I was a bit skeptical when I read the title of this article. It seemed so provincial. But it turned out to be a well-researched, thoughtful article about how a small town in an economically deprived part of the UK is trying to thrive in a globalized world. The financial experiments of Preston are instructive not just for similar communities in the north of England but also for the Rust Belt communities in the US.
I also learned, along the way, that France maintains what amounts to a separate tax code for small business to help them survive. Interesting idea and one I can research on-line. That’s when Unherd shines: when it provides a nugget of information that sends me off in a direction I had never considered.
Great article. Kudos to the author.
Brendan O'Leary
2 years ago
I don’t see “investment” , I see wealth distribution.
Which is fine, that’s what every aspect of the distributive economy – government at all levels, welfare, entertainment, cafés, tourism etc does anyway.
But somehow, somewhere, there has to be a productive economy generating this wealth and that’s what socialists never seem to grasp.
Last edited 2 years ago by Brendan O'Leary
Hubert Knobscratch
2 years ago
Some very interesting thoughts here, and I think the journalist did the main thing here, which is to go and visit, talk to locals and find out for themselves.
School boy error to start off with – Why talk to the politicians?
What about the local businesses there, do they want to invest in the town?
Speaking as a Lancastrian, who has lived in Preston as a student for 3 years and has worked there for 4 years, I left for the South East 20+ years ago – I wouldn’t go back.
Read the article again
Monolithic concrete bus station
Student accommodation block
Cinema
Council offices
Café/restaurant
Meddling left wing politicians
Gig venues
Greggs
hmmm…..
I am NOT reading
Artificial intelligence
Robotics
Aerospace
Nuclear energy
Green energy
Formula 1 / Motor sport
Electric aircraft
Which I have on my door step here in Buckinghamshire, yet the joke is, nearly all those local industries to me here are also there in the surrounding areas of Preston. Find out about those and how well they are doing, and I will believe the rest of it.
Are local councils best suited to make investment decisions in AI? I don’t actually see any harm in a modest level of municipalism, which the Preston model actually seems to be. This was pretty much the norm for many decades – Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds etc. and led to a welcome degree of local decision making and City pride.
As is often mentioned, despite the new Mayors with their very limited powers, of nations of similar size, we are governed in the most centralised manner.
Galeti Tavas
2 years ago
In my old part of London, within a very short walk of the house now are 3 restaurants, Petrol station/convenience shop, Newsagent, Real estate agent, tiny Tesco, all owned/run by people from Africa, Middle East, China, Asia. Not one is ethnically British. And we do very much appreciate the amenities they provide, but without my vaccine I wonder if I will ever see it again, likely not, the old family house was finally sold recently – during lockdown, so I could not be there in 2021, and I could not return in 2020.
There is something of a sad and empty feeling when your old home is gone for ever, your old country is now just a history to you. My mother is now living in my guest cottage here, and in her mid 90s also may never return again. It felt like a huge door thudding shut when the house sold and so my ties to UK are merely memories now… it is a sad feeling.
My mother, like the few remaining old people living in their old houses there, form a substantial part of the Ethnic British in that community, and when they finally have to sell up, like my mothers sale, it is always foreigners who buy – the people I knew when in school there long gone, they could mostly never afford to live in the houses they grew up in.
UK, London, it is a very different land and reality to this place. I miss its culture and high intellect, and all I gained by my formative years there, it has changed so very much though. I wonder how it is in Preston.
Dr Stephen Nightingale
2 years ago
The Preston Bus Station was always a white elephant because it is located across town from the railway station – and Preston is one of the most important stations on the West Coast main line – and is a perversely unsigned zig-zag route to get betwen them. On arriving at the concrete bus station you are faced with a vast asphalt apron, having to mix it with buses in order to get to the building itself. Finally, the bus you want (if there is one) goes in an hour. Result is most people arriving at the Railway Station leave by car. It is the perfect example of how not to do a joined up public transport system. “Modernizing” the actual bus station cannot fix this fundamental disconnectedness problem.
I don’t know it but it is worth mentioning that most people using local buses have not previously arrived by train.
JR Stoker
2 years ago
Minor point: the Duke of Westminster does not own Lendlease!
Nick Russell
2 years ago
The idea of awarding lucrative contracts to local firms certainly sounds attractive – a way to keep money in the local area rather than it being skimmed off to distant shareholders.
But if this policy becomes embedded, isn’t there a danger of complacency within the local firms and a risk that they’ll ultimately provide a sub-optimal service?
Would the council rather hire a company that is more expensive and less reliable than some competitors- just because it’s local?
The post-office scandal is a good example of where this can go wrong. The real reason ICL and then Fujitsu got away with a crappy system that destroyed sub-postmasters lives is because they were the favoured contractor of government. And so those in the upper echelons of the PO including after its pseudo-privatisation had every reason to aid and abet lies to court about how the system function (despite it being common knowledge among employers in Fujistu) so they could continue to deploy their system and order new ones and pay juicy fixed rate contracts for them in mutual back-rubbing schemes. And all because, well, it was part of the public-section gravy train, promoted under the aegis of helping local jobs etc.
Of course this is the national government, at a national scale with a national/internation business. The damage radius from local decisions will obviously be smaller. But the same kind of petty injustices and backrubbing could be easily propogated there too, as anyone with first hand experience of local government decision making and corruption can all too readily attest.
Last edited 2 years ago by Ferrusian Gambit
Andrew Fisher
2 years ago
Interesting article. Small local companies can often provide good efficient and value for money services, but are not always well placed to complete the complex and costly procurement box ticking processes. So the big boys win again and again.
I was a bit skeptical when I read the title of this article. It seemed so provincial. But it turned out to be a well-researched, thoughtful article about how a small town in an economically deprived part of the UK is trying to thrive in a globalized world. The financial experiments of Preston are instructive not just for similar communities in the north of England but also for the Rust Belt communities in the US.
I also learned, along the way, that France maintains what amounts to a separate tax code for small business to help them survive. Interesting idea and one I can research on-line. That’s when Unherd shines: when it provides a nugget of information that sends me off in a direction I had never considered.
Great article. Kudos to the author.
I don’t see “investment” , I see wealth distribution.
Which is fine, that’s what every aspect of the distributive economy – government at all levels, welfare, entertainment, cafés, tourism etc does anyway.
But somehow, somewhere, there has to be a productive economy generating this wealth and that’s what socialists never seem to grasp.
Some very interesting thoughts here, and I think the journalist did the main thing here, which is to go and visit, talk to locals and find out for themselves.
School boy error to start off with – Why talk to the politicians?
What about the local businesses there, do they want to invest in the town?
Speaking as a Lancastrian, who has lived in Preston as a student for 3 years and has worked there for 4 years, I left for the South East 20+ years ago – I wouldn’t go back.
Read the article again
hmmm…..
I am NOT reading
Which I have on my door step here in Buckinghamshire, yet the joke is, nearly all those local industries to me here are also there in the surrounding areas of Preston. Find out about those and how well they are doing, and I will believe the rest of it.
Nuclear? Look for Westinghouse Springfields. It’s 5 miles west of Preston
Are local councils best suited to make investment decisions in AI? I don’t actually see any harm in a modest level of municipalism, which the Preston model actually seems to be. This was pretty much the norm for many decades – Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds etc. and led to a welcome degree of local decision making and City pride.
As is often mentioned, despite the new Mayors with their very limited powers, of nations of similar size, we are governed in the most centralised manner.
In my old part of London, within a very short walk of the house now are 3 restaurants, Petrol station/convenience shop, Newsagent, Real estate agent, tiny Tesco, all owned/run by people from Africa, Middle East, China, Asia. Not one is ethnically British. And we do very much appreciate the amenities they provide, but without my vaccine I wonder if I will ever see it again, likely not, the old family house was finally sold recently – during lockdown, so I could not be there in 2021, and I could not return in 2020.
There is something of a sad and empty feeling when your old home is gone for ever, your old country is now just a history to you. My mother is now living in my guest cottage here, and in her mid 90s also may never return again. It felt like a huge door thudding shut when the house sold and so my ties to UK are merely memories now… it is a sad feeling.
My mother, like the few remaining old people living in their old houses there, form a substantial part of the Ethnic British in that community, and when they finally have to sell up, like my mothers sale, it is always foreigners who buy – the people I knew when in school there long gone, they could mostly never afford to live in the houses they grew up in.
UK, London, it is a very different land and reality to this place. I miss its culture and high intellect, and all I gained by my formative years there, it has changed so very much though. I wonder how it is in Preston.
The Preston Bus Station was always a white elephant because it is located across town from the railway station – and Preston is one of the most important stations on the West Coast main line – and is a perversely unsigned zig-zag route to get betwen them. On arriving at the concrete bus station you are faced with a vast asphalt apron, having to mix it with buses in order to get to the building itself. Finally, the bus you want (if there is one) goes in an hour. Result is most people arriving at the Railway Station leave by car. It is the perfect example of how not to do a joined up public transport system. “Modernizing” the actual bus station cannot fix this fundamental disconnectedness problem.
I don’t know it but it is worth mentioning that most people using local buses have not previously arrived by train.
Minor point: the Duke of Westminster does not own Lendlease!
The idea of awarding lucrative contracts to local firms certainly sounds attractive – a way to keep money in the local area rather than it being skimmed off to distant shareholders.
But if this policy becomes embedded, isn’t there a danger of complacency within the local firms and a risk that they’ll ultimately provide a sub-optimal service?
Would the council rather hire a company that is more expensive and less reliable than some competitors- just because it’s local?
The post-office scandal is a good example of where this can go wrong. The real reason ICL and then Fujitsu got away with a crappy system that destroyed sub-postmasters lives is because they were the favoured contractor of government. And so those in the upper echelons of the PO including after its pseudo-privatisation had every reason to aid and abet lies to court about how the system function (despite it being common knowledge among employers in Fujistu) so they could continue to deploy their system and order new ones and pay juicy fixed rate contracts for them in mutual back-rubbing schemes. And all because, well, it was part of the public-section gravy train, promoted under the aegis of helping local jobs etc.
Of course this is the national government, at a national scale with a national/internation business. The damage radius from local decisions will obviously be smaller. But the same kind of petty injustices and backrubbing could be easily propogated there too, as anyone with first hand experience of local government decision making and corruption can all too readily attest.
Interesting article. Small local companies can often provide good efficient and value for money services, but are not always well placed to complete the complex and costly procurement box ticking processes. So the big boys win again and again.