve non-indigenous people and cars. be it no license, no insurance or wahtever. Times are changing indeed, but blaming it on the asian originated population (most Bradford Asians were born in Bradford, or at least the UK) is wrong.

Wakefield's christmas market run by the same company as the one in Bradford has also been closed early after claims that it only sold utter tat and wasn't German at all. It seems to me that CB Productions have a flawed approach to these markets. news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west ... 405412.stm

Wakefield's christmas market run by the same company as the one in Bradford has also been closed early after claims that it only sold utter tat and wasn't German at all. It seems to me that CB Productions have a flawed approach to these markets. news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west ... 405412.stm

I was in town on Saturday. I thought it was quiet for what is supposed to be the peak shopping day before xmas.

It was more like a normal saturday really.

The main problem for the market I think was simply the lack of numbers of shoppers in the town centre. That is because half the shops have closed down and most of the goods ones are long gone.



I was in Greenwich yesterday and on a wednesday afternoon it was jam packed with shoppers and the little market there was doing a good trade. I know it's London and so obviously busier but even mid-week it was way better than we will see in Bradford until we get some decent shops

Agreed Andrea. That`s why, though I`m as exasperated as the next person, I really hope the Westfield scheme eventually comes to fruition. The odd new shop, however good, isn`t going to generate the level of business to be sustainable, simply because there isn`t the footfall to create profit. Even worse, the footfall that is there is largely looking for the first `pound shop` to re-incarnate as a 99p shop. A big new centre, with all the publicity that is certain to surround it, will give the rest of the city centre a chance by bringing new shoppers with (hopefully) new attitudes.



Sadly, it will only be of use if the current traders take the opportunity (if it ever arrives, and there must be serious doubt there) to collectively up their game. Sad to say, but years of simply trying to sell tat a bit more cheaply than the next trader tends to become ingrained in both shoppers and traders.

Was in London yesterday and on the Thames embankment there was another German market next to the London Eye and it was utterly heaving (bloody pricey too!!) I bet they will be glad they didn't choose Bradford or Wakey then..



Bought some good stuff, but way too expensive...

Once again though note the differences in response between Wakefield and Bradford..



Wakefield quite happy to close it down and complain about it and give honest opinion.



Bradford council paper over the cracks and blame it on the weather.

I agree just look at what the krauts have driven us to. We have enough markets dyeing out in Britain without importing foreign ones!!!

i ddislike der Schnitt Ihres Gib



war der Markt zwar Müll

...and apologise.

To be fair you've got your own back. You nicked the entire city of Danzig off them!

Treaty of Warsaw says otherwise init!

Presumably the treaty doesn't say it wasn't nabbed, it just seeks to legtimise it.



On a procedural point - are we allowed to drift off-topic within the confines of an off-topic post?

It might mention that it was called the Royal Polish City of Danzig for several hundred years prior to Germany's existence.

Gdańsk (not "Danzig"icon_wink.gif always was and is essentially Polish. Danzig is a decent group and the eponyomous lead singer has a good rock voice.

Supported Metallica in Bradford in the late eighties. They were bottled off.



The Misfits, on the otherhand, were awesome.

Not quite true. Danzig or Gdańsk, however you wish to spell it, was part of the German empire from the later 19th century until the end of the second world war, when it was given to Poland as part of the reparations. Sadly (?) I`ve not heard the group so can`t comment!

Is that a paradox?



Back to the german market why didn't they have it in Little germany?