I seem to remember the writer popping up in the Guardian quite often, and he is certainly a metropolitan type. So I assume he voted Labour, and certainly not for UKIP. As such he believes in, and has voted for, mass immigration. He cannot, therefore, complain about suburban sprawl.
Sorry, that’s not a valid chain of reasoning! Just a sequence of ever more tenuous assumptions built on the observation that the author once had articles published in the G – which not too long ago was a much more broad-minded publication.
The fact is that if you have voted for any of the mainstream parties over the last 20 years you have voted for mass immigration. You cannot, therefore, complain when new housing is built all over the place, perhaps in the fields near to you.
Where do you want the extra six or seven million people to live? On the streets? I have no doubt that Mr Glancy and yourself are hosting a number of the newcomers in your own houses but not everyone has the space to offer this.
Nonsense. Every party has good and bad bits in their offer, one just has to pick the best of a bad bunch. That is still better than not voting, and letting the nutters get in. And yes, we do have immigrants living in our house and neither are we complaining about the village growing.
In our election system you don’t get to express much of an opinion because they only ask one question. It’s perfectly possible to oppose mass immigration but disagree with U.K.I.P. in other policy areas. Elections might as well be asking: “What do you want the government to do? 1 of 1 characters remaining”.
Suburban sprawl started in the interwar period. You can’t possible blame migration for that. That is why the current law was passed in 1947.
Robin Lambert
3 years ago
He is Also has typical ‘Remain’Pessimism, ”Only trade blocs work,contribute to history” Not….Central Line and other heritage lines are popular tourist attractions..Fred Dibnahs Programmes on BBC4 are still popular on youtube 16 years after his death..If you dont have A Past,you have NO future,thats why ”Cancel Culture” of Right &Left is SO misplaced &dangerous/..
Phil Phil Large
3 years ago
I love the way millennial journalists glibly romanticize Britain’s industrial past whilst never actually having the pleasure of working in it. My father was an apprentice in a privately owned wagon works in Doncaster in the 1940s built in the “glorious” Victorian era. No electricity, no washing facilities ( at the end of a 12hr shift you washed the worst of the coal dust and dirt off in the blacksmiths bosch) and one stinking toilet between 60 men. Horwich locomotive works is just another crumbling relic that probably had equally appalling working conditions. What the North needs are secure, well paid jobs in the new 21st century technology industries not another heritage centre.
” What the North needs are secure, well paid jobs in the new 21st century technology industries not another heritage centre.” True, but do you think that the avg. IQ of northern workers is 120 and over?
I saw a story yesterday claiming that Sunderland is the UK’s new AI capital. To suggest that northern workers are less intelligent than southern workers is disgustingly insulting.
Thanks to that cretin d**k (f..k the Grammar Schools!) Crosland and others, we destroyed over a thousand first class Grammar Schools and replaced them with a plethora of very mediocre Comprehensives.
We are now reaping the ‘benefits’ of that self inflicted wound, that are even worse than our current response to the C-19 fiasco.
Perhaps there is a direct correlation between the two?
Do you think the IQ of the (now) average Londoner is even single figures. To say it bred, promoted and exalted intelligent females like Dawn & Dianne – the combined IQ not above my size 9 shoes. A stroll along the A13 wearing a Canada Goose jacket, new Nike Air Trainers speaking on an Iphone X which you would be relieved of within 50 yards by a gang of “chirpy Londoners” who’s combined IQ would not reach double figures. Although I bit, when you look to having your backside covered in a conflict the simple low IQ Northern servicemen would make the bulk of the very best.
1) People that work for tech firms have very high IQs and those people (in any country) are no more than 2.5% of the population. Look at IQ distribution curve. 2) Because of economic activity those people are far more like to be in London/Oxbridge than Sunderland. 3) I don’t see the connection between war fighting and IQ/Sunderland argument.
The real problem is state education, or lack of. Thanks to that cretin, the late d**k Crosland and others, ‘we’ destroyed over a thousand first class Grammar Schools and replaced them with a plethora of very mediocre Comprehensives. We are now reaping the ‘benefits’ of that self inflicted wound, that are even worse than our current response to the C-19 fiasco. Perhaps there is a direct correlation between the two?
The real problem is state education, or lack of. Thanks to that Marxist, the late d**k Crosland and others, ‘we’ destroyed over a thousand first class Grammar Schools and replaced them with a plethora of very mediocre Comprehensives. We are now reaping the ‘benefits’ of that self inflicted wound, that are even worse than our current response to the C-19 fiasco. Perhaps there is a direct correlation between the two?
The real problem is state education, or lack of. Thanks to that devout Marxist, the late d**k , Crosland, and others, ‘we’ destroyed over a thousand first class Grammar Schools and replaced them with a plethora of very mediocre Comprehensives. We are now reaping the ‘benefits’ of that self inflicted wound, that are even worse than our current response to the C-19 fiasco. Perhaps there is a direct correlation between the two ?
Hello Phil, obviously you’re Dad and his co-workers should have stayed accepting those working conditions. After all, there are plenty overseas who accept far worse. This is the quandary the West has faced for many decades. The solution. Bring those with a culture of minimal rights into the nation. And people wonder why their rights are being eroded.
I agree, what a load of patronising twod this article is. The scars of industrialisation lie 2 centuries deep on the landscape and psyche of Lancashire. The sooner it’s gone the better. Perhaps the hypothetical heritage visitors could go for the full experience and arrive on our decrepid Pacer trains? – vehicles so antique they would embarrass the Soviet Union. Perhaps we could wave from our backyards after feeding the pigeons? By all means decry ugly new housing, but it’s a cheap way of getting the things middle class people take for granted – a detached house and a drive to park your car on. One of the most loved Boltonians is Fred Dibnah, who made a great start of knocking it all down. And who can forget J.B. Priestley’s observation of the Bolton / Manchester wasteland: “the ugliness is so complete it is almost exhilarating. It challenges you to live there.”
Jonathan G is 66, hardly a millennial. I enjoyed the article, and share his frustration at the wasted opportunity. I saw no mention of heritage centres. On the contrary, he talks of forward-looking industrial enterprise and housing, workshops, laboratories, hi-tech offices etc, exactly what you say the north needs
He’s been kidnapped by his Dutch alter ego, an agent of Disqus. I can confirm that he’s alright, but they’re not currently letting him change his name back. Do you know how it’s done?
You don’t have to replicate the past exactly for it to be fruitful.
Geoff Cox
3 years ago
In romanticising the past, it is all too easy to forget the appaling working conditions and the overall poverty that extended far and wide. But what I don’t understand is why we have not been able to have our cake and eat it by now. Living standards have increased because capitalism forces companies to produce better and cheaper. Yet all that wealth seems to have been sqandered and I doubt whether anyone in the UK is much happier than they were when the Horwich railway yard was in full flow.
Government has of course quandered millions of pounds employing people in non-jobs and mass immigration has diluted the money still further. Together with the erosion of any sort of binding culture and brotherhood and the picture is a sad one.
Mark Corby
3 years ago
At over 1,500 feet long, the length of 4-5 English Medieval Cathedrals, what can one do with such a building as the fantastic Erecting Shop?
Perhaps reuse as a Detention/Holding Centre for Sinbad & Co, currently paddling across the Channel on Lilos and water wings?
I estimate it could hold about seven thousand souls.
Dave Smith
3 years ago
The council destroyed Swindon Works without much thought and are still refusing to do up the Mechanics Institute. No money they say. The L & Y was a fine company but always suffered from the attentions of the Midland and the LNWR . In the end it had to merge with the latter. That was before the Grouping. Like the Great Central it was probably one of the last of the provincial companies to be a real national force. In the end London sucked everything in.
Mark Corby
3 years ago
What, no mention of John Ramsbottom, who selected and ‘built’ the Horwich site.
Previously he had been infamously fired’ by the chairman of the LNWR for asking for a salary increase!
ed martin
3 years ago
Do we now worship slums? Why?
jim payne
3 years ago
So in the North they take over our Industrial Heritage!! Here in West Sussex, they take away our A1 Farm Land. “Experts”, after jsut going thru my own planning experience, I think councils are shite!
LCarey Rowland
3 years ago
Jonathan, here’s one distant yankee who appreciates your historical perspective and wistful description. I know that feeling–instigated by visitation in a site such as you describe, of being– mystically, but certainly nostalgically– in deep connection with those past places. The old haunts almost seem to be, themselves, ghosts. Over here on the other side, In North Carolina where I live, we have a Railroad Museum, established in an old Railyard near Salisbury, NC, USA. Unlike certain areas of your Horwich railway yours, this depot and service roundyard did escape the wrecking ball. So today, one can stand next to one of the grand old steamers, then muse in a restored waiting room, catch a glimpse into the ancient office . . We Americans have much for which to thank you Brits, connecting that whole, ole Railway heritage that just steamed its way through . . . then was gone into the sunset like a column of smoke. Speaking of Smoke, I wrote a novel by that name in which the story began in London on May 12, 1937, the day of King George VI’s coronation. But that’s neither here there. Back to industrial nostalgia. Recently, I was in our nearby city of Greensboro, North Carolina, where, while doing historical research for a novel I may write, I happened upon century old textile plant that had been built and operated by Moses Cone . . . Cone Knitting Mills. Though eerily fascinating, the place is indeed doomed to the wrecking ball. But I walked away with some good photos and a serious case of deja vu. And we have some serious appreciation for you Brits in that department as well: textiles. Ah, but back to Horwich . . . your Horwich railway yard sounds like a serious case of 4000 holes in Horwich, Lancashire . . .now we know how many holes it takes to fill the UnHerd call.
Horwich was actually dotted with many textile industry mills, weaving sheds and bleach works as well as pipe works, brick works, small mines on the moors above etc. Also, Hawker Siddeley had a plant up the road making props and all sorts, later to become part of British Aerospace. Bolton, 6 miles down the road was arguably the Center of the Universe when it came to textiles. It’s the same story told in a thousand industrial towns the world over I suppose.
I seem to remember the writer popping up in the Guardian quite often, and he is certainly a metropolitan type. So I assume he voted Labour, and certainly not for UKIP. As such he believes in, and has voted for, mass immigration. He cannot, therefore, complain about suburban sprawl.
Sorry, that’s not a valid chain of reasoning! Just a sequence of ever more tenuous assumptions built on the observation that the author once had articles published in the G – which not too long ago was a much more broad-minded publication.
The fact is that if you have voted for any of the mainstream parties over the last 20 years you have voted for mass immigration. You cannot, therefore, complain when new housing is built all over the place, perhaps in the fields near to you.
Where do you want the extra six or seven million people to live? On the streets? I have no doubt that Mr Glancy and yourself are hosting a number of the newcomers in your own houses but not everyone has the space to offer this.
Nonsense. Every party has good and bad bits in their offer, one just has to pick the best of a bad bunch. That is still better than not voting, and letting the nutters get in. And yes, we do have immigrants living in our house and neither are we complaining about the village growing.
His “live in immigrants” no doubt have their own stairs and entry door in the “other” part of the house.
In our election system you don’t get to express much of an opinion because they only ask one question. It’s perfectly possible to oppose mass immigration but disagree with U.K.I.P. in other policy areas. Elections might as well be asking:
“What do you want the government to do? 1 of 1 characters remaining”.
People are hypocrites? Get out of here!
Suburban sprawl started in the interwar period. You can’t possible blame migration for that. That is why the current law was passed in 1947.
He is Also has typical ‘Remain’Pessimism, ”Only trade blocs work,contribute to history” Not….Central Line and other heritage lines are popular tourist attractions..Fred Dibnahs Programmes on BBC4 are still popular on youtube 16 years after his death..If you dont have A Past,you have NO future,thats why ”Cancel Culture” of Right &Left is SO misplaced &dangerous/..
I love the way millennial journalists glibly romanticize Britain’s industrial past whilst never actually having the pleasure of working in it. My father was an apprentice in a privately owned wagon works in Doncaster in the 1940s built in the “glorious” Victorian era. No electricity, no washing facilities ( at the end of a 12hr shift you washed the worst of the coal dust and dirt off in the blacksmiths bosch) and one stinking toilet between 60 men. Horwich locomotive works is just another crumbling relic that probably had equally appalling working conditions. What the North needs are secure, well paid jobs in the new 21st century technology industries not another heritage centre.
” What the North needs are secure, well paid jobs in the new 21st century technology industries not another heritage centre.”
True, but do you think that the avg. IQ of northern workers is 120 and over?
I saw a story yesterday claiming that Sunderland is the UK’s new AI capital. To suggest that northern workers are less intelligent than southern workers is disgustingly insulting.
or midlands workers?..
Did i say that?
“..Sunderland is the UK’s new AI capital” – sarcasm?
Look at IQ distribution curve, how many people have IQs of 120 and over? Those people are in places like London, Oxbridge – not Sunderland.
The real problem is state education, or lack of.
Thanks to that cretin d**k (f..k the Grammar Schools!) Crosland and others, we destroyed over a thousand first class Grammar Schools and replaced them with a plethora of very mediocre Comprehensives.
We are now reaping the ‘benefits’ of that self inflicted wound, that are even worse than our current response to the C-19 fiasco.
Perhaps there is a direct correlation between the two?
nul
Do you think the IQ of the (now) average Londoner is even single figures. To say it bred, promoted and exalted intelligent females like Dawn & Dianne – the combined IQ not above my size 9 shoes. A stroll along the A13 wearing a Canada Goose jacket, new Nike Air Trainers speaking on an Iphone X which you would be relieved of within 50 yards by a gang of “chirpy Londoners” who’s combined IQ would not reach double figures. Although I bit, when you look to having your backside covered in a conflict the simple low IQ Northern servicemen would make the bulk of the very best.
1) People that work for tech firms have very high IQs and those people (in any country) are no more than 2.5% of the population. Look at IQ distribution curve.
2) Because of economic activity those people are far more like to be in London/Oxbridge than Sunderland.
3) I don’t see the connection between war fighting and IQ/Sunderland argument.
Most Londoners Are from EU , But Most Remainers are thick…
The real problem is state education, or lack of.
Thanks to that cretin, the late d**k Crosland and others, ‘we’ destroyed over a thousand first class Grammar Schools and replaced them with a plethora of very mediocre Comprehensives.
We are now reaping the ‘benefits’ of that self inflicted wound, that are even worse than our current response to the C-19 fiasco.
Perhaps there is a direct correlation between the two?
The real problem is state education, or lack of.
Thanks to that Marxist, the late d**k Crosland and others, ‘we’ destroyed over a thousand first class Grammar Schools and replaced them with a plethora of very mediocre Comprehensives.
We are now reaping the ‘benefits’ of that self inflicted wound, that are even worse than our current response to the C-19 fiasco.
Perhaps there is a direct correlation between the two?
The real problem is state education, or lack of.
Thanks to that devout Marxist, the late d**k , Crosland, and others, ‘we’ destroyed over a thousand first class Grammar Schools and replaced them with a plethora of very mediocre Comprehensives.
We are now reaping the ‘benefits’ of that self inflicted wound, that are even worse than our current response to the C-19 fiasco.
Perhaps there is a direct correlation between the two ?
It seems impossible to answer you on this interesting subject. The Censor is not amused!
Hello Phil, obviously you’re Dad and his co-workers should have stayed accepting those working conditions. After all, there are plenty overseas who accept far worse. This is the quandary the West has faced for many decades. The solution. Bring those with a culture of minimal rights into the nation. And people wonder why their rights are being eroded.
I agree, what a load of patronising twod this article is. The scars of industrialisation lie 2 centuries deep on the landscape and psyche of Lancashire. The sooner it’s gone the better. Perhaps the hypothetical heritage visitors could go for the full experience and arrive on our decrepid Pacer trains? – vehicles so antique they would embarrass the Soviet Union. Perhaps we could wave from our backyards after feeding the pigeons? By all means decry ugly new housing, but it’s a cheap way of getting the things middle class people take for granted – a detached house and a drive to park your car on. One of the most loved Boltonians is Fred Dibnah, who made a great start of knocking it all down. And who can forget J.B. Priestley’s observation of the Bolton / Manchester wasteland: “the ugliness is so complete it is almost exhilarating. It challenges you to live there.”
Jonathan G is 66, hardly a millennial. I enjoyed the article, and share his frustration at the wasted opportunity. I saw no mention of heritage centres. On the contrary, he talks of forward-looking industrial enterprise and housing, workshops, laboratories, hi-tech offices etc, exactly what you say the north needs
What has happened to Andrew Derrick, the “devout sceptic”?
He’s been kidnapped by his Dutch alter ego, an agent of Disqus. I can confirm that he’s alright, but they’re not currently letting him change his name back. Do you know how it’s done?
Thank God!
No, the powers of Disqus are truly terrifying.
Satan will have to ‘up his game’!
You don’t have to replicate the past exactly for it to be fruitful.
In romanticising the past, it is all too easy to forget the appaling working conditions and the overall poverty that extended far and wide. But what I don’t understand is why we have not been able to have our cake and eat it by now. Living standards have increased because capitalism forces companies to produce better and cheaper. Yet all that wealth seems to have been sqandered and I doubt whether anyone in the UK is much happier than they were when the Horwich railway yard was in full flow.
Government has of course quandered millions of pounds employing people in non-jobs and mass immigration has diluted the money still further. Together with the erosion of any sort of binding culture and brotherhood and the picture is a sad one.
At over 1,500 feet long, the length of 4-5 English Medieval Cathedrals, what can one do with such a building as the fantastic Erecting Shop?
Perhaps reuse as a Detention/Holding Centre for Sinbad & Co, currently paddling across the Channel on Lilos and water wings?
I estimate it could hold about seven thousand souls.
The council destroyed Swindon Works without much thought and are still refusing to do up the Mechanics Institute. No money they say.
The L & Y was a fine company but always suffered from the attentions of the Midland and the LNWR . In the end it had to merge with the latter. That was before the Grouping. Like the Great Central it was probably one of the last of the provincial companies to be a real national force. In the end London sucked everything in.
What, no mention of John Ramsbottom, who selected and ‘built’ the Horwich site.
Previously he had been infamously fired’ by the chairman of the LNWR for asking for a salary increase!
Do we now worship slums?
Why?
So in the North they take over our Industrial Heritage!!
Here in West Sussex, they take away our A1 Farm Land.
“Experts”, after jsut going thru my own planning experience, I think councils are shite!
Jonathan, here’s one distant yankee who appreciates your historical perspective and wistful description. I know that feeling–instigated by visitation in a site such as you describe, of being– mystically, but certainly nostalgically– in deep connection with those past places.
The old haunts almost seem to be, themselves, ghosts.
Over here on the other side, In North Carolina where I live, we have a Railroad Museum, established in an old Railyard near Salisbury, NC, USA.
Unlike certain areas of your Horwich railway yours, this depot and service roundyard did escape the wrecking ball.
So today, one can stand next to one of the grand old steamers, then muse in a restored waiting room, catch a glimpse into the ancient office . .
We Americans have much for which to thank you Brits, connecting that whole, ole Railway heritage that just steamed its way through . . . then was gone into the sunset like a column of smoke.
Speaking of Smoke, I wrote a novel by that name in which the story began in London on May 12, 1937, the day of King George VI’s coronation. But that’s neither here there.
Back to industrial nostalgia. Recently, I was in our nearby city of Greensboro, North Carolina, where, while doing historical research for a novel I may write, I happened upon century old textile plant that had been built and operated by Moses Cone . . . Cone Knitting Mills.
Though eerily fascinating, the place is indeed doomed to the wrecking ball. But I walked away with some good photos and a serious case of deja vu.
And we have some serious appreciation for you Brits in that department as well: textiles.
Ah, but back to Horwich . . . your Horwich railway yard sounds like a serious case of 4000 holes in Horwich, Lancashire . . .now we know how many holes it takes to fill the UnHerd call.
Horwich was actually dotted with many textile industry mills, weaving sheds and bleach works as well as pipe works, brick works, small mines on the moors above etc. Also, Hawker Siddeley had a plant up the road making props and all sorts, later to become part of British Aerospace. Bolton, 6 miles down the road was arguably the Center of the Universe when it came to textiles. It’s the same story told in a thousand industrial towns the world over I suppose.