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.
J Bryant
11 days ago
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.
SIMON WOLF
10 days 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.
Charles Stanhope
10 days 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.
Adam Bartlett
10 days 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.
Anthony Roe
10 days 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
Depressing articles about Blackpool are all the more depressing for their lack of balance.
Howard S.
10 days 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.
mike otter
10 days 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.
Jane Watson
9 days 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Illuminating.
This is a nice piece of journalism.
Urchins? Aren’t urchins under 12’s? These are men
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.
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.
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.
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.