Of course Mandelson is in lockstep with Starmer. Not just Davey but much of PB were wildly off base yesterday.
I disagree. If it's a tactic then I don't think it's a smart one. If it's actual policy, then it's worse.
You may disagree but it’s current British strategy.
So which of the two is it ?
Like Mandelson has suggested, Britain wants Ukraine to sign the deal and agree a ceasefire.
It wants European peers to agree to ground troops, we are told to expect a few to announce their intentions this week.
And it wants the U.S. to provide air and intelligence cover.
It does *not* seem to agree with Macron’s call last night for a one month ceasefire, per briefings this morning, perhaps because a temporary arrangement doesn’t really commit anybody to anything substantive.
Spending all that sterling on foreign holidays. We need to bring back the £50 limit. Best thing we could do for the UK economy, even Brexit-by-Sea towns - especially them.
Spending all that sterling on foreign holidays. We need to bring back the £50 limit. Best thing we could do for the UK economy, even Brexit-by-Sea towns - especially them.
Or we could try something really extreme. Like making them nicer places.
Spending all that sterling on foreign holidays. We need to bring back the £50 limit. Best thing we could do for the UK economy, even Brexit-by-Sea towns - especially them.
Or we could try something really extreme. Like making them nicer places.
Very funny just about the entire PB corpus denounced Mandy when he first made his announcement saying what a ****, what an idiot, he's mad someone should rein him in.
And just about the entire PB corpus is now saying well of course what he's been saying is part of the government's master plan.
Soz but you lot are such idiots.
Not me, I've not changed my mind. Mandy should be pulled up.
Agreed. And if it is Government policy then they are idiots. Trump cannot be trusted and we ned to stop relying on the US to solve things for us.
All Trump will register is "Top Brit calls for Ukrainians to give up".
Spending all that sterling on foreign holidays. We need to bring back the £50 limit. Best thing we could do for the UK economy, even Brexit-by-Sea towns - especially them.
Or we could try something really extreme. Like making them nicer places.
Yes, but bigger policy changes than a lick of paint might be needed to revive the British seaside holiday.
Spending all that sterling on foreign holidays. We need to bring back the £50 limit. Best thing we could do for the UK economy, even Brexit-by-Sea towns - especially them.
Or we could try something really extreme. Like making them nicer places.
That's where the money comes from.
#genius
No. That’s a receipe for people doing staycations. Or booking #airbnbs wherever upsets the most locals.
I’ve been reading “Embers of War” (or listening mainly on Audible) - a monumental history of south east Asia (mainly Vietnam) from the early 20th century to the American war - ie the entire history of the French empire there, and its fall
Despite the intense depth and dryness it manages to be fascinating. For multiple reasons
One of them is the uncannily weird echo of the debate today. It’s all about Russia and China destabilising the world as desired by the west. The three major western powers are the USA, the UK, and France
America is puissant and commanding yet capricious even nervous. Has to deal with isolationist voters
Britain is a pivotal power despite being weak, and wary of American wilfulness. France is prideful but petulant and at times shockingly needy (Dien Ben Phu - I had no idea the French BEGGED America to help)
France is resentful of the “commonwealth bloc”: UK plus Oz and NZ
Spending all that sterling on foreign holidays. We need to bring back the £50 limit. Best thing we could do for the UK economy, even Brexit-by-Sea towns - especially them.
Spending all that sterling on foreign holidays. We need to bring back the £50 limit. Best thing we could do for the UK economy, even Brexit-by-Sea towns - especially them.
Or we could try something really extreme. Like making them nicer places.
Yes, but bigger policy changes than a lick of paint might be needed to revive the British seaside holiday.
Drop nukes on them
“The town is now a radioactive wasteland inhabited by malevolent zombie revenants. So property prices have tripled.”
Of course Mandelson is in lockstep with Starmer. Not just Davey but much of PB were wildly off base yesterday.
I disagree. If it's a tactic then I don't think it's a smart one. If it's actual policy, then it's worse.
You may disagree but it’s current British strategy.
So which of the two is it ?
Like Mandelson has suggested, Britain wants Ukraine to sign the deal and agree a ceasefire.
It wants European peers to agree to ground troops, we are told to expect a few to announce their intentions this week.
And it wants the U.S. to provide air and intelligence cover.
It does *not* seem to agree with Macron’s call last night for a one month ceasefire, per briefings this morning, perhaps because a temporary arrangement doesn’t really commit anybody to anything substantive.
Adapt and relish, not endure. Swap lager for ye olde bitter, salads for hearty pies, flat for the jumps. cotton flimsies for the battered waxy Barbour and a proper cap. Nobody is really British if they recoil from all of this.
Spending all that sterling on foreign holidays. We need to bring back the £50 limit. Best thing we could do for the UK economy, even Brexit-by-Sea towns - especially them.
Why are British seaside towns so shite when their (northern) French and indeed New England equivalents are not?
We begin our analysis with a simple observation - that the decline in UK electricity availability, which started in 2006, coincided with the start of structural weakness in UK productivity growth
Conversely, American growth in the last ten years or so appears to be strongly correlated with the discovery of abundant gas etc.
The UK has the highest domestic energy prices in the developed world, an entrenched culture against capital investment, and planning policies that make development almost impossible.
It also spent 2016 onwards putting tariffs on its main trading partner.
We really need to stop asking why the British economy has been toileted.
Spending all that sterling on foreign holidays. We need to bring back the £50 limit. Best thing we could do for the UK economy, even Brexit-by-Sea towns - especially them.
Or we could try something really extreme. Like making them nicer places.
Folkestone is making an effort. Shame about the bits they've missed though.
Spending all that sterling on foreign holidays. We need to bring back the £50 limit. Best thing we could do for the UK economy, even Brexit-by-Sea towns - especially them.
I’ve been reading “Embers of War” (or listening mainly on Audible) - a monumental history of south east Asia (mainly Vietnam) from the early 20th century to the American war - ie the entire history of the French empire there, and its fall
Despite the intense depth and dryness it manages to be fascinating. For multiple reasons
One of them is the uncannily weird echo of the debate today. It’s all about Russia and China destabilising the world as desired by the west. The three major western powers are the USA, the UK, and France
America is puissant and commanding yet capricious even nervous. Has to deal with isolationist voters
Britain is a pivotal power despite being weak, and wary of American wilfulness. France is prideful but petulant and at times shockingly needy (Dien Ben Phu - I had no idea the French BEGGED America to help)
France is resentful of the “commonwealth bloc”: UK plus Oz and NZ
Vietnam ends up being partitioned…. At first….
Vietnam not only took on the US, they also saw off China in 79. Not sure they can do anything about the South China Sea now though - but you never know.
I’ve been reading “Embers of War” (or listening mainly on Audible) - a monumental history of south east Asia (mainly Vietnam) from the early 20th century to the American war - ie the entire history of the French empire there, and its fall
Despite the intense depth and dryness it manages to be fascinating. For multiple reasons
One of them is the uncannily weird echo of the debate today. It’s all about Russia and China destabilising the world as desired by the west. The three major western powers are the USA, the UK, and France
America is puissant and commanding yet capricious even nervous. Has to deal with isolationist voters
Britain is a pivotal power despite being weak, and wary of American wilfulness. France is prideful but petulant and at times shockingly needy (Dien Ben Phu - I had no idea the French BEGGED America to help)
France is resentful of the “commonwealth bloc”: UK plus Oz and NZ
Vietnam ends up being partitioned…. At first….
The amount of US aid France received to maintain what was fairly obviously an indefensible (in both moral and practical terms) colony after WWII is fairly breathtaking.
Arguably their single biggest foreign policy mistake in the immediate postwar decade.
Spending all that sterling on foreign holidays. We need to bring back the £50 limit. Best thing we could do for the UK economy, even Brexit-by-Sea towns - especially them.
Why are British seaside towns so shite when their (northern) French and indeed New England equivalents are not?
Weather
They used to be nice (go look at old photos of seaside resorts). Some of them were genuinely lovely
But there’s nothing you can do about shite rainy British summers and as soon as the British realised they could fly quite cheaply to Benidorm (and then beyond) for guaranteed sun - and often cheaper - the middle classes and then all classes abandoned them
Seaside resorts in.northern France suffer from the same weather (albeit somewhat better) but they benefit from superior French urbanism - the French don’t destroy historic town centres and they still support high street shops
Of course Mandelson is in lockstep with Starmer. Not just Davey but much of PB were wildly off base yesterday.
I disagree. If it's a tactic then I don't think it's a smart one. If it's actual policy, then it's worse.
You may disagree but it’s current British strategy.
So which of the two is it ?
Like Mandelson has suggested, Britain wants Ukraine to sign the deal and agree a ceasefire.
It wants European peers to agree to ground troops, we are told to expect a few to announce their intentions this week.
And it wants the U.S. to provide air and intelligence cover.
It does *not* seem to agree with Macron’s call last night for a one month ceasefire, per briefings this morning, perhaps because a temporary arrangement doesn’t really commit anybody to anything substantive.
Spending all that sterling on foreign holidays. We need to bring back the £50 limit. Best thing we could do for the UK economy, even Brexit-by-Sea towns - especially them.
Why are British seaside towns so shite when their (northern) French and indeed New England equivalents are not?
Weather
They used to be nice (go look at old photos of seaside resorts). Some of them were genuinely lovely
But there’s nothing you can do about shite rainy British summers and as soon as the British realised they could fly quite cheaply to Benidorm (and then beyond) for guaranteed sun - and often cheaper - the middle classes and then all classes abandoned them
Seaside resorts in.northern France suffer from the same weather (albeit somewhat better) but they benefit from superior French urbanism - the French don’t destroy historic town centres and they still support high street shops
Agree, but my point was to compare them with similarly inclement peers.
Anyway, you’ve kind of answered the question which is simply that the UK munted most of its towns and cities with terrible development policies, and then, from Thatcher onwards, basically gave up investing at all.
All of local government in the UK now is a disability care program with a council attached.
God knows what this does to voter feelings of “agency”.
It’s notable that even in tax-hating America, local townships are better maintained and even have services that have long been abandoned in the UK.
We begin our analysis with a simple observation - that the decline in UK electricity availability, which started in 2006, coincided with the start of structural weakness in UK productivity growth
Our energy prices reflect global/European price developments, not relative supply and demand in the UK. Energy consumption has gone down because energy efficiency has gone up. LED light bulbs etc. Of course energy consumption and GDP per capita are positively correlated. That tells us nothing about causation. The rise in real energy prices predated the drop in productivity growth by four years. Apart from that, very convincing. This is pretty low grade analysis.
We begin our analysis with a simple observation - that the decline in UK electricity availability, which started in 2006, coincided with the start of structural weakness in UK productivity growth
Our energy prices reflect global/European price developments, not relative supply and demand in the UK. Energy consumption has gone down because energy efficiency has gone up. LED light bulbs etc. Of course energy consumption and GDP per capita are positively correlated. That tells us nothing about causation. The rise in real energy prices predated the drop in productivity growth by four years. Apart from that, very convincing. This is pretty low grade analysis.
Not so fast. Much of that late 2000s growth was a finance sector bubble.
Then the tide went out and the abilty of the UK economy to pick up the slack elsewhere seemed permanently impaired.
Adapt and relish, not endure. Swap lager for ye olde bitter, salads for hearty pies, flat for the jumps. cotton flimsies for the battered waxy Barbour and a proper cap. Nobody is really British if they recoil from all of this.
No, British winters are shit and only hapless cowards stay and suffer them
And let’s face it there is nothing MORE British than haring off around the world drinking gin and conquering bad snacks
I’m the kind of Briton that forged the EMPIRE, if it had been left to effete types like you we’d have been conquered by Belgium
Spending all that sterling on foreign holidays. We need to bring back the £50 limit. Best thing we could do for the UK economy, even Brexit-by-Sea towns - especially them.
Why are British seaside towns so shite when their (northern) French and indeed New England equivalents are not?
Compalcency.
Northern French resorts had to be good, becasue they were in competition with southern French resorts.
British resorts could get away with being a bit rubbish because, for a long time, people couldn't go anywhere else. Then, all of a sudden, package holidays by plane were invented and the bottom fell out of the market. For a while, the thing to do was to milk the cash cow as it died, and then it did.
So basically the same problem as every other aspect of British life.
Adapt and relish, not endure. Swap lager for ye olde bitter, salads for hearty pies, flat for the jumps. cotton flimsies for the battered waxy Barbour and a proper cap. Nobody is really British if they recoil from all of this.
No, British winters are shit and only hapless cowards stay and suffer them
And let’s face it there is nothing MORE British than haring off around the world drinking gin and conquering bad snacks
I’m the kind of Briton that forged the EMPIRE, if it had been left to effete types like you we’d have been conquered by Belgium
Adapt and relish, not endure. Swap lager for ye olde bitter, salads for hearty pies, flat for the jumps. cotton flimsies for the battered waxy Barbour and a proper cap. Nobody is really British if they recoil from all of this.
No, British winters are shit and only hapless cowards stay and suffer them
And let’s face it there is nothing MORE British than haring off around the world drinking gin and conquering bad snacks
I’m the kind of Briton that forged the EMPIRE, if it had been left to effete types like you we’d have been conquered by Belgium
One's country isn't pick and mix. It's a package deal. Good times, bad times, fair weather and foul. You love your country like a husband loves his wife who leaves her when she needs care.
Spending all that sterling on foreign holidays. We need to bring back the £50 limit. Best thing we could do for the UK economy, even Brexit-by-Sea towns - especially them.
Why are British seaside towns so shite when their (northern) French and indeed New England equivalents are not?
Compalcency.
Northern French resorts had to be good, becasue they were in competition with southern French resorts.
British resorts could get away with being a bit rubbish because, for a long time, people couldn't go anywhere else. Then, all of a sudden, package holidays by plane were invented and the bottom fell out of the market. For a while, the thing to do was to milk the cash cow as it died, and then it did.
So basically the same problem as every other aspect of British life.
I think much of British life is driven by the need of middle class people to distinguish themselves and get away from working class people.
Britain is very crowded, and maybe has the largest percentage of “urban proletarian” population in the world.
So businesses - and maybe even seaside resorts - have to pitch themselves either to a small upper middle class, but exclusivity is hard to maintain —- or to the ghastly mass market.
We begin our analysis with a simple observation - that the decline in UK electricity availability, which started in 2006, coincided with the start of structural weakness in UK productivity growth
Our energy prices reflect global/European price developments, not relative supply and demand in the UK. Energy consumption has gone down because energy efficiency has gone up. LED light bulbs etc. Of course energy consumption and GDP per capita are positively correlated. That tells us nothing about causation. The rise in real energy prices predated the drop in productivity growth by four years. Apart from that, very convincing. This is pretty low grade analysis.
It's correlation rather than causation.
S Korea has seen a similar trend in unit prices, but a 50% increase in generation over a similar period.
Did they just plan better, or was there simply more demand ?
Spending all that sterling on foreign holidays. We need to bring back the £50 limit. Best thing we could do for the UK economy, even Brexit-by-Sea towns - especially them.
Why are British seaside towns so shite when their (northern) French and indeed New England equivalents are not?
Weather
They used to be nice (go look at old photos of seaside resorts). Some of them were genuinely lovely
But there’s nothing you can do about shite rainy British summers and as soon as the British realised they could fly quite cheaply to Benidorm (and then beyond) for guaranteed sun - and often cheaper - the middle classes and then all classes abandoned them
Seaside resorts in.northern France suffer from the same weather (albeit somewhat better) but they benefit from superior French urbanism - the French don’t destroy historic town centres and they still support high street shops
Agree, but my point was to compare them with similarly inclement peers.
Anyway, you’ve kind of answered the question which is simply that the UK munted most of its towns and cities with terrible development policies, and then, from Thatcher onwards, basically gave up investing at all.
All of local government in the UK now is a disability care program with a council attached.
God knows what this does to voter feelings of “agency”.
It’s notable that even in tax-hating America, local townships are better maintained and even have services that have long been abandoned in the UK.
In the US, tax raising is localised. So a growing town and population means more tax to spend.
Same in France.
So the activist local Mayor model works. And the locals believe that more people = better, so are more likely to back development.
We begin our analysis with a simple observation - that the decline in UK electricity availability, which started in 2006, coincided with the start of structural weakness in UK productivity growth
Our energy prices reflect global/European price developments, not relative supply and demand in the UK. Energy consumption has gone down because energy efficiency has gone up. LED light bulbs etc. Of course energy consumption and GDP per capita are positively correlated. That tells us nothing about causation. The rise in real energy prices predated the drop in productivity growth by four years. Apart from that, very convincing. This is pretty low grade analysis.
Not so fast. Much of that late 2000s growth was a finance sector bubble.
Then the tide went out and the abilty of the UK economy to pick up the slack elsewhere seemed permanently impaired.
Yes but that supports the orthodox thesis this 'out of his box' leccy one from WG is challenging - that the GFC is the main root cause of our relative stagnation since. We had the biggest bubble hence suffered the biggest pop.
Spending all that sterling on foreign holidays. We need to bring back the £50 limit. Best thing we could do for the UK economy, even Brexit-by-Sea towns - especially them.
Why are British seaside towns so shite when their (northern) French and indeed New England equivalents are not?
Weather
They used to be nice (go look at old photos of seaside resorts). Some of them were genuinely lovely
But there’s nothing you can do about shite rainy British summers and as soon as the British realised they could fly quite cheaply to Benidorm (and then beyond) for guaranteed sun - and often cheaper - the middle classes and then all classes abandoned them
Seaside resorts in.northern France suffer from the same weather (albeit somewhat better) but they benefit from superior French urbanism - the French don’t destroy historic town centres and they still support high street shops
Agree, but my point was to compare them with similarly inclement peers.
Anyway, you’ve kind of answered the question which is simply that the UK munted most of its towns and cities with terrible development policies, and then, from Thatcher onwards, basically gave up investing at all.
All of local government in the UK now is a disability care program with a council attached.
God knows what this does to voter feelings of “agency”.
It’s notable that even in tax-hating America, local townships are better maintained and even have services that have long been abandoned in the UK.
In the US, tax raising is localised. So a growing town and population means more tax to spend.
Same in France.
So the activist local Mayor model works. And the locals believe that more people = better, so are more likely to back development.
The problem (in the US at least) is what happens when you get into a death spiral: people leave, meaning taxes need to rise and services are cut, therefore more people leave.
Adapt and relish, not endure. Swap lager for ye olde bitter, salads for hearty pies, flat for the jumps. cotton flimsies for the battered waxy Barbour and a proper cap. Nobody is really British if they recoil from all of this.
No, British winters are shit and only hapless cowards stay and suffer them
And let’s face it there is nothing MORE British than haring off around the world drinking gin and conquering bad snacks
I’m the kind of Briton that forged the EMPIRE, if it had been left to effete types like you we’d have been conquered by Belgium
I've had a splendid winter. So many of those cold, clear days. Sunrises and moonrises and snow and starry skies.
I'm certainly not the kind of Briton who'd have colonised India or the Caribbean. But I AM the kind of Briton who'd have colonised Canada.
Spending all that sterling on foreign holidays. We need to bring back the £50 limit. Best thing we could do for the UK economy, even Brexit-by-Sea towns - especially them.
Why are British seaside towns so shite when their (northern) French and indeed New England equivalents are not?
Compalcency.
Northern French resorts had to be good, becasue they were in competition with southern French resorts.
British resorts could get away with being a bit rubbish because, for a long time, people couldn't go anywhere else. Then, all of a sudden, package holidays by plane were invented and the bottom fell out of the market. For a while, the thing to do was to milk the cash cow as it died, and then it did.
So basically the same problem as every other aspect of British life.
I think much of British life is driven by the need of middle class people to distinguish themselves and get away from working class people.
Britain is very crowded, and maybe has the largest percentage of “urban proletarian” population in the world.
So businesses - and maybe even seaside resorts - have to pitch themselves either to a small upper middle class, but exclusivity is hard to maintain —- or to the ghastly mass market.
Both demographics now have better options.
It is patchy though. The Isle of Wight has rundown traditional resorts like Sandown, and parts of Ryde, but Bembridge and Yarmouth are more Chelsea on Sea, with a heavy Yachting presence too on the north coast, also very popular with dog owners. Ventnor has a beautiful setting with a mix of hipster gentrification and faded charity shops. There are tourist markets out there for British resorts.
Spending all that sterling on foreign holidays. We need to bring back the £50 limit. Best thing we could do for the UK economy, even Brexit-by-Sea towns - especially them.
Why are British seaside towns so shite when their (northern) French and indeed New England equivalents are not?
Thats a great question. Certainly I would point a finger of blame at the weather and cheap foreign alternatives to the UK being one reason for the British resorts failure. But why not in France? The weather is probably more reliably good, but are there fewer French who favour a trip to the Algarve or Majorca?
Spending all that sterling on foreign holidays. We need to bring back the £50 limit. Best thing we could do for the UK economy, even Brexit-by-Sea towns - especially them.
Why are British seaside towns so shite when their (northern) French and indeed New England equivalents are not?
Thats a great question. Certainly I would point a finger of blame at the weather and cheap foreign alternatives to the UK being one reason for the British resorts failure. But why not in France? The weather is probably more reliably good, but are there fewer French who favour a trip to the Algarve or Majorca?
There’s another geographical factor affecting the channel coasts. Geology, currents and longshore drift are such that vast amounts of fine golden sand piled up along the French and Low Countries side, while all the sand was scoured away from the English coast from roughly Portsmouth Eastwards, topped off by Wealden and London clay filling many of the gaps with mud.
Hence why British seasides get a lot more chichi from Sandbanks westwards, and likewise West from Cromer on the Norfolk coast. Posh coasts are easier with nice sand.
Comments
Ambassador to US rebuffed for saying Zelenskyy should give ‘unequivocal backing’ to Trump’s peace efforts
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/mar/03/peter-mandelson-ukraine-comments-not-government-policy-minister
Looks like it works very well in your case.
#genius
Tw@.
This site is hosted in the USA
I’ve been reading “Embers of War” (or listening mainly on Audible) - a monumental history of south east Asia (mainly Vietnam) from the early 20th century to the American war - ie the entire history of the French empire there, and its fall
Despite the intense depth and dryness it manages to be fascinating. For multiple reasons
One of them is the uncannily weird echo of the debate today. It’s all about Russia and China destabilising the world as desired by the west. The three major western powers are the USA, the UK, and France
America is puissant and commanding yet capricious even nervous. Has to deal with isolationist voters
Britain is a pivotal power despite being weak, and wary of American wilfulness. France is prideful but petulant and at times shockingly needy (Dien Ben Phu - I had no idea the French BEGGED America to help)
France is resentful of the “commonwealth bloc”: UK plus Oz and NZ
Vietnam ends up being partitioned…. At first….
“The town is now a radioactive wasteland inhabited by malevolent zombie revenants. So property prices have tripled.”
I’m starting to fear that PB’s critical abilty is weaker than I’d thought.
This was at at residents' meeting. I think it's his Reform Rally outfit. My photo quota.
The UK has the highest domestic energy prices in the developed world, an entrenched culture against capital investment, and planning policies that make development almost impossible.
It also spent 2016 onwards putting tariffs on its main trading partner.
We really need to stop asking why the British economy has been toileted.
But it isn’t, is it? It a a terrible dark dreary prison of chilly wet dankness, like some awful endless punishment for a crime you never committed
Arguably their single biggest foreign policy mistake in the immediate postwar decade.
They used to be nice (go look at old photos of seaside resorts). Some of them were genuinely lovely
But there’s nothing you can do about shite rainy British summers and as soon as the British realised they could fly quite cheaply to Benidorm (and then beyond) for guaranteed sun - and often cheaper - the middle classes and then all classes abandoned them
Seaside resorts in.northern France suffer from the same weather (albeit somewhat better) but they benefit from superior French urbanism - the French don’t destroy historic town centres and they still support high street shops
The whole exercise was (at best) pretty pointless, intended or otherwise.
As I said.
Cloudless March sunshine. Definitely spring
January and February SWERVED
Anyway, you’ve kind of answered the question which is simply that the UK munted most of its towns and cities with terrible development policies, and then, from Thatcher onwards, basically gave up investing at all.
All of local government in the UK now is a disability care program with a council attached.
God knows what this does to voter feelings of “agency”.
It’s notable that even in tax-hating America, local townships are better maintained and even have services that have long been abandoned in the UK.
Energy consumption has gone down because energy efficiency has gone up. LED light bulbs etc.
Of course energy consumption and GDP per capita are positively correlated. That tells us nothing about causation.
The rise in real energy prices predated the drop in productivity growth by four years.
Apart from that, very convincing.
This is pretty low grade analysis.
I seriously doubt that both Davey and Cleverly are criticising Mandelson just for some theoretical temporary political score.
Much of that late 2000s growth was a finance sector bubble.
Then the tide went out and the abilty of the UK economy to pick up the slack elsewhere seemed permanently impaired.
And let’s face it there is nothing MORE British than haring off around the world drinking gin and conquering bad snacks
I’m the kind of Briton that forged the EMPIRE, if it had been left to effete types like you we’d have been conquered by Belgium
Northern French resorts had to be good, becasue they were in competition with southern French resorts.
British resorts could get away with being a bit rubbish because, for a long time, people couldn't go anywhere else. Then, all of a sudden, package holidays by plane were invented and the bottom fell out of the market. For a while, the thing to do was to milk the cash cow as it died, and then it did.
So basically the same problem as every other aspect of British life.
NEW THREAD
"Trigger warnings: Explicit content, satire, gender stereotypes, body politics, and coarse language. Views expressed are not those of the creators."
This is the world we live in now, artistically.
Plus wtf does "Views expressed are not those of the creators" mean when it's at home.
Britain is very crowded, and maybe has the largest percentage of “urban proletarian” population in the world.
So businesses - and maybe even seaside resorts - have to pitch themselves either to a small upper middle class, but exclusivity is hard to maintain —- or to the ghastly mass market.
Both demographics now have better options.
S Korea has seen a similar trend in unit prices, but a 50% increase in generation over a similar period.
Did they just plan better, or was there simply more demand ?
Same in France.
So the activist local Mayor model works. And the locals believe that more people = better, so are more likely to back development.
I'm certainly not the kind of Briton who'd have colonised India or the Caribbean. But I AM the kind of Briton who'd have colonised Canada.
Hence why British seasides get a lot more chichi from Sandbanks westwards, and likewise West from Cromer on the Norfolk coast. Posh coasts are easier with nice sand.