Grimsby on benefits

[Seeker]

I see Grimsby made it to #1 (again) with the most number of people on benefits. It seems to me that if a town is built on an industry that is no longer there, why support it, let it slowly die. Yet they are building houses locally like crazy, who is buying them?

How do you let a town die though? Maybe that is what is happening now, any young person with a scrap of intelligence and drive leaves the area leaving the dregs and the retired (like me).

Can you make a down-on-its-heels town prosper? Further up the river (Humber) they have built a train factory in Goole to build trains (duh) for the London Underground but what happens when that contract is fulfilled? TfL doesn't need new trains every year and they are not mainline trains so it's a niche market.

The current solution is keep pumping money in but it isn't a long term fix, (imho), but I'm not clever enough to think of another plan.


It is sad though, before I left to join the RAF you could find engineering firms, carpenters, hardware suppliers, pretty much anything needed to support the trawlers. There were so many skilled people, now; all gone.

[Craig380]

It's late-stage capitalism in action: successive governments (both Tory and Labour) have embraced the race to the bottom on price, which has filleted our home-grown primary industries, leading to unemployment and loss of skills.

If you look at the US, Trump's solution is big import tariffs. This is popular with voters but they don't seem to have grasped that those tariffs will only drive prices up and make things less affordable, as wages are unlikely to increase at the same time.

I don't think there is an easy fix without radical change, as it's an issue that's facing pretty much every Western country.

[Seeker]

I was listening to "My Hometown" by Springsteen (from Born in the USA) and one of the verses was particularly apt:


"Now Main Street's whitewashed windows
And vacant stores
Seems like there ain't nobody
Wants to come down here no more
They're closing down the textile mill
Across the railroad tracks
Foreman says, "These jobs are going, boys
And they ain't coming back"

[Craig380]

It's a complex situation: British industry died because of years of complacency and cynical under-investment by management boards that assumed they'd always have market leadership in the UK and a strong export market. This was combined with increasing friction between workers and management.

This attitude is summed up in Edward Turner's report to the board of BSA (https://vintagebikemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/turnerreport.pdf) following a visit to Japan in 1960 - in essence, he stated the Japanese are very fastidious workers, and Japanese factories make great small 'basic transport' bikes, but don't threaten the big bike sector. So BSA carried on making machines based on 20+ year-old designs, on knackered old machine tools that meant huge variations in tolerances and therefore reliability, until all of a sudden Yamaha & Honda launched big bikes made to the same standards as their small machines. And BSA (together with every other British bike maker) found their sales plummeting.

Why should people buy British when for the same money they could get something that was reliable, didn't vibrate bits off every time you went over 70, and had things like direction indicators, a rev counter etc as standard?

[Ruffy]

I guess part of the solution is to embrace that work and home no longer need to be close by for many (often higher paying) employment activities, and/or longer commuting is easier and more reliable. So people can live in what appear to be remote or unloved parts and there is possibility it will revive as those who do reside there pass on their earnings as they live their lives in the area.

I think places often have to go through a local depression but hopefully it's only a transitional cycle rather than a continual decline. Of course, much of the challenge is to keep crime, dereliction and resentment sufficiently at bay so that the areas don't become beyond saving. I think that's getting harder because people are becoming more insular and selfish. Less community spirit and pride to build from.

[redtrummy]

'people are becoming more insular and selfish. Less community spirit and pride to build from' --- Very true driven by greed and intolerance

[Sir Trev]

Earlier this year I visited our depot in Bridgwater. Going out for dinner that evening was an eye opener as the place was clearly suffering. I also grew up near Great Yarmouth, which has miles of terrace housing built for the dock workers back when it was a thriving fishing port, but it has nothing there any more. However the town is earmarked for thousands of new houses, but who will want to live there with little to no employment opportunities? The houses may of course be Labour annoying their Rform MP...