The little town in Cambridgeshire in which we live is a beautiful place, we are lucky. Set on a river it boasts period architecture, countryside, wetlands, wildlife and a market-town center, that whilst it may not be a hub for big designer shopping expeditions, offers just about everything one might need on a day to day basis....and it's reasonably affluent, and that's the worrying aspect!
Why is it worrying? Because even with all that going for it, the last few months have seen it begin to slide into very obvious economic decline as the recession bites and before very much longer and if the situation doesn't improve it's going to begin to resemble an 80's ghost town!
In the last few weeks more and more units have become empty shells, we have lost Woolworths, a shoe shop, a gift shop, our book shop, and an independent department store that has withstood decades of economic up's and down's is now teetering precariously on the edge of disaster. With each closure comes a gaping empty hole where not too long ago there was a working business, a constant reminder
If it can happen in this affluent little town it can happen anywhere and at the current rate of closures, before very much longer, what was a busy market town will all too soon begin to resemble The Specials vision of the 1980's! Empty retail units seem to be dotted along every street all too obviously and already something of the vibrancy seems to be missing from the day to day bustle.
What was an economic crisis that we listened about on the news has suddenly become all too apparent and real......
All the clubs have been closed down
This place, is coming like a ghost town
Bands won't play no more
too much fighting on the dance floor
Do you remember the good old days
Before the ghost town?
We danced and sang,
And the music played inna de boomtown
This town, is coming like a ghost town
Why must the youth fight against themselves?
Government leaving the youth on the shelf
This place, is coming like a ghost town
No job to be found in this country
Can't go on no more
The people getting angry.
4 Comments:
I don't understand why the government aren't doing more to sort this out. They need to get the banks in hand, they need to distance themselves from the US and they possbily need to think more about joining the Euro. All this pomp and English stiff upper lip aren't doing anything to help.
Ironically (or perhaps not) "Ghost Town" was written about Coventry where the majority of The Specials came from. With the current financial meltdown in the car industry Coventry is once again becoming a desolate wasteland due to its economic foundation being largely comprised of small industrial and manufacturing units. I worked at Rover in their death throes when they were bought by BMW. Things were bleak then. The closure of Longbridge and failure of Phoenix was a final kick in the groin for an already destroyed UK motor industry. SO many tiny companies and whole families relied on the crumbs of a survival diet that dropped from the meagre dinner table of the Coventry and Birmingham motor industry.
This town, is coming like a ghost town.
Wrong. This nation, is coming like a ghost nation.
Britain: we were the pearls of inventiveness and shone like stars in a time when a British kite mark meant "a quality standard" but the collective greed of corporate and shareholder-driven pleasures have finally done for us all.
Overly bleak? Maybe, but it's clear to all of us now, surely, this is an epic disaster movie which we're all living in. It better get better. Not that I should care, I expect to be spending dollars by September.
Dire Straits wrote of "Telegraph Road" in the early 80's that expressed some of the same sentiments, but really this could represent any town, anywhere that has suffered some sort of economic crisis.
I was went to university in the early 80's in Buffalo, NY, when the steel plants and the car manufacturers were pulling out, and watched a once thriving city die by degrees. To this day, it has not been able to find the way out of an economic hell that has it rated as one of the least desirable places to live in the U.S. It has a 40% vacancy rate amongst its urban dwellers. Keep in mind that this is the second largest city in NY state after NYC.
As for joining the euro, as punctuation has suggested, I wouldn't be so quick. It is having its own stabilization issues. At the end of the day, this is a business/financial cycle, albeit a nasty one.
If cities like Coventry want to make a comeback, they need to reinvent themselves. We're seeing that here in Rochester, NY, as this city is morphing out of what was primarily a manufacturing base for 3 big companies, (Kodak, Xerox, Bausch and Lomb) and into a service and technology base, with the University of Rochester being the largest employer now.
The downtown core is reviving itself, slowly but surely, even in these uncertain times. I suppose Coventry will need to take a hard look at itself and decide what it needs to do in order to reinvent itself if it wants to avoid being a ghost town.
Pardon, my mistake, I meant pinkjellybaby's comment regarding the euro
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