Every online review for one of Blackpool’s brothels tells a sordid story. “I plan to visit nightly,” writes a punter whose wife has just died. “A depressing hovel,” claims another who took a teddy bear with him. A third admits he was too drunk “to make full use”, but plans to return.
The first time I visit Cookson Street, it is Saturday morning and, despite its reputation, there are no red lights: just a string of boarded-up shops and a building site at the end of the road. A new “Civil Service Hub” for 3,000 relocated government workers is nearing completion. Around the corner, a Royal British Legion club stands opposite a gay sauna. Which, I wonder, will the civil servants prefer?
Only one brothel is open and a car loiters outside. The driver leans over a baby in a car seat, watching the door. Is he waiting to go in, or for someone to come out? He drives off before I can ask.
The second time I visit Cookson Street, the groan of revellers near the North Pier lingers on the wind. Natalie’s is flanked by darkness; her LED lights in neon contrast with the squalid buildings on either side. Fluorescent blue picks out her pink door. I press the buzzer.
A lingeried woman, perhaps in her late-20s, appears at the door. She smiles vacantly, and guides me into a waiting room. The walls are crimson; the leather sofa is black; a vending machine vibrates in the corner, selling chocolate bars and crisps. “We do not tolerate harassment,” reads a poster, provided by the police. A CCTV camera flashes. There is a faint scent of hand sanitiser.
“Have you been here before?” the woman asks, before reeling off her prices. “It’s £40 for hand relief: £50 for topless hand relief; £60 for oral or sex; or it’s £70 for all three. And that’s for half an hour.” She summons two younger women from a backroom. They shuffle in nervously, introduce themselves in Lancashire accents, and ask me to choose.
I decline and explain I want to talk about their business, the punters, and whether the brothel — technically illegal in the UK — had been approved by the police. “NO,” a woman shouts from the backroom. “He needs to ask Joanne.” The two younger women quickly disappear; the third passes me a phone number.
Joanne Andrew has run a brothel out of 27 Cookson Street since at least 2010, when she was caught advertising it as a “beauty salon” on the local council’s website. As punishment, the council removed the listing, but the punters kept returning. For six years, they came and went — until a police raid discovered a 16-year-old runaway from Manchester hiding half-naked under a blanket. Pulled up in court and facing a closure order, Andrew apologised for not knowing the girl’s age: it was a “one-off mistake”, she told a judge. It wouldn’t happen again. She claimed she had a mortgage to pay, and worried what would happen to her “girls” if the brothel closed. This satisfied the judge who allowed Natalie’s to remain open. Since then, the police have carried out regular inspections, the most recent taking place earlier this year.
When I asked Lancashire Police about this visit, they — like Andrews — refused to comment. And who can blame them? Far easier to stay quiet — to accept that Blackpool’s vice and politics are too entwined to untangle. Far easier to pretend the underworld doesn’t exist.
Last year, it was revealed that 105 serving police officers were under investigation for corruption; this year, it was the turn of Blackpool’s representatives in Westminster. In Blackpool North, the MP stands accused of misusing taxpayers’ money, while his colleague in Fylde allegedly paid a teenage escort for sex and later used campaign funds to pay off “bad people” who had locked him in a flat. For now at least, neither has fallen as far as the MP for Blackpool South: in March, Scott Benton was forced to stand down after agreeing to lobby ministers in return for money from journalists posing as gambling industry investors.
There’s a by-election next month, but few believe change will follow: every year or so, political betrayal washes up on Blackpool’s shores, and lies there ignored. Three decades ago, Tony Blair chose the resort’s Winter Gardens as the demolition site of Clause IV, his party’s commitment to socialism, and in return promised to build an opulent supercasino; but the project was moved to Manchester, and finally binned. Then, 15 years later, Boris Johnson came to town and promised to Level It Up. The Government claims the resort has received more than £100 million of funding since 2019. But how did they spend it?
Today, eight of the country’s 10 most deprived council wards are in Blackpool. And on all counts, the southern ward of Bloomfield tops the list: 40% of children live in poverty here, 25% of adults are on out-of-work benefits, and nearly 20% suffer from GP-diagnosed depression. It is a petri dish for political negligence. There are no by-election placards; just the resigned and despairing.
Jimmy, David and Dylan are no exception. Perched outside a crumbling house on a crumbling street, a 10-minute walk from Blackpool’s South Pier, the trio of oversized urchins are smoking a “biff”.
“Do you want to see the seedy drug side or the seedy sex side?” Jimmy asks. He’s the eldest of the three, probably in his early-30s, and boasts that he knows all the “rough places”. He tells me, too, that “nobody messes” with his brother, while his nephew is on the run in Dubai and “looking at 30 years”.
Jimmy’s eyes flicker as he describes his own predicament. “I’ve got a problem with this bloke, Robert,” he says. “And I’m going to have to have it with him.” But Robert won’t fight “man-to-man” with his fists. “He’s driving about on one of those electric bikes with a bottle of acid for me. Do you know why he wants to do that?” Jimmy answers his own question. “Because he’s a soft cunt.”
On cue, a car screeches wildly down the road and skids to a halt on the pavement next to us. Jimmy’s smile has disappeared; his torso has tensed. He looks terrified.
“Look here you maggot,” the driver is livid. “What have you been saying about me?” Jimmy tries to dart around the car but is cut off. “You’ve been saying to people that you’re going to kill me,” the driver yells, reaching to get out. But Jimmy has disappeared down an alleyway — and the man can only fire off insults: “You’re a MUPPET. You’re a fucking muppet.” He turns to a teenager who has emerged from a nearby house. “Tell me where he lives,” he demands, speeding off as soon as the boy replies.
With Jimmy gone, the younger pair open up. David is 20; Dylan is 18. Both deal drugs and both are homeless. They have black rings around their eyes, filth under their fingernails, and the wispy moustaches of young men unable to grow a full beard. Occasionally, they admit, they rob tourists at knife-point.
“Occasionally, they admit, they rob tourists at knife-point.”
David was “kicked out of care” when he was 18, and had nowhere to go. He worked as a roofer for a bit, living on-site, but then the jobs dried up. “I’m selling weed right now to get some p’s on the table.” On a good day, he’ll make around £70 — enough to pay for a twin room in a mouldering backstreet hotel. On a bad day, the pair spend the night wandering the streets, bitter gusts off the Irish Sea making sleep impossible.
Dylan was 16 when he was kicked out by his mother, and doesn’t know why. He lived on a friend’s sofa for a few months, and was passed between family-members. But eventually they tired of him, and he knew couldn’t go home. “My brother is a paedo,” he says matter-of-factly. “He’s been done for it… If I go near that gaff, that’ll be me done. I know I’ll just go for him.”
When they’re not dealing, the boys — they’re still boys — hang out on the resort’s Central Pier, where a security guard brings them food and lets them charge their phones. Sometimes they smoke a “biff”; other times they glare at tourists. Both claim to have girlfriends who don’t know they’re homeless. “They just think we sell a bit of weed,” Dylan says. David starts to tell me about his last girlfriend who had two miscarriages, before catching himself. “It’s just one of those things,” he shrugs.
By contrast, they seem to feed giddily off the violence they see. “A few months ago, I saw someone get run over, stabbed, and then run over again,” Dylan says. David interrupts: “I’ve seen someone with their intestines hanging out.” He then pulls up his jacket to reveal scars down his arms. He first got stabbed when he was in care, he explains. Not to be outdone, Dylan lifts his shirt proudly: his pale stomach is pockmarked by knife wounds.
“We’ve all seen shit,” Dylan adds. “We’ve all been forced to live through it… I watched one of my friends kill himself.” The friend, inconsolable after an argument with his mother, was on FaceTime to Dylan when he pulled out a knife and plunged it into his chest. Dylan sprinted to his house, but arrived too late. A coroner blamed “unmanaged ADHD”. The boy was 15.
A few hundred metres away, up towards the promenade, Martin is sitting in his toy shop. Surrounded by puzzles and dolls and brightly coloured beach balls, he is unforgiving of Blackpool’s young criminals. Just three weeks after the store opened, a group of teenagers smashed through its windows and ran off with its contents. Every now and then, one will return. Today, the shop is empty. It’s been a slow start to the year, he explains.
Martin dismisses those who claim it’s hard to find a job in Blackpool. “If you want work, you just need to ask around,” he says. “There’s always a job somewhere.” The problem, according to everyone I speak to, is that crime has anchored itself in Blackpool — and few can escape it. Martin describes how a nearby flat was colonised by dealers and turned into a drug den. Just a few weeks ago, somebody was killed around the corner: he says a heroin addict went to attack her boyfriend with a knife, who then took it off her and stabbed her 18 times.
A few doors down from where the attack took place, Jenny is having a cigarette on her porch. She claims a prying neighbour spotted a wall caked in blood, but isn’t sure she believes it: “Surely it would’ve been reported in the papers?”
Born in Huddersfield and now in her 50s, Jenny has worked behind almost every bar in Blackpool, but is currently unemployed. She suffers from spinal degeneration, pulmonary disease, bipolar disorder and anxiety. “There’s nothing rare about that here,” she adds. “Everyone has a story behind it though.”
And hers? “My dad was a Glaswegian gangster and one of Britain’s longest-serving prisoners, and my step-dad beat the seven bells out of me.” She breezily describes her father’s downfall: “He killed a child molester and then they put him in a prison full of child molesters. So he went ahead and killed a few more…”
For Jenny, moving to Blackpool provided an escape and a livelihood for her and her children. But it was a limited one. She points to Central Drive to chart the resort’s decline. It used to be the proud backbone of Blackpool. Today, it is an assortment of derelict buildings, its main attraction — a joke shop from the Seventies — finally collapsing in December.
Eastern European gangs now operate out of the creaking houses, selling drugs and trafficked women on soiled mattresses. A Romanian newsagent stands accused of trying to solicit schoolgirls. Jenny tells me how a bunch of local lads went down to “kick the shit out of them”.
When I visit at night, lights flicker behind torn blackout curtains. A few young men skulk up the street and into a disintegrating building. Just the sort of place where a 16-year-old runaway could be hidden; or a young man stabbed; or an MP held ransom. A patrol car turns on to the road, and then off again. “Everyone knows about what’s going on,” a neighbour says. “But the police do nothing.” Some residents blame their councillors, others their MP. All are resigned to the fact that nobody will step in. “It feels like they’re letting the Romanies and Romanians take over,” says one woman.
Back on the promenade, a Romany disagrees. Jade claims to read hundreds of palms each week, but, like every business owner here, has to contend with thieving gangs and delinquents. They descend in balaclavas during the day, many as young as 11. “You can’t do anything because they’re underage,” she adds.
Vice is written into Blackpool’s stars, Jade says. And then dragged down to earth: to the brothels and backrooms, to the drug dens and open streets. For decades, politicians offered platitudes and promises — and look at what they delivered: a party town thrown into the abyss. “People just don’t have enough money,” she sighs. “Businesses are closing and there’s more homeless on the streets. It all adds to this restless atmosphere.”
She’ll always have her regulars, though. Even in turmoil, people want to have their palms read; to be told that they matter, that they have a future. As if to prove her point, a woman sticks her head through the curtain and demands a reading. “Just don’t tell me if I’m going to die,” she pleads.
The fortune-teller laughs. “But of course you are.”
Dear Unherd readers: allow me to give you fair warning and advise you to skip to the next comment. I’m about to offer, in substance if not in form, the same comment I left in connection with the author’s earlier article entitled “Inside the American Redoubt.” https://unherd.com/2023/11/inside-the-american-redoubt/
Unlike the author, I don’t want to waste your time while I rehash old ideas.
In his “Redoubt” article, the author single-handedly discovered there are redn*cks is north Idaho. Apparently, some of them are antisocial; some are downright dangerous; some (and this, it would appear, is the important part) display pro-Trump signs on their property. A little internet research would have informed the author that “r*dn*cks in Idaho” long ago became a cliché and is not worth his journalistic talents. But I’m being cynical.
The current article informs us (with eerie similarities in tone, structure and style to his “Redoubt” article) that the deprived (and abandoned, at least by the elites) UK town of Blackpool contains, prostit*tes, p*mps, and broth*ls (yes, I’m using asterisks to avoid the Unherd moderation software). Whodda thunk?!
Dear Mr. Furedi: your story is old; older than old. Instead of reciting the obvious, why not tell us about how ordinary people in Blackpool are adapting to the devastating effects of neoliberal globalism on their community (or do you mean to imply they’re all becoming pr*stit*tes and p*mps?); how about telling us something that hasn’t been written about a thousand times before, whether in north Idaho or Blackpool, England?
Maybe you all should visit for yourselves. Real, entrenched poverty and dereliction can be confronting. But hey, why bother? Might be hard to find a good coffee.
Well, I found the article interesting. Sometimes it’s good to take the time to go on the ground and look at what’s happening.
In the journalist’s defence, he doesn’t do much pontificating or point-scoring, or high-brow commentating. He’s trying to do a portrait. And it’s well written. As a writer, I appreciate that.
Not the whole UK. Yes, sadly some parts. But a long way from the whole country.
And the decay and disease is different in different areas. In Blackpool, you’re looking at people who seem to have lost hope and exude a sense of resignation. In government and the civil service and public services on the other hand where the “progressives” rule, the decay is a direct result of an often naive belief in progress.
I found this interesting and useful – perhaps I haven’t read enough of his other articles to find it repetitive as some comments claim. But it needs saying regardless.
Is the biggest thing missing in these left behind places simply hope ?
Blackpool is, sadly, a special case. The decline in holiday makers over the years meant that there were loads of B&Bs that couldn’t make ends meet and so the council dumped every problem family from the North West of England in them. It has spiralled out of control with predictable results.
It’s a real shame for Blackpool but go to Lytham St Annes 2 miles down the road or head 10 miles east to Preston (where I’m from) and you won’t see the same problems.
On the whole, the UK is a prosperous, law-abiding and happy place. For what it is worth, I read the latest instalment of the highly-publicised World Happiness Report last week and Britain was ranked as the happiest large country (over 50M population) and happier than the US, Germany, France and Japan.
Brothels and open drug dealing are certainly not a feature of the area I live. I think sometimes this doom-and-gloom about moral decay in Broken Britain goes a bit far.
If a Victorian and Edwardian holiday resort, once full of civic pride, can be reduced to this state, there are plenty of other similar towns that are on the path to the same destination. There must be happier towns in Ukraine.
Eastbourne may still be reasonably prosperous but is no longer a holiday resort. The postcards from the 1960s demonstrate this absolute decline.
Ramsgate has a development of high-end apartments replacing the 1930s lido on the promenade. This for the thin strata of super rich. But the town centre looks on the cusp of becoming an economic dead zone. European third world.
The seafront gardens of Broadstairs show clear signs that the budget crises of the local councils have reached the flower beds. Unlike the 1960s when the high street featured multiple butchers, bakers, confectioners, toy shops, and even a shop selling expensive ladies fashions, today one in three premises are either a bar, restaurant, café, bistro or take-away. Far too many for a town where even in early July the students outnumber the holidaymakers by ten to one.
Nevertheless, the author of this article deserves to be commended for an indefatigable adventurousness and curiosity, not to mention a certain bravery.
””I think sometimes this doom-and-gloom about moral decay in Broken Britain goes a bit far.””
I do not think it goes far enough.
No need for it – Except….. I believe lawlessness is being increased intentionally so people will demand 100% surveillance by Phone gps tracking and Digital currency tracking, facial, retinal, gait, syntax (on written stuff) tracking till you are tracked 100% of your day – as well as every person you have contact with, every penny in and out…
This crime is NOT because they cannot stop it – it is because they WANT it.
In 1984 they intentionally kept ghettos where lawlessness was tolerated.
Lancashire Lad
5 months ago
Illuminating.
Charles Stanhope
5 months ago
What no mention of immigrants?
I was under the impression that every English seaside town from Blackpool to Torquay, Skegness to Bognor is crammed with recent Channel paddlers.
For thousands of Fawlty Towers like establishments the arrival of Sinbad & Co has been a financial salvation.
Levelling-up policy has forgotten about British coastal towns, and yet these are often where the original UKiP votes came from to batter the Tories’ base.
Blackpool has had a homelessness problem for decades now and it’s unsurprising that organised crime has taken advantage of its status as a long-term abandoned town.
I originally come from a northern, coastal resort, similar to, though not as big and famous, as Blackpool. I don’t know if it’s as bad as this article makes out, though I have heard of similar things as described on the article. They are the most deprived areas in the country I believe, though completely forgotten and barely mentioned. The people who live in them are not interesting to those in London.
Graham Stull
5 months ago
This is a nice piece of journalism.
Buck Rodgers
5 months ago
The spitefulness behind the decisions that made Blackpool the way it is will always fascinate me.
Now consider that Blackpool sits on top of one of Europe’s largest gas fields, and should have been a boom town for the last 15 years or more.
British Gas got gifted Morecambe Bay by Thatcher to 1. Make the privatisation worthwhile. 2. Make the fanatical Frau Thatchler (thanks Ingrams R and Hislop I) look good. Despite the massive gift of gas BG still blew it and made a net loss after all payments were accounted for. Typical Public Sector – thieves or bien pensents?. The Spanish got the fish (thx) and the natives got a few cockles. (Which they still had to share with the Chinese & Mercadona etc) If UK ever gets “family silver” again here’s some advice: Don’t give it away, don’t sell it either -lease it on fixed term with an option to foreclose if returns are not achieved.
Indeed-I watched in dismay as a bunch of self centred middle class activists managed to shut down fracking at the Bowland field-it would have transformed not only Blackpool but the surrounding areas in the North west to east of Manchester-it would have transformative on a scale not seen in the UK since the industrial revolution and achieved “levelling up” all without a penny from the Government.the economic multiplier would have been off the scale .They did the same with the Lancashire coal fields-screw the working class eh-we need to save the world!!!.Tragic beyond belief.
The working classes need safe air & drinking water just like anyone else.
Do you think turning Blackpool into a vast extraction site would have benefited anyone but rich industrialists? Have you even watched _Erin Brockovich_?
“Fracking uses vast quantities of chemicals known to harm human health… [including at least] 5 billion pounds of hydrochloric acid, a caustic acid; 1.2 billion pounds of petroleum distillates, which can irritate the throat, lungs and eyes; cause dizziness and nausea; and can include toxic and cancer-causing agents; and 445 million pounds of methanol, which is suspected of causing birth defects… People living or working nearby can be exposed to these chemicals if they enter drinking water after a spill or if they become airborne,” according to Environment America Research and Policy Center.
Adam Bartlett
5 months ago
Thanks for drawing attention to this. Sarah O’Connor did a major expose of seaside towns in the FT 5 years back, which sparked much talk but as you say little effective action. Maybe things will be different now we have a change of the political guard on the horizon. Northerners have always seemned warmer, more communal & willing to put themselves out for others compared to us southerners – allbeit used to be more noticeable when I visited back in the 80s & 90s than it is now. Lanacaster maybe an especially strong example. Elite oppression like Peterloo massacre did little to curb their self sacraficing concern for their fellow men, which even sometimes extended to those across the Atlantic ocean. Abe Lincoln himself praised the men of Lancastire for “sublime Christian heroism which has not been surpassed in any age or in any country.” Sadly, over a century of economic harrowing may finally be dissovling their once exceptional solidarity.
JR Stoker
5 months ago
Urchins? Aren’t urchins under 12’s? These are men
Anthony Roe
5 months ago
Blackpool should be razed to the ground and replaced with parkland and forest. It is a disservice to the few remaining honest citizens to prolong it’s economic death-rattle and their misery.
indeed we don’t need reminding of those ‘left behind’ or of those less fortunate.
we want tales of success
14 yrs of Tory grift that have enriched our lives
not these sort of people obviously
besides they’re in the North
they don’t count
unless it’s vote time
when promise or slogan can get them to doff their hats
that is if they have hats to doff
ffs
mike otter
5 months ago
Sounds like Laredo, Tijuana etc.. nothing to see here gueros – just humanity in all its various guises. Question for Furedinito – was there anything like this in your father’s homeland? in its Magyar, Hapsburg, Austro or Soviet eras? Look for the beam in your eye before you cagando at others.
Depressing articles about Blackpool are all the more depressing for their lack of balance.
SIMON WOLF
5 months ago
Blackpool has in theory a lot of potential.It has an airport, a railway station line to Manchester and is not far from the M6 .If Brown had not binned the idea of a super casino-hotel it could have resumed its old position as an attractive tourist resort .
Alternatively if it had been allowed to go ahead with fracking that would have transformed the local economy.
Howard S.
5 months ago
Here in the States, we have our share of the above described social degeneracy. But it is only in some areas, in Camden, or Detroit, or the South side of Chicago (where a young Barack Obama worked as a Community Organizer, whatever that is), or in Newark, or in the largely Third World enclaves in New York City’s outer boroughs, the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens. Petty thieves, young prostitutes, some of them visibly pregnant, others obviously males but dressed as females, patrol the streets wearing little more than skimpy lingerie and a weak smile. Goods are brazenly stolen from shops, then set up for resales on the sidewalks in front of the shops. Brothels line some of the streets, like in the Zona Norte of Tijuana. The police make half-hearted attempts at controlling this all, usually with TV camera crews in tow, so that they can show the public how Michael Bloomberg’s and Arthur Sulzberger’s dim-witted sock puppet mayor Adams has the whole thing under control. But the rest of us don’t live there, we live in well-policed, quiet suburbs, with good schools and safe streets and, frankly we don’t care.
Jane Watson
5 months ago
What a load of codswallop. Blackpool has always been weary out of season, and if you go looking for ruffians you’ll find them in most towns and cities. No mention of the massive seafront hotels full of migrants?
Come June, all the landladies will be back from Spain and the prom will be buzzing.
Dear Unherd readers: allow me to give you fair warning and advise you to skip to the next comment. I’m about to offer, in substance if not in form, the same comment I left in connection with the author’s earlier article entitled “Inside the American Redoubt.”
https://unherd.com/2023/11/inside-the-american-redoubt/
Unlike the author, I don’t want to waste your time while I rehash old ideas.
In his “Redoubt” article, the author single-handedly discovered there are redn*cks is north Idaho. Apparently, some of them are antisocial; some are downright dangerous; some (and this, it would appear, is the important part) display pro-Trump signs on their property. A little internet research would have informed the author that “r*dn*cks in Idaho” long ago became a cliché and is not worth his journalistic talents. But I’m being cynical.
The current article informs us (with eerie similarities in tone, structure and style to his “Redoubt” article) that the deprived (and abandoned, at least by the elites) UK town of Blackpool contains, prostit*tes, p*mps, and broth*ls (yes, I’m using asterisks to avoid the Unherd moderation software). Whodda thunk?!
Dear Mr. Furedi: your story is old; older than old. Instead of reciting the obvious, why not tell us about how ordinary people in Blackpool are adapting to the devastating effects of neoliberal globalism on their community (or do you mean to imply they’re all becoming pr*stit*tes and p*mps?); how about telling us something that hasn’t been written about a thousand times before, whether in north Idaho or Blackpool, England?
His article about the estate in Luton was almost identical in tone and content. Tiresome, condescending, Guardianesque poverty porn.
Wow, crime happens in poor areas. Who knew?
Maybe you all should visit for yourselves. Real, entrenched poverty and dereliction can be confronting. But hey, why bother? Might be hard to find a good coffee.
Well, I found the article interesting. Sometimes it’s good to take the time to go on the ground and look at what’s happening.
In the journalist’s defence, he doesn’t do much pontificating or point-scoring, or high-brow commentating. He’s trying to do a portrait. And it’s well written. As a writer, I appreciate that.
I go to work, day in, day out and might be a different project or client but often do pretty similar stuff.
Lord of the Rings was a trilogy
Blackpool – a microcosm of the political, institutional, educational and moral decay afflicting the whole U.K.
Not the whole UK. Yes, sadly some parts. But a long way from the whole country.
And the decay and disease is different in different areas. In Blackpool, you’re looking at people who seem to have lost hope and exude a sense of resignation. In government and the civil service and public services on the other hand where the “progressives” rule, the decay is a direct result of an often naive belief in progress.
I found this interesting and useful – perhaps I haven’t read enough of his other articles to find it repetitive as some comments claim. But it needs saying regardless.
Is the biggest thing missing in these left behind places simply hope ?
Indeed. sounds like the most ghastly place in this benighted nation.
Blackpool is, sadly, a special case. The decline in holiday makers over the years meant that there were loads of B&Bs that couldn’t make ends meet and so the council dumped every problem family from the North West of England in them. It has spiralled out of control with predictable results.
It’s a real shame for Blackpool but go to Lytham St Annes 2 miles down the road or head 10 miles east to Preston (where I’m from) and you won’t see the same problems.
On the whole, the UK is a prosperous, law-abiding and happy place. For what it is worth, I read the latest instalment of the highly-publicised World Happiness Report last week and Britain was ranked as the happiest large country (over 50M population) and happier than the US, Germany, France and Japan.
Brothels and open drug dealing are certainly not a feature of the area I live. I think sometimes this doom-and-gloom about moral decay in Broken Britain goes a bit far.
If a Victorian and Edwardian holiday resort, once full of civic pride, can be reduced to this state, there are plenty of other similar towns that are on the path to the same destination. There must be happier towns in Ukraine.
Eastbourne may still be reasonably prosperous but is no longer a holiday resort. The postcards from the 1960s demonstrate this absolute decline.
Ramsgate has a development of high-end apartments replacing the 1930s lido on the promenade. This for the thin strata of super rich. But the town centre looks on the cusp of becoming an economic dead zone. European third world.
The seafront gardens of Broadstairs show clear signs that the budget crises of the local councils have reached the flower beds. Unlike the 1960s when the high street featured multiple butchers, bakers, confectioners, toy shops, and even a shop selling expensive ladies fashions, today one in three premises are either a bar, restaurant, café, bistro or take-away. Far too many for a town where even in early July the students outnumber the holidaymakers by ten to one.
Nevertheless, the author of this article deserves to be commended for an indefatigable adventurousness and curiosity, not to mention a certain bravery.
””I think sometimes this doom-and-gloom about moral decay in Broken Britain goes a bit far.””
I do not think it goes far enough.
No need for it – Except….. I believe lawlessness is being increased intentionally so people will demand 100% surveillance by Phone gps tracking and Digital currency tracking, facial, retinal, gait, syntax (on written stuff) tracking till you are tracked 100% of your day – as well as every person you have contact with, every penny in and out…
This crime is NOT because they cannot stop it – it is because they WANT it.
Saw statistics recently that claimed Preston has the highest per capita violent crime rate in Europe. It’s not that far from Blackpool
Not Negligence.
In 1984 they intentionally kept ghettos where lawlessness was tolerated.
Illuminating.
What no mention of immigrants?
I was under the impression that every English seaside town from Blackpool to Torquay, Skegness to Bognor is crammed with recent Channel paddlers.
For thousands of Fawlty Towers like establishments the arrival of Sinbad & Co has been a financial salvation.
POSTED AT 0951 BST and immediately SIN BINNED.
Was it the mention of BOGNOR?
Oh Charles, BUG*ER BOGNOR !
Did you miss the references to Romanians?
Do ‘they’ really count?
POSTED AT 13.13 GMT and immediately SIN BINNED.
Did the censor misread the word COUNT perhaps?
Levelling-up policy has forgotten about British coastal towns, and yet these are often where the original UKiP votes came from to batter the Tories’ base.
Blackpool has had a homelessness problem for decades now and it’s unsurprising that organised crime has taken advantage of its status as a long-term abandoned town.
I originally come from a northern, coastal resort, similar to, though not as big and famous, as Blackpool. I don’t know if it’s as bad as this article makes out, though I have heard of similar things as described on the article. They are the most deprived areas in the country I believe, though completely forgotten and barely mentioned. The people who live in them are not interesting to those in London.
This is a nice piece of journalism.
The spitefulness behind the decisions that made Blackpool the way it is will always fascinate me.
Now consider that Blackpool sits on top of one of Europe’s largest gas fields, and should have been a boom town for the last 15 years or more.
British Gas got gifted Morecambe Bay by Thatcher to 1. Make the privatisation worthwhile. 2. Make the fanatical Frau Thatchler (thanks Ingrams R and Hislop I) look good. Despite the massive gift of gas BG still blew it and made a net loss after all payments were accounted for. Typical Public Sector – thieves or bien pensents?. The Spanish got the fish (thx) and the natives got a few cockles. (Which they still had to share with the Chinese & Mercadona etc) If UK ever gets “family silver” again here’s some advice: Don’t give it away, don’t sell it either -lease it on fixed term with an option to foreclose if returns are not achieved.
Indeed-I watched in dismay as a bunch of self centred middle class activists managed to shut down fracking at the Bowland field-it would have transformed not only Blackpool but the surrounding areas in the North west to east of Manchester-it would have transformative on a scale not seen in the UK since the industrial revolution and achieved “levelling up” all without a penny from the Government.the economic multiplier would have been off the scale .They did the same with the Lancashire coal fields-screw the working class eh-we need to save the world!!!.Tragic beyond belief.
The working classes need safe air & drinking water just like anyone else.
Do you think turning Blackpool into a vast extraction site would have benefited anyone but rich industrialists? Have you even watched _Erin Brockovich_?
“Fracking uses vast quantities of chemicals known to harm human health… [including at least] 5 billion pounds of hydrochloric acid, a caustic acid; 1.2 billion pounds of petroleum distillates, which can irritate the throat, lungs and eyes; cause dizziness and nausea; and can include toxic and cancer-causing agents; and 445 million pounds of methanol, which is suspected of causing birth defects… People living or working nearby can be exposed to these chemicals if they enter drinking water after a spill or if they become airborne,” according to Environment America Research and Policy Center.
Thanks for drawing attention to this. Sarah O’Connor did a major expose of seaside towns in the FT 5 years back, which sparked much talk but as you say little effective action. Maybe things will be different now we have a change of the political guard on the horizon. Northerners have always seemned warmer, more communal & willing to put themselves out for others compared to us southerners – allbeit used to be more noticeable when I visited back in the 80s & 90s than it is now. Lanacaster maybe an especially strong example. Elite oppression like Peterloo massacre did little to curb their self sacraficing concern for their fellow men, which even sometimes extended to those across the Atlantic ocean. Abe Lincoln himself praised the men of Lancastire for “sublime Christian heroism which has not been surpassed in any age or in any country.” Sadly, over a century of economic harrowing may finally be dissovling their once exceptional solidarity.
Urchins? Aren’t urchins under 12’s? These are men
Blackpool should be razed to the ground and replaced with parkland and forest. It is a disservice to the few remaining honest citizens to prolong it’s economic death-rattle and their misery.
Gadzooks, what a thoroughly pointless article
indeed we don’t need reminding of those ‘left behind’ or of those less fortunate.
we want tales of success
14 yrs of Tory grift that have enriched our lives
not these sort of people obviously
besides they’re in the North
they don’t count
unless it’s vote time
when promise or slogan can get them to doff their hats
that is if they have hats to doff
ffs
Sounds like Laredo, Tijuana etc.. nothing to see here gueros – just humanity in all its various guises. Question for Furedinito – was there anything like this in your father’s homeland? in its Magyar, Hapsburg, Austro or Soviet eras? Look for the beam in your eye before you cagando at others.
Blackpool lives matter…leave Blackpool alone lol
There is some good news.
https://www.liveblackpool.info/about/getting-here/electrification-of-blackpool-railway-line/
https://www.liveblackpool.info/about/town-centre/tramway-extension-holiday-inn-talbot-gateway-phase-2/#:~:text=Both%20well%20on%20the%20way,see%20how%20the%20site's%20changed%E2%80%A6
Depressing articles about Blackpool are all the more depressing for their lack of balance.
Blackpool has in theory a lot of potential.It has an airport, a railway station line to Manchester and is not far from the M6 .If Brown had not binned the idea of a super casino-hotel it could have resumed its old position as an attractive tourist resort .
Alternatively if it had been allowed to go ahead with fracking that would have transformed the local economy.
Here in the States, we have our share of the above described social degeneracy. But it is only in some areas, in Camden, or Detroit, or the South side of Chicago (where a young Barack Obama worked as a Community Organizer, whatever that is), or in Newark, or in the largely Third World enclaves in New York City’s outer boroughs, the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens. Petty thieves, young prostitutes, some of them visibly pregnant, others obviously males but dressed as females, patrol the streets wearing little more than skimpy lingerie and a weak smile. Goods are brazenly stolen from shops, then set up for resales on the sidewalks in front of the shops. Brothels line some of the streets, like in the Zona Norte of Tijuana. The police make half-hearted attempts at controlling this all, usually with TV camera crews in tow, so that they can show the public how Michael Bloomberg’s and Arthur Sulzberger’s dim-witted sock puppet mayor Adams has the whole thing under control. But the rest of us don’t live there, we live in well-policed, quiet suburbs, with good schools and safe streets and, frankly we don’t care.
What a load of codswallop. Blackpool has always been weary out of season, and if you go looking for ruffians you’ll find them in most towns and cities. No mention of the massive seafront hotels full of migrants?
Come June, all the landladies will be back from Spain and the prom will be buzzing.