Last updated 11:39, Friday, 11 July 2008

My word, Carlisle has taken some low body blows lately. Visitors and locals alike have been uncommonly vociferous in their criticism of our poor old city; depressingly pessimistic about her future revival prospects.

Carlisle: Visitors and locals alike have been vocal in their criticism recently

Poorer than some, not quite so poor as others but certainly very old, Carlisle has been found wanting by correspondents to this and our sister papers. Visitors to Cumbria’s social, retail and commercial focal point have described the city variously as disgusting, drunken, dirty, unwelcoming and crumbling. Ouch!

There’s nowt so painful as a slap around the cheeks of one of your own. And while it might not always be true that home is where the heart is, the heart usually leans towards where home is made. Can we leap to the defence of the disgusting, drunken and crumbling? Well, yes actually. We can’t easily help it when that crumbling place is somewhere we call home – which never feels disgusting.

In addition to the grumbles of strangers, youngsters who live here have been casting their own critical eyes over Carlisle and concluding there’s nothing much for them here; nothing to do beyond hanging around the public library – which to a teenager must 10 times worse than doing nothing at all. I know octogenarians who have better times than that in bus shelters.

Gloomy times all round then – unless you’re a county council worker looking forward to a new bike. And it’s raining. Things just get worse.

We shouldn’t be too dispirited, of course. Pessimism is very ageing. Wrinkles come with dwelling on only the worst of things. The road to youthful loveliness is paved with reasons to be cheerful about the place we call home.

In his letter to us J.S. Sheldon, from Torquay, said we needed to get our act together, we in Carlisle needed to tell our council to pull its finger out, attack dereliction of once lovely areas. He asked: “Doesn’t anyone care in Carlisle?”

In another, J Bell, of Grange Over Sands said: “We visited Carlisle, the alleged great historic city, over the weekend.We were disgusted.”

All right, OK, we get the message. But we prefer to believe that all is not lost. You might have great toffee in Devon and a quirky lack of sea in Grange but here in Carlisle we have strength of character, sausage cook-offs, the ability to make matters worse without even trying, a knack for shooing away shiny new airports, leaving theatres to rot and simultaneously closing all routes into and out of our city for roadworks, right through the summer when visitors might like to come here to be disgusted. But hey – that’s what we call home.

Relatively new to this neck of the woods, I’m advised by the wiser born and bred, good things do happen in Carlisle. It’s just they take a couple of decades to materialise. And I’m prepared to believe it. Resistance to rushed change is a symptom of deep affection.

But change is surely afoot. Backlash to the potential loss of aforementioned shiny new airport is almost deafening. Impatience for regeneration is mounting and pride in heritage is genetic. Visitors with an aversion to blockading barriers on Botchergate might see more if they looked beyond the immediate and superficial to find a compact, historic city that’s really rather beautiful – when it stops raining – and is especially welcoming, whatever the weather.

MPs complained this week that generally foreign tourists received a poor welcome wherever they visited in the UK. Customary British reserve was being taken as poor customer service and ignorance by foreign visitors more used to warmth and hospitality.

John Whittingdale, MP told the Government’s culture, media and sport committee: “Tourism is one of the UK’s most important industries and yet it has been consistently sidelined by the government, if not ignored. Its most recent decision to cut the budget of VisitBritain by nearly 20 per cent seems extraordinary.”

It does, he’s right. But the cutting of public expenditure on anything that matters (promoting tourism for instance) in favour of spending on things that don’t (BBC executive salaries and MPs’ shopping lists) is very much the way of the credit-crunched world. Not extraordinary at all.

That kind of thinking changes only where there’s a will for change and a spirit of aspiration for something better than the unsatisfactory norm. In Torquay, Grange and the public library, they can say what they like about Carlisle and Cumbria but there’s no denying the presence of spirit, will for change and eagerness to show off the best of everything.

A few bob from a government minded to help make something happen in fewer than 20 years – in the interests of an economy reliant on tourism – would be nice, of course. But since we know miracles can take a little longer, we’ll hold no breath while smiling a welcome to guests – and directing them to attractions other than the public library and bus shelters.