For a snapshot of life in one corner of North-East England, some four years ago, please watch:
*The ghost town where houses are on sale for one pound*/ Channel 4 News, 25 February 2015. YouTube.
The dying village was Horden, on the bleak but beautiful coast of Durham; a corner of England that will always be close to my heart.
Unemployment levels and *welfare reforms* made it impossible for people to live in these once friendly streets. Benefit payments, under the Tories, just won't stretch that far. This is what Jeremy Corbyn was going to change, with a real and costed programme for social regeneration.
Liberal economics is an ideology too, though it wears a non-ideological mask; a mask that says, shrewdly, *This is the way things have to be. There is no alternative.*
A generation ago, the travel writer, Mark Hudson, wrote a haunting book about the same village of Horden, in County Durham, *Coming Back Brockens* (1994) which is worth ordering from Amazon or a used bookstore.
Mark Hudson painted an unforgettable picture of everything we have lost in our post-industrial, post-civic society. The voices of the people he spoke to continue to live in the mind, long after the book comes to an end. There must be many situations like this in towns all across Canada.
As someone said, the word *community* only became current after our communities had crumbled and vanished. Now we live in neighbourhoods where people can die at home and lie for months, before the body is discovered.
It was Margaret Thatcher who said, ominously, *There is no such thing as society.* William McIlvanney, the Scottish novelist, saw the fearful way things were going in this Thatcherite future, when he said: *Every man had become his own private limited company.*
What no one could have forseen was the worldwide economic collapse, brought about by the unregulated banking and financial industry; which led to unnecessary levels of austerity measures; and the ugly face of populism, and racism, which wore the Brexit mask.
The social tensions of Europe with its open borders; the catastrophe of the Greek economy; and the dominance of Germany, all helped to catapult the Brexiteers on to centre stage.
Nigel Farage will get a footnote in British history, because he spooked David Cameron the Prime Minister into holding the European Referendum. Farage has no more of a clue what happens after this hard Brexit than I have, though he blusters like a saloon bar comedian.
What happens to all the businesses which depend on European markets? Who will we trade with? We are on the edge of an abyss. The educated young know it only too well.
As you say, *What happens now?* Or as a German writer asked long ago, *Little man, what next?*
Irenaeus - The above comment was intended for the post by Barona, *George Galloway: The Labour Party's War against the workingman was its undoing.* The error is mine. Sorry.
As it happens, George Galloway used to be my Member of Parliament, and I did vote for him. He is a man of his word.
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For a snapshot of life in one corner of North-East England, some four years ago, please watch:
ReplyDelete*The ghost town where houses are on sale for one pound*/ Channel 4 News, 25 February 2015. YouTube.
The dying village was Horden, on the bleak but beautiful coast of Durham; a corner of England that will always be close to my heart.
Unemployment levels and *welfare reforms* made it impossible for people to live in these once friendly streets.
Benefit payments, under the Tories, just won't stretch that far.
This is what Jeremy Corbyn was going to change, with a real and costed programme for social regeneration.
Liberal economics is an ideology too, though it wears a non-ideological mask; a mask that says, shrewdly, *This is the way things have to be. There is no alternative.*
A generation ago, the travel writer, Mark Hudson, wrote a haunting book about the same village of Horden, in County Durham, *Coming Back Brockens* (1994) which is worth ordering from Amazon or a used bookstore.
Mark Hudson painted an unforgettable picture of everything we have lost in our post-industrial, post-civic society. The voices of the people he spoke to continue to live in the mind, long after the book comes to an end.
There must be many situations like this in towns all across Canada.
As someone said, the word *community* only became current after our communities had crumbled and vanished.
Now we live in neighbourhoods where people can die at home and lie for months, before the body is discovered.
It was Margaret Thatcher who said, ominously, *There is no such thing as society.*
William McIlvanney, the Scottish novelist, saw the fearful way things were going in this Thatcherite future, when he said: *Every man had become his own private limited company.*
What no one could have forseen was the worldwide economic collapse, brought about by the unregulated banking and financial industry; which led to unnecessary levels of austerity measures; and the ugly face of populism, and racism, which wore the Brexit mask.
The social tensions of Europe with its open borders; the catastrophe of the Greek economy; and the dominance of Germany, all helped to catapult the Brexiteers on to centre stage.
Nigel Farage will get a footnote in British history, because he spooked David Cameron the Prime Minister into holding the European Referendum.
Farage has no more of a clue what happens after this hard Brexit than I have, though he blusters like a saloon bar comedian.
What happens to all the businesses which depend on European markets?
Who will we trade with?
We are on the edge of an abyss. The educated young know it only too well.
As you say, *What happens now?*
Or as a German writer asked long ago, *Little man, what next?*
*The ghost town where houses are on sale for £1*/ Channel 4 News.
ReplyDelete25 February 2015.
Youtube.
The town in Horden, in County Durham, North East England.
Irenaeus - The above comment was intended for the post by Barona, *George Galloway: The Labour Party's War against the workingman was its undoing.*
ReplyDeleteThe error is mine. Sorry.
As it happens, George Galloway used to be my Member of Parliament, and I did vote for him. He is a man of his word.
Not to worry. Just copy and paste onto the other post and we will take it from there.
ReplyDelete