Travelodge has gotten excited this week at the government’s announcement that it is to spend £10 million of our money to re-generate three venerable old seaside towns; Blacpool, Dover and Torbay.
They don’t make it clear how this money will be split up, or even if it’s a typo because £3.3m won’t go very far in Blackpool or anywhere else, but I do think throwing £10m at three dilapidated old resorts is pretty much feeding strawberries to donkeys.
I live on the coast near Blackpool, and have seen first hand the decline in the town over the last couple of decades or so. To be fair, Blackpool is very good at what it does. What it does is play to a fairly straightforward audience of weekend pissheads and the ‘grey’ pound, markets that are wearisome and, erm, naturally declining respectively.
I do see some parrallels between tired English resorts and the licensed trade in that they both have an element of managed decline. I’m not a fan of local politicians, who is?, but the decision makers in Blackpool have been pretty creative over the years. It’s gone from being a solid, classic, family resort to the squalid shit-tip that we see buried in under a blizzard of blood and vomit every weekend these days without succumbing to the near total social and economic collapse that has hamstrung places like Morecambe.
Similarly, once thriving pubs seem to get passed through several smaller companies who manage them to a smaller and smaller profit but it keeps them alive for a while until they get boarded up and then pulled down or converted into carpet shops. There are some mercurial talents operating in this sector and I admire them.
We are good at managing decline in this country, from Empires to Pubs, and I do believe that it will be a feature of our lives for the foreseeable future.
Big Bucks For Blackpool
Tuesday, August 5th, 2008Travelodge has gotten excited this week at the government’s announcement that it is to spend £10 million of our money to re-generate three venerable old seaside towns; Blacpool, Dover and Torbay.
They don’t make it clear how this money will be split up, or even if it’s a typo because £3.3m won’t go very far in Blackpool or anywhere else, but I do think throwing £10m at three dilapidated old resorts is pretty much feeding strawberries to donkeys.
I live on the coast near Blackpool, and have seen first hand the decline in the town over the last couple of decades or so. To be fair, Blackpool is very good at what it does. What it does is play to a fairly straightforward audience of weekend pissheads and the ‘grey’ pound, markets that are wearisome and, erm, naturally declining respectively.
I do see some parrallels between tired English resorts and the licensed trade in that they both have an element of managed decline. I’m not a fan of local politicians, who is?, but the decision makers in Blackpool have been pretty creative over the years. It’s gone from being a solid, classic, family resort to the squalid shit-tip that we see buried in under a blizzard of blood and vomit every weekend these days without succumbing to the near total social and economic collapse that has hamstrung places like Morecambe.
Similarly, once thriving pubs seem to get passed through several smaller companies who manage them to a smaller and smaller profit but it keeps them alive for a while until they get boarded up and then pulled down or converted into carpet shops. There are some mercurial talents operating in this sector and I admire them.
We are good at managing decline in this country, from Empires to Pubs, and I do believe that it will be a feature of our lives for the foreseeable future.
Posted in General, News & Comment | No Comments »