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From Times Online
July 4, 2008

Hazel Blears comments on Salford's Chimney Pot Park

Hazel Blears, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, as a child in A Taste of Honey

Where I grew up

Hazel Bears recalls: “Some of these sorts of terraces were very badly built, with thin walls, outside toilets and tin baths. They were not exactly the best places in which to live, though there can be a case of rose-tinted glasses when it comes to them. When my grandmother's terraced house was demolished, she went to the 12th floor of a multistorey block. In the early days she loved it: she had a bathroom for the first time in her life, she had central heating, she had a view out over the city. Later on, when the tower blocks got rough, it was different.

”My mum and dad had two choices: go to an overspill council estate or really, really try to save up a deposit for a house. My mum had three jobs at one stage to do this. When you do a wholesale slum clearance - and our house did get cleared - you lose communities.”

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