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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Flotsam and jetsam. Britain’s quiet coastal disaster
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Flotsam and jetsam. Britain’s quiet coastal disaster
They say that if the outer 50 kilometres of Australia were to fall into the sea, the population of that island continent would drop by 85%. Britain doesn’t have the large hinterland that Australia possesses, but if Britain were to be attacked by a giant cookie cutter from space, it’s not at all clear that some of the places crimped off would get any less attention than before.
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I have no idea what the answer is but let's hope a way forward can be found to improve our coastal towns and the lives of people who live there.
Thank you for making me think.
- Isn't some of depressing awfulness of some seaside places due to the cheap accommodation in the 1980s and 1990s encouraging various types of er - disadvantaged people - drug users and so on - to make their homes there?
- Decline is reversible. If Margate - Margate ?! can become a destination, then anywhere can.
If I had 50 million quid, I would buy up Weymouth, and open boutique hotels and fine restaurants.
How much of this is the "local population" and how much of it is people with existing problems being encouraged by service providers to relocate there as a kind of cheap dumping ground e.g. I believe Weston Super Mare is where a lot of problematic individuals from Bristol have been encouraged to go.
At a time when housing is the number one issue, I doubt this will happen. In fact, I think the pressure to export problem people to these places is only going to grow.
Interesting piece, nonetheless.
Perhaps in 50 years Great Yarmouth will have the same climate as Magaluf and Blackpool will become Ibiza?
Meanwhile those Mediterranean reports become like north African deserts...
The incomers are not just retired people, although this is a major factor. It is younger people working part time in London and at home for the rest of the week. They are also bringing their kids here. It is having a major gentrifying effect as tenants in newly desirable areas move out as the landlords flog the properties they live in to starry eyed newcomers, and the house prices go up accordingly.
Of course, the underlying problems social problems remain, which is poor employment, troubled families etc. All this becomes apparent after a few months. Then you start to wonder if you really want to send your kid to the local school, with the mums outside the gate looking like they are all skag addicts. Hmm.
Indeed it is a combination of the 2. Availability of cheap B and B accommodation (might as well be a smackhead by the sea), and a lack of any realistic employment opportunities for the well-qualiffied, motivated locals leading to a brain drain.
It is interesting to compare and contrast with ex-mining regions. Those within relatively easy reach of cities have benefitted from plentiful cheaper housing and are doing well. Those that aren't are locked in a similar death spiral of paucity of opportunities leading to a drain of population and talent.
Have to say places like Portsmouth and Southampton seem to do well - the latter has found a niche as a major cruise terminal which provides considerable local employment for much of the year.
Elsewhere, it's interesting to see St Ives leading the way in opposing "second home" purchases of any new housing. The extent to which this will aid the huge problems local people have in obtaining accommodation they can afford remains to be seen but it's as much a signal that the indigenous population fears the soul of the town being eaten away.
Go down to St Ives at New Year and the place is full and buzzing but by January 5th it's a ghost town and Downlong is almost deserted day and night as so many of the properties are holiday lets.
Along the south coast, at least, accommodation isn't cheap and there are two additional problems. First, if you're rootless and homeless, it makes sense to move to where the weather is a bit warmer, and then you run into the problem that local councils will only help you to get back 'home' & not help you into accommodation once you're there. Second, the constant drain on local council resources made by having to fund OAP tourists' bus travel.
Even if none of the major parties is brave enough to tackle OAPs perks outright, they surely could take a step in the right direction by reducing the bus pass to local council area only.
Good evening, everybody. (I hope this is the real new thread.)
Anyway, wrt the article, depresisng stuff, but somewhat familiar. There are a number of towns or small villages in Scotland like that, once seaside vacation spots, now they die slowly.
I might add other inland areas face worse problems; for instance some Welsh ex-mining areas, which do not even have the advantage of good scenery and sea views.
Yet as you point out, the decline can be reversed. Some places are doing good things, and there must be studies somewhere out there that outline what the successful ones are doing compared to the unsuccessful ones.
Which seems like a good idea on a number of levels.
edit: It was Blackpool, not Brighton. I was only a few hundred miles out ...
Further edit: It isn't the TV segment, but here's an article:
https://www.blackpoolgazette.co.uk/news/26m-project-is-turning-derelict-blackpool-hotels-into-new-homes-1-9040103
http://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-us-canada-43706880
Hastings was used to house London problem families over 30 years ago, burdened by poor road and rail links. It was one of the SE's unemployment blackspots, almost on a par with the Isle of Sheppey and the Medway Towns.
https://skwawkbox.org/2018/04/09/uk-firms-sold-nerve-agent-components-to-syria/
But weirdly when you click on the link listed on that Fake News site you don't get the report they claim (and it is talking about events from 4 years ago).
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-28212724
The chemicals mentioned were sold back in the 1980s, when it was all too easy for dodgy countries to buy them - there simply wasn't much in the way of export controls.
But you keep reading the mentalist Corbyn sites, and I will keep pointing out when it is bullshit they are peddling.
https://twitter.com/ToryFibs/status/983781300069982210
https://twitter.com/chrisgreybrexit/status/983425043324723202?s=21
How do you always find links from known liars and nutters.
https://www.greater.sydney/three-cities
FU FU
It is a misleading claim and also now a totally mute point. Just like Jezza's, let all talk about a cease-fire.
Where as, Dr Eoin Clarke has made claim after claim after claim where people have had to start legal action against him and he has had to make massive apologies for printing absolute lies. He is another well known bullshit artist.
There are good honest people on the left, who only trade in facts, why not stick to them.
The modern economy requires critical mass above everything else. This is why London does so well at so many things. Coastal towns are too often too small and too remote. It’s odd. The internet should make distance less of an issue but it doesn’t. Humans are funny beasts. We feed off each other.
Its also wrong (if I was less charitable I would say 'lying'): "Because in 2014, the UK was revealed to be selling the components used in the manufacture of Sarin – to the Syrians:"
That is wrong. It had been revealed that the UK had sold the components. 'Selling' makes it seem as though the sales were ongoing, instead of being historic.
Seriously
Sea, yes. Not sure about the other two.
John Woodcock under pressure from Labour members over Jeremy Corbyn criticism
https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/political-parties/labour-party/news/94269/john-woodcock-under-pressure-labour-members-over
This is a man who outright stated he could not countenance Corbyn as PM, even as he went into a GE campaign. Who did they think they were getting?
There be cannibals up North !
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-shropshire-43701700
"Hague revealed that the exports included several hundred tonnes of the chemical dimethyl phosphite (DMP) in 1983 and a further export of several hundred tonnes in 1985; several hundred tonnes of trimethyl phosphite (TMP) in 1986; and a quantity of hydrogen fluoride (HF) in 1986 through a third country."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/08/could-britain-have-sold-sarin-chemicals-assad-syria
"Cornwall is one of the poorest areas in the United Kingdom with a GVA of 70.9% of the national average in 2015." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Cornwall
But there's some nice Potemkin villages for the tourists.
"The Presidents sex life is strictly off limits. What kind of Puritan weirdo are you?"
"Obviously the functioning of the FISA courts is of public interest and should be investigated"
"Investigations into Presidents should be strictly narrowed to the original matter"
"States have no rights to contest Federal Immigration policy"
"The Presidents past business dealings are completely irrelevant"
etc etc.
A fun point that a cousin in the US (Democrat since Aldi Stevenson) raised - since the FBI found that those wacky Russians were using Facebook to push support for Black Lives Matter, did they take the next, logical (in a J Edgar Hoover logical) step? Apply for some warrants to tap phones/email relating to Black Lives Matter.....
"All these chemicals have legitimate uses, for example in the manufacture of plastics and pharmaceuticals."
I am glad I don't do twitter, countering the Fake News BS put out by the likes of Eoin Clarke must be super tiring....and hence why they get away with so much of it.
There was some conflict in the CLP before the election pretty much a continuation of that.
As to the other little argument Order order and skwakbox are both biased and both as legitimate as each other. I've read both but I always like to check out different angles on what they are saying. Although that goes for almost all news sources anyway.
Your move.
I have been surprised by the complete absence of any attempt by or on behalf of Facebook to turn the attacks on it into a First Amendment issue; it is fairly easy to imagine a dystopia where the government strikes down anything on the web which it doesn't like on the grounds that it must be the work of a Russian netbot.
He notes that artificial intelligence can already detect most Islamist extremist content, but other offensive posts are only reacted to after a user has complained to the company.
"Hate speech, I am optimistic, that over a five- to 10-year period we will have AI [artificial intelligence] tools that can get into some of the linguistic nuances of different types of content to be more accurate in flagging things for our systems.
"But today we're just not there on that.
http://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-us-canada-43706880
One of the organisations that contacted me is actually in a contractual relationship with me and wanted my consent to continue processing my data in relation to that contract. Again, entirely unnecessary.
Consent is the weakest reason for processing data. It places tighter limits on what you can do with the data, requires greater record keeping (to show when and how the subject consented) and gives the subject most rights. The general advice is that you should only use this reason if none of the others is available. And yet a lot of people are behaving as if consent is needed for everything. It isn't. Hence my comment to DavidL on the last thread. I'm pretty sure that the processing he is talking about (solicitors and barristers) is covered under one of the other justifications for processing and therefore consent is not required.
It should be remembered that Blackpool has long diversified out of depending on 'sun, sea and sand' with such things as the illuminations and pleasure beach.
And as others have pointed out the 'gentrification' of seaside towns such as Padstow does not necessarily help the local people.
As both holiday times and spending power was much less in previous generations and centuries I wonder if the likes of Blackpool were ever really affluent - perhaps they looked better because they were much closer to their construction than they are now. In much the same way that so many 1930s housing developments now look so much more run down than they did only twenty years ago.
The TV keep showing the replays for the offside 'goal' when it's one of the clearest offside you'll ever get. The goalkeeper and 9 other players were a long gap behind the goalscorer. It shouldn't be news that you need 2 defenders for it not to be offside.
The thing you are missing is the shift from the concept of universality of rights to the concept of rights for groups. Hence the banging on about removing First Amendment protection from corporations etc etc.
The vision certain people have of the future is exactly what you describe - Proper People Decieding what is Free Speech and What is Hate Speech.
I always wanted to see a film made about a certain politician who used such hateful speech that wherever he went there were riots. Many died. He even published a book on knife fighting based on his killing several people in such riots. Five points for who is was....
At the end of the day, being beside the sea is a nice place to be. I have a soft spot for Portsmouth, Bournemouth and even Plymouth, which I prefer to Exeter, and visit not infrequently. My wife and I take our Winter breaks in North Devon, and we both like heading out to Barnstaple.
Sure, there are places that have their challenges - Ilfracombe, Weston, Hastings, Great Yarmouth and Barrow - but there are also those that are the next Whitby, Dartmouth,Scarborough, Whitstable or St Ives. Even Eastbourne has started to turn a corner recently, and I think the Isle of Wight is a hidden gem. Ventnor and Shanklin are amongst my favourite places, and almost (rather bizarrely given their proximity to London) totally off the map.
I think the solution is a bit of regeneration money, better transport connections, a few foodie choices, some tax breaks, and a decent marketing and tourism drive. Also, in all honesty, a few entrepreneurs willing to invest and take a punt too: you need some clever thinking to carry over the Winter months where the seaside can still be charming, but quiet.
What makes my wife and I choose a minibreak by the sea is a good quality B&B or hotel (not a 70s boarding house) with some good atmosphere pubs or fresh seafood restaurants, a place that frankly doesn’t look grotty, and a few things to see in the local area.
It really is as simple as that.
Probably doesn’t matter now though.
Roma 2-0 Barcelona 3-4 agg
It might be significant that the failing seaside towns are concentrated in SE England plus Blackpool.
Those in Yorkshire and the North-East seem to be doing better.
http://personofinterest.wikia.com/wiki/Samaritan
The problem with making the UK less London centric is that people are much less inclined to be mobile. While there are some jobs in Bournemouth, when you want to move jobs every 5 years or so (pretty standard in modern white collar work)......
Those in Yorkshire, Lancashire and the Midlands are centrally located and are on communication routes and so have been able to attract new investment and/or become bases for commuting.
The more isolated coalfields in South Wales, Scotland and the North-East have greater difficulties.