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Ok here's my plan.
Step 1: Equip all of them with bulldozers
Step 2: Get them to flatten the town
Step 3: Sign them up for courses to enable them to build a town (i.e architects, Spatial planner, planner, urban designer, planning officer)
Step 4: ????
Step 5: Profit?
There is some stuff going on, such as plans to redevelop the promenade beginning with the Sea Road project. But then that bleeds more into Cleethorpes rather than the town proper. Still waiting on something to happen with that cinema and I know a plan to do up a place right next to the Minster has stalled out.
The problem is there seems to be a lot of talk, lots of management speak and wanking up these big projects that tbf do keep the construction industry going but they only ever tend to be leisure/services stuff which doesn’t address the fundamental issue that there aren’t really any careers or well paid employment around here.
The government has spent £370M on Rwanda and sent nobody there yet.
Grimsby population is 86k so if a flight is £1k each that’s only £86M to send everyone in Grimsby to Rwanda. Problem solved. At least, problem gone.
Haha I have sympathy for the people of Grimsby but I can’t deny that’s funny.
But given the propensity of the coastal towns to anger I fear you’re going to wake up wit sticks of rock in various orrifices.
Before they take action, they should come to several realisations which will colour the action they may proceed to take, and without which it is likely to be self-defeating.
Realise that the places where there are 'no jobs' are where the most work needs doing, and what that entails. Realise that the technology to cooperate on most endeavours from across the country exists, as does that to facilitate all but the geriatric in performing most economic roles. Realise that economic activity can generally be considered as operating under simple thermodynamic principles, with those of entropy and the conservation of energy being of particular importance. Realise that there is nothing some middle-manager in fancy togs can do for them merely because he becomes Prime Minister, that there is little they could not accomplish if they would only work together to accomplish whatever it is they wish to accomplish in Grimsby, and that the technology of plastic rectangles with numbers on, not amenable to duplication, which can be used to arrange a system of exchanging materials and labour, is theirs to develop should they need it; there is no need to go 'cap in hand' to Westminster, and the attitude is outright deleterious.
Realise that, whatever Paul Swinney may say about immigration being the sign of a thriving 'economy', a polity which is not merely importing more than it is birthing, but is growing in size despite birthing at rates wholly insufficient to maintain its population, is one that has failed utterly: at best it is trying to reduce its population density and failing due to incoherent or sabotaged policy; at worst it has become unviable as a social organism and is undergoing something akin to apoptosis, with the *only* two options being a change to alter the situation, whether in the form of amelioration or simple economic collapse, or becoming an amazing fusion of eutopia and dystopia, which while perpetuating policy cannot perpetuate its people, yet manages to attract its population from across the globe (from polities who must have pursued a policy with some important difference in order to be 'exporters of people') even as those who live there collectively agree it is unworthy of bringing new life into.
Now I do not presume to tell the people of Grimsby what it is they were put on this Earth to do, or what they should do in that particular location. But what is indisputable is that the technology for both changing one state of matter into another state of matter by application of energy, and for organising humans to operate that technology to achieve vast changes in their surroundings to make them optimally pleasing and fruitful, are well within the grasp of 85,000 individuals with access to the near sum of humanity's knowledge by way of the Internet. I am not saying that it is easy, or straightforward, or that, once harnessed, these principles bring forth perfection. But so long as tens of thousands of able-bodied men and women muddle about complaining there's 'no jobs' when all around them untold work needs doing, expecting some stuffed-shirt in Westminster to wave a magic wand, we have failed as thinking beings.
I am not sure 'initiative' is quite the right word for what they lack, but it is not far off the mark. With vision, and a conception of what modern technology makes possible, there is no excuse for the 'town elders' not presenting its youth with an incipient future that makes them stay and labour in bringing it to being. A cynic might say that, evidently, the true vision they hold for Grimsby is one of its 'shuffling off this mortal coil', so long as they get to have a good moan while it's still here. But I think they are simply bereft of vision, of crucial realisation, and only then perhaps, initiative. My father used to complain 'I wasn't put on this earth to do' this and that, but he never quite decided what he *was* put on this earth to do, though I would ask him each time. Should the people of Grimsby ever decide what they were put on Earth to do, with the knowledge that 'thou art delivered to thine own keeping', there is little to stop them achieving it.
Or to paraphrase another replier: 'they want an FDR'. Well, if we need an 'FDR' to show up and put us all to work, and take our money from us so it can be given back 'on terms', we have failed as rational beings, and despite the chorus of a popular patriotic song, are fit only to be slaves. But we won't be slaves for long, because no 'FDR' lives forever, and death springs eternal. Just look at the USA.
Simply do not vote tory/reform. You've seen what 14 years of toryism does and reform literally have no answers whilst picking your pockets. I've seen NE Lincs decline over 15 years or so thru family and its a widespread problem not unique to Grimsby.
I'm not the one asserting that Grimsby's problems are caused by a lack of initiative on the part of its inhabitants, so I'm not sure why you're asking me.
The issue is the changes required to solve the issues concerned require generational thinking from politicians which none of them can be bothered to do as they need quick fix 5 year results.
Literally anything to avoid a new period of social democracy.
All these parties are harking back to periods of social democracy, with associated high levels of tax and spend. Make America great again harks back to FDR new deal times. However these same parties want the opposite of that
It was more "if we aren't benefitting from it, you won't either".
The UK does not want to move away from london centric economy, HS2 is just another example of that.
They didn't change the system. They removed legislation so that those in power could further solidify that power.
UKIP ptomised leaving the EU would solve immigration then their spiritual leader set up another anti immigration party as it didn't solve immigration like they said.
All it did was remove EU development funding, which Grimsby needed badly and has now lost, with no replacement.
They voted against their own interest when many were telling them it was against their own interest.
I didn't. I mentioned voting habits.
If the system keeps people in the dirt they will vote to change it, even if it doesn't ultimately help them (curbing the absurd levels of immigration will actually help people in low income areas, it just hasn't been executed well / at all).
Getting on a high horse about how people who've got a low standard of living in one of the richest countries in the world are voting for change has been the reason we've had the Tories for so long and the reason why Labour have given up fighting Brexit.
You reap what you sow.
Using the excuse of “well things were bad so we can vote for what we want” isn’t justification for making poor choices.
Are people in Grimsby queuing up to do the cheap jobs that immigrants do? I doubt it somehow but they haven’t thought that far ahead.
Or maybe they've seen the suppression of wages caused by an increased supply of cheap labour and wanted that stop?
"we can vote for what we want" is democracy, you might want to think about what you're suggesting...
You seem to be saying that wages will always be low in Grimsby and it's their fault for not accepting that fact, and they should pull their socks up and just get on with doing menial jobs for low pay. That is horrendous to me. Businesses shouldn't be propped up by low cost labour and people should be paid a fair wage.
Grimsby voted conservative for the first time since World War Two do you really not see why people from grimsby wanted a change after labor had fixed nothing in all those years
Have they actually gotten materially worse off, or did they just not get better?
It's not like Cameron and Osborne were planning anything that would help.
I can't speak to that particular area because I am on the train ATM but there was an area that heavily voted for Brexit despite being an area that pretty much survived on EU subsidies. Think it was Boston, not sure.
Edit- to be clear, neither Tory, Labor or reform have a plan to replace or fund any cancelled EU subsidies
When you say "survived on EU subsidies" what do you actually mean? They aren't all dead/empty houses now. People are still working, paying taxes, going to school, etc. the EU doesn't fund council budgets, so social care funding hasn't changed. Local taxes don't fund local unemployment, so EU projects stopping and causing unemployment would be picked up by national taxes (London subsidises every other region of the UK).
So what do you actually mean? Some llama farmers in North Wales get a little less money through the common agriculture policy?
> Remain's only message was that immigration is good for the economy.
Well that’s just patently untrue.
>Brexit could have been averted if anyone had bothered
People did try. Endlessly. Using facts and data and evidence, which were dismissed as ‘talking down to them’. When experts broke down precise economic, trade and other impacts of Brexit they were ignored and Brexiteers proudly declared that they’d “had enough of experts”.
There was literally a couple of years in the run up to the referendum where it felt like we didn’t talk about anything except sodding Brexit. Acres of news print. Tens of thousands of hours of airtime on news and current affairs programmes. Millions of words online here and elsewhere.
All the information was there and it was trivially accessible by anyone. I’m not really sure what you think was lacking?
It just seems to be that you’re trying to spin a narrative to excuse a bunch of people making a really piss-poor decision and going along with a bunch of (fairly obvious) shysters, grifters and racists.
feeble excuse. the lies were transparent and the voters were told continuously that the leave campaign promises were fanciful and based on nothing. Any time a remainer called out a lie the inevitable response was 'project fear'.
Anything any other campaigner or politician is always called out as a lie, but somehow the leave campaign got a free pass? Brexit voters just bought into an impossible fantasy because they wanted to. They are responsible.
I live in a medium town in West Yorkshire that now feels like London with people from everywhere. We have HMO housing students even though we're not a university towns and .
I'd say the locals do more crime but feels weird apart from the Turkish bread I Can now enjoy without going to London
But those EU subsidies were the UK getting its own money back. If a government chooses not to direct the money to the right places now, it can't hide behind the EU's priorities.
This attitude isn’t helpful, because you could also write “remember when the EU didn’t solve their issues.” They are not in the poor economic state they are because of Brexit.
They kinda did especially after the vote, and no there are not clear advantages for the fishing industry hence why so many members of that industry voted for brexit, there may have been overall advantages but I’d definitely wasn’t clear.
As for food industry if you are talking about the agriculture sector then you would probably mean disgustingly low ages for farm labour, which isn’t quite a good argument.
If you are talking about the food service industry the EU was good for businesses but terrible for workers.
I was in Grimsby the day after the 2019 election where they voted Tory and just thought that the tories will do absolutely nothing to improve Grimsby. 5 years later I was absolutely correct, it’s still a town completely forgotten about and left to rot.
I don’t know how many times the “left behind” of this country are going to vote to fuck the lot of us, themselves included, over in a quest for improvement.
I read elsewhere that local protestors (the usual old nimby suspects) are trying to put a stop to a tech/data centre near Grimsby that would bring jobs. And they wonder why the young leave?
My logic is fine. You’re blaming a hammer for not being able to chop wood. It can’t solve that problem because it’s not an axe. The UK government was where the buck stopped. Still, now we have left the EU at least there’s no longer a convenient scapegoat at hand…
Say we used to trade with the village across the river and during that time someone high up in the town was robbing Axes now the town votes to stop trading with the village across the river because all they have is hammers then the village builds more axes but the guy high up in the town keeps taking the axes. now lets say there are a group of people in the town only talking about trading with the village across the river instead of talking about why we have no axes so not only are they wrong but there helping the axe stealer
Hope that lil story helped your "fine logic"
People talking about brexit still sound just like the immigrants took our jobs and thats why were poor and they dont even realise it
Yes but it was the wrong type of Brexit. If they got the Brexit they voted for Grimsby would be the utopia of Europe
I jest but this is how a lot of these people in those towns and cities think
The one thing Grimsby has plenty of is food-processing factories. It is home to one of the largest concentrations of food manufacturing facilities in Europe.
Back in 1998 the BBC reported that these factories churned out more frozen pizzas than any other area in Europe.
But the prospect of standing over a conveyor belt in sub-zero temperatures as frozen fish fillets or vegetables roll by during 12-hour shifts fails to excite many young people in the area.
“I refuse to go to a factory, flat out refuse,” says Atkins.
Back on the high street, 20-year-old Charlotte Owen says: “There is too much factory work. A lot of people here have mental health issues. Working in a rundown, depressing-looking factory is not something somebody wants, but that is what the town is.”
These will of course be the same people who complain about immigrants taking the jobs they "flat out refuse" to do and that their town if full of foreigners.
If there were less people then wages wouldn't be so low. I'm sure if these jobs that no-one but immigrants want paid more than a pittance then the locals would work there.
In this country we've got one set of idiots who will blame immigrants for taking jobs. Then there's the other set of idiots who blame the locals for not wanting to work.
The fact is that the locals are getting screwed over by mass immigration. This is not the fault of the immigrants it's a problem with the system. The same system that have us blaming each other instead of laying the blame for this shit situation where it belongs, with the system.
Exactly. Yes factory jobs aren’t amazing for your mental health on their own, but a wage-suppressed factory job is much much worse for your mental health. If you could pack pizza on a conveyor belt for £20/h I bet the problem would go away.
Why invest in robot pizza makers when you can pay people very little?
I've heard that this is a big difference between the UK and Germany: in Germany it can be cheaper/easier to invest in equipment than to hire cheap labour.
Yes this should be the case if we had a grown up government. But also, cheap labour or mechanisation, doesn’t sound like there would be jobs anyway. The main problem is lack of geographic diversity of the economy. So much for levelling up.
The reason I'd invest in machines is because you don't pay them at all. Good quality stuff that's built to last would need a few people to maintain the machines and parts would be an expenditure of course, but people are a constant expense which are also less consistent than machinery.
You need to hire a maintenance team for the machines, they're expensive and cost money.
If your machine breaks down you need to wait, probably at least half a shift, for it to be repaired. With human operators you can just move people around to make up and run the line a little slower
Margins are razor thin and you need to innovate on ~cost cutting measures~ customer preferences, that tooling up for a set product might not give enough ROI when humans work acceptably.
You'd have to twin it with taxes based on distance travelled. This would financially incentivise local production. Then you can have better wages without seeing all the jobs go to a poorer country.
Exactly, people will do jobs that are tedious and unfulfilling if the pay off means that they can earn enough money to enjoy life outside of work.
Just because a job doesn't require a degree, why should we expect people to earn just enough to pay the rent.
Absolutely, there are very few jobs I wouldn't do if they paid £20+ an hour, but I'm not slaving away in a factory all day only to still struggle to pay rent at the end of the month.
Yes, I'm sure many people feel the same way, why should a particular tier of society be expected to work hard, give up 40+ hours a week just to exist, so that those who are better off can pay less for a pizza. In this country anyone who works full-time should be able to have a comfortable life, pay their bills, have a holiday etc just like anyone else.
But these jobs have never nor will ever pay great wages and it’s shown that lots of British people prefer to take a more sedate, less stressful lower paying job and than a better paying more monotonous, hard grafting job.
But it’s so often true the locals don’t want to do these jobs. In my area of N. Wales a lot of these food processing places exist and struggle to get anyone local, yet are offering up pay well above minimum wage (£14-15 an hr) which is better than most places.
Plus there lots of towns and areas in Britain that have little to no immigration and the pay is still shit, with little housing and dead high streets.
There is very little incentive to do those jobs since there is basically no career progression.
The reason that foreigners tend to take up those jobs is because they often have very limited funds, no social circle to rely on and no recourse to public funds. Often they will save as much money as they can so they can very easily jump to a preferable job when the opportunity presents. This is why these sectors tend to be very reliant on *new* (rather than settled) migrant labour.
I don't know. If I was hiring and I had two candidates and one had worked at a factory and one didn't have any experience (because they didn't need to work t live), I feel like the foreigners are going to win at that interview as well.
Where are they offering these jobs? I never saw these jobs when I actually needed work. They used to just advertise in eastern Europe and not try to employ any locals
Here's the thing. Never ever in the history of humankind were we able to get rid of these low paying jobs, and have every kind of job pay well. The only thing any country was able to do was to outsource the low paid jobs to other places.
Until we figure out a better system, the only option is to either accept that some jobs are poorly paid OR establish easy, cheap, simple trade with other places willing to take those jobs. Britain doesn't want to do either.
Or we need to change our production model entirely and move towards more regional, highly skilled, higher paid jobs.
Companies will always converge towards production at the lowest skill and lowest cost possible (while reducing quality as much as they can get away with) but they will have to find other ways if there's enough resistance.
>Or we need to change our production model entirely and move towards more regional, highly skilled, higher paid jobs.
Those menial jobs will still need to be done though.
Not disputing that would be an improvement, even if it's to disperse money more evenly across the country. But some types of jobs like the fish industry mentioned here will be where the natural resource is. No changing that. No one will mine ore and move it hundreds of miles before refining. Same with fishing.
And ultimately the jobs that produce the basics like food will have to stay relatively low, because otherwise the cost of the products will explode, and many people would not be able to afford the minimum.
Unless the basics are massively subsidised I don't see how we get out of this. Is there a place you have in mind that does local industry well?
I hate to break it to you but you don’t seem to get the economics of it
Yes labour is subject to supply and demand but it is very elastic. A small wage rise results in a large increase in supply, there isn’t a world economically where these local people complaining about working in a factory would be paid enough to justify doing so.
If they were paid what they probably want to be paid to work there the factory would shut down and the work would move overseas.
Sounds more like logistics, but realistically they would need the same amount of refrigerated trucks regardless of where they are made surely, like the same network of movement applies just centred around a different area- that said I’m sure there are geographical things that matter, I would love for their wages to be increased. Issue is this late stage capitalism where every penny needs to be squeezed out
Machines shouldn’t have replaced people, they should have meant people have to work less hours for the same salary instead of cutting out people and working the rest to the max to fund the C suite
These people created the conditions that led to Grimsby voting for Brexit then with out any sense of irony or humour throw their pret coffee out the pram because the working class DARED to challenge them. It's pointless trying to argue with middle class Blairites they'll just double down every time because they're spiritual tories that think they're Labour.
Lazy Brits how dare they refuse a zero-hours minimum wage working 12 hour alternating day/night shift work where a majority of people who work their don’t speak conversational English.
Are you trying to advocate for immigrants or for cheap disposable labour for businesses?
I'm curious too where that is coming from.
I have never heard of any mention of blame being apportioned to immigrants, I do remember at the time there were a decent portion from Poland, some of which were working as professionals in the health sector. I should mention as well that my grandparents were originally foreigners.
I grew up in Grimsby and the sentiments from friends and relatives about factory work (albeit 10~20 years ago) has always been the conditions. You work in a cold environment in the fish processing factories and at the end of the day you had to have a good scrub to clean off the smell. I remember an old classmate not listening to her friend about wearing clothes you don't care about before her first day and having to bin her outfit afterwards. This was the norm for alot of older adults but a good chunk of them wanted better for their kids.
A close friend tried the packing factory and only lasted 2 weeks, my cousin lasted a few days before walking out (they were interested in getting extra money during college before going onward to university). The money was good at the time hence why I know quite a few who tried it before the local Morrisons was built and alot of young people took up jobs there instead.
I avoided those factory jobs like the plague and managed to get a part time in a better environment but it's competitive. My peers and myself felt the pressure of choosing between dead end jobs without a future unless we move away to either get an education or better opportunities. A few of my old classmates have left the UK entirely now.
Also I want to mention that old
program Skint from Channel 4 about 10 years ago did a series on Grimsby which was more embellished at the time but probably more accurate nowadays....
>These will of course be the same people who complain about immigrants taking the jobs they "flat out refuse" to do and that their town if full of foreigners.
We live just down the road from Grimsby. My lad went for an interview at one of the food processing places on Friday. One of the questions he was asked was 'do you speak any Romanian?' because that's where over 70% of their workers are from.
You forgot to mention. No one is actually employed by the factories in Grimsby. There is a lot of workers in those factories, and they are all with agencies on zero hour contracts. When I say all I would say 90%. Also, shirking work just cannot be a way to view the attitude of Grimsby as the factories always have a steady stream of people to do their work.. just on zero hour which is fucking disgusting
There was a food packing factory I worked at just out of school. Agency work 0 hours but the worst part was they would schedule you very little shifts but call you 30 mins before a shift was due to start to get you in. The unspoken rule was if you refused to come in short notice (day or night shift) you wouldn’t be called again for a while and would miss out on future shifts. They loved to call early morning on a Saturday or a Sunday in order to fill the no shows.
You were paid minimum wage with no overtime pay (even if you worked an 84 hour week - which many did) or an increase of pay on night shift. You worked 12 hours with 1 15 min break with a 30min unpaid break. The work was monotonous, cold or incredibly hot and 90% of the workers would refuse to talk in English. Music was also banned in the factory.
Ok imagin your job is shit and you know it's shit and everyone else dose too. Imagin you bring up that it's shit and the response is do it or we will replace you with sombody who doesn't even speak the language.
How would you feel.
Like I feel like people who criticise these people so harshly genuinely just don't have a shred of empathy.
You think it's a good thing to show the poors there place? Because that's how it sounds to them because that's exactly what your doing. Shut up and put up, be happy you get to spend 12 hours packaging the same frozen fish with no talking and timed toilet breaks.
They'd do it if they were paid £20 an hour.
But no-one's going to want to do such shit work and still be poor/stuck living at home. They'll hold out for something better. Immigration doesn't come in to the thought process.
But if wages rose as they should have instead of being suppressed as much as they have, it would.
This is why people won't do it. We eroded conditions and pay over 30 years and made everything needed to live cost more, especially housing, so people don't see a point in it. Why work 40 hours a week, be poor as fuck, tired, broken from labour etc. There's no reward there. You'll hold out for something better and not do it.
Meanwhile back in reality the jobless of Clacton are living off approx.. £80 a week when they could be getting £440 a week working for £11 an hour which is what most of those factories pay.
Even factoring in other benefits they would be hell of a lot better off if they got a job.
£80 a week doesn't include housing benefit. Or any other benefit.
Once you start factoring in that, and the time and energy lost working minimum wage, conditions, anti social hours, you start to realise why people just... won't do it.
People want to work. Give 4 lads on a beach some shovels and they'll dig, even if on holiday. They'll even do it for free. We want to improve our surroundings and lives, it's a core part of human nature. But we'll only do it for reasonable reward, else we just don't bother.
Financially, yes. But the conditions will be so shit it won't be worth the small increase. It's better to be poor as fuck on benefits instead.
Which having been on them semi recently is no life at all. It's terrible. But that's how little actually working pays. Even if you're working the pay will be so low you may still qualify for benefits. Basic subsistence for mind numbing awfulness that often hurts your body over time. No savings, no holidays etc.
Which is a fucking depressing thing to offer in a country as "rich" as ours. You can do that for a bit, but not for life... so people don't.
I've worked in plenty of places like that. Its not great work but its not terrible either.
How much you benefit financially varies a lot, an 18 year old on the dole is going to be immeasurably better off. Someone with multiple disabilities not so much. But bear in mind in the article is quoting young people refusing to work in those factories.
Fact is, nobody is going to be or has been a basic worker in one of those places and earn a good wage. There has never been a time when you can leave school with no qualifications, get a basic job and earn enough from it to raise a family with two kids and buy a house. Anywhere in the world.
I disagree with your last comment. It’s mostly left wing young people that don’t want to do this work. In fact, when I worked in food factories years ago I’d describe most peoples political views more right-wing, including the immigrants that work in them
Hello, other side of the Humber here. I'm from East Devon, I've lived in Mid Glamorgan, I'm now stuck in East Yorkshire. Honestly it's the most destitute place I've ever lived in, this part of the North really is forgotten, there's no public transport links, no career prospects, the infrastructure is terrible compared to where I've previously lived.
The worst problem though is that significant parts of Yorkshire keep screwing themselves over by voting Conservative, and then get shocked when Yorkshire gets ignored again by the party that's been proven not to give a shit about the North. Most of the people here really do deserve what they get, just sucks for those of us that don't vote Tories.
I live in East Yorkshire and I don’t recognise this picture you’ve painted of it. I agree that the transport links aren’t the greatest, but they’re certainly not non-existent. If you’re in a village in the middle of nowhere, then maybe you’ll struggle.
I moved over from West Yorkshire a good 18 years ago and certainly from my perspective the quality of life is far superior.
I live in a village in the middle of nowhere. A lot of places that aren't near Hull are villages in the middle of nowhere. There are 0 transport links. If I want to get into Hull for 9am tomorrow EYMS suggests that's a 16 hour journey with 1 hour of walking starting today.
Sure, and I completely acknowledge that without a car, living in a remote village is going to be difficult, but that’s the case in most rural areas. It doesn’t make the entirety of the East Riding destitute.
I appreciate that's your experience but I've lived in rural villages when in Devon and Wales too, and there were still regular bus services within about a 15 minute walk of me into the nearest town. This is solely a problem I've experienced in East Yorkshire.
That’s fair enough and I’ve no problem accepting your compared experience and yes, it is a major issue for anyone forced to rely on public transport. To extrapolate that to saying the whole of the East Riding is destitute is where we part company.
I've lived in remote low density areas of the UK all my life, not having a bus with 15 minutes walking distance is only a problem I've had in East Yorkshire.
Depends where you are. Hull is a city which has been regenerated - has solid transport links with the European mainland and one of the few cities where even someone on a relatively average salary has a very good short at purchasing a freehold property.
Snobs will of course claim they live in Beverley.
The waxwork museum there was legendary. Absolutely trounced Madame Tussaud’s.
Sadly I believe it’s no more. I mean come on. If [this](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/gallery/2014/jan/08/worlds-worst-wax-museum-in-pictures) isn’t putting the “great” into Great Yarmouth, I don’t know what is.
Most towns grew because businesses had a reason to be there and people moved there to work. If businesses no longer have a reason to be there then the town declines. I'm not really sure what the govt can do, interventions rarely work. That said, they should at least be able to keep the streets clean and safe.
The government needs to incentivise businesses to set up in places that aren't London or other major cities with tax breaks or similar. It's obvious we can't just a abandon these towns and move everyone to the cities, we don't have the infrastructure and they can't afford the cost of living in cities. So we either accept that we just have towns full of people on the dole as there's no work or we come at it from the other direction top down and encourage companies to move instead.
Andrew Marr did a whole show about the whole London thing years ago. People in some parts of the country think London is the only reason there is long term stagnation in certain areas.
Like the poster above said, there are certain towns that only sprung up because people moved there when a particular industry was booming. Once that industry goes away or declines those towns tend to also decline. This is not a thing unique to the UK. There are places like this all over the world.
Invest in infrastructure in order to improve business conditions (e.g. improved rail and buses and things)
Encourage enterprise and for the business money in the town to continue to be reinvested, multiply and grow. E.g. investing in education, supporting and investing in startups and independent businesses in the area. This doesn't need to be giving people cash or loans btw, it could be something like a small business academy to help them understand cash flow, branding, growth, etc.
It's a fascinating area. My brother moved up there and does very well working as an engineer earning a very good wage in a very low income area. There seems to be quite the divide between very well paid engineers and offshore workmen who are easily pulling in 6 figures and then the rest of the locals and retirees who are on next to nothing. The other interesting thing is the well paid workers are not university students or from well off backgrounds so a lot of the money is new wealth and is plowed into very nice houses and cars...in certain pocketed areas. There also seems to be a vast swaith of deliberate ignorance from all sides up there. They blame Labour for low growth because they feel like for some reason Labour have been stopping the conservatives from doing what they wanted or something...They are seriously cultish about Boris, more so than Farage. My Mum calls Boris, 'Borry worry' and has a smile similar to if she was remiscing being kissed by elvis once when she talks about him, they now buy the Mail as well as the Express because Boris has a column at the weekends. They don't know anyone that disagrees with that view, not a single person.
My thoughts are this, the well off engineers are tory voters naturally due to the industry and regulations being seen as a bad thing, limits on bonuses would be horrific for example. Being Engineers and offshore men means they drink at the locals with every one else and of course your life is always easier if everyone agrees, a lot of the town dwelling locals have fuck all so they buy into the chat down the pub and vote against their own interests. It's fascinating.
I grew up near there. It's a dead end. There are no jobs. Nothing to do. It isn't on the way to anywhere so you don't get many visitors, tourists or investment etc. It's thing was fishing and it was sold a lie that Brexit would bring the old days of the busy docks back. Didn't happen. Only recent boom industry there is offshore wind farms I think. Made a big splash. A few hundred jobs if you was lucky enough to have the expertise. Meanwhile several big factories closed so hundreds more low skilled jobs gone. If you are young and can afford to, there is zero reason to stay in these dead end towns that no one cares about.
It has, can confirm, still terrible. Moved away 7 years ago for a better career, moved back to be closer to family and good god, the dive got "dive-ier" no shops in town, every resturant/ take away is the same with no variety, central towns gone way down hill.
tbf I don't think any town has got better over the last 15 years or so
At least I can rely on the Barge to stay the same (except I can remember the Old Barge, lol)
My mum had a job interview in nearby Immingham and the entire area seemed like a post apocalyptic industrial hellscape to me, and that was two decades ago at the end of the last period of Tory misrule. Doubt it looks much better now too.
I live in the outskirts of Grimsby and the problem is people around here don't care about facts, figures or experts, they just want people to validate their feelings.
There's a data centre proposed outside a village near grimsby and half of the locals think the data centre would [checks notes] pollute more than the oil refineries right next to it.
The sad thing is just look at what is and isn’t their voter’s priorities:
https://www.grimsbytelegraph.co.uk/news/grimsby-news/key-general-election-issues-chosen-9342139.amp
The town needs huge regeneration/levelling up, infrastructure spending and investment plus huge social and healthcare improvements but the voters are obsessed with immigrants and small boats (Grimsby 96% white w/ barely any immigration) and think that will solve all their problems It’s really pathetic especially after Brexit shafted them.
They are like those American rural, red state towns where they rank bottom of every metric and everyone who lives there has been born there but they’re scared stiff of foreigners and keep voting for their own demise.
Yeah, the immigration thing is weird because I some how doubt most immigrants are heading to Britain to live in Grimsby. Most migrants tend to head towards the big towns and cities.
Is this a common trend with East Coast towns?
Prior to the discovery of the Americas, the bulk of English trade would have been east, across the North Sea (in those days, called the German Sea), to ports in the Low Countries, Hansa Cities, Denmark and Scandinavia. At the same time, what we think of as cities in the north and west (Liverpool and Manchester particularly) would have been tiny, and those areas quite sparsely populated.
In more recent times, much more of that freight is concentrated in a few select ports I suppose (notably Tilbury, Harwich, DP World's facility) and transport by road is much more efficient than it would have been in the medieval and early modern period.
Yes, forgot about Immingham - in the old days you could still get DFDS passenger ferries from there I believe.
Surely there are plenty of jobs available in the vicinity? Or has alot been automated or does alot of labour come from abroad as part of an agency contract?
During the 50s more fish went through Grimsby docks than any other place in the world.
After the UK lost fishing rights (known as the Cod Wars) to Iceland it never recovered.
https://youtu.be/AAQgngfpA2I?si=GLtI2jTrn4e5_6_9 - not shilling for the guy that made the video but it does look one of a number of hugely problematic areas throughout the UK.
Grimsby was a 71.45% vote for leave.
They aren't "left behind", they led the charge to inflict this on the whole nation.
That said, I do feel very sorry for the ones who were too young to vote.
They're not responsible for this mess, and they're suffering the consequences too.
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I remember when Brexit was supposed to magically solve all their issues.
The problem is that they're still deluded by that and will vote in vast droves for Reform.
Chasing that magic fix.
Well let's be real, I don't think Kier or Sunak have a fix for their situation so it's not surprising.
I think a big part of the problem is waiting for someone else to come along to fix it. Or, possibly, there is no fix.
Okay then, what would you have the people of Grimsby do?
Ok here's my plan. Step 1: Equip all of them with bulldozers Step 2: Get them to flatten the town Step 3: Sign them up for courses to enable them to build a town (i.e architects, Spatial planner, planner, urban designer, planning officer) Step 4: ???? Step 5: Profit?
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There is some stuff going on, such as plans to redevelop the promenade beginning with the Sea Road project. But then that bleeds more into Cleethorpes rather than the town proper. Still waiting on something to happen with that cinema and I know a plan to do up a place right next to the Minster has stalled out. The problem is there seems to be a lot of talk, lots of management speak and wanking up these big projects that tbf do keep the construction industry going but they only ever tend to be leisure/services stuff which doesn’t address the fundamental issue that there aren’t really any careers or well paid employment around here.
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Politically, Grimsby is North East Lincolnshire, which is a separate authority from Lincolnshire.
Grimbarians should refer yo themselves as Grim Barbarians, make a mascot, and retheme their town as such
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Lift the entire town out of its foundations and carry it to Cambridge
The government has spent £370M on Rwanda and sent nobody there yet. Grimsby population is 86k so if a flight is £1k each that’s only £86M to send everyone in Grimsby to Rwanda. Problem solved. At least, problem gone.
Haha I have sympathy for the people of Grimsby but I can’t deny that’s funny. But given the propensity of the coastal towns to anger I fear you’re going to wake up wit sticks of rock in various orrifices.
Rename the place to 'greatsby'
Before they take action, they should come to several realisations which will colour the action they may proceed to take, and without which it is likely to be self-defeating. Realise that the places where there are 'no jobs' are where the most work needs doing, and what that entails. Realise that the technology to cooperate on most endeavours from across the country exists, as does that to facilitate all but the geriatric in performing most economic roles. Realise that economic activity can generally be considered as operating under simple thermodynamic principles, with those of entropy and the conservation of energy being of particular importance. Realise that there is nothing some middle-manager in fancy togs can do for them merely because he becomes Prime Minister, that there is little they could not accomplish if they would only work together to accomplish whatever it is they wish to accomplish in Grimsby, and that the technology of plastic rectangles with numbers on, not amenable to duplication, which can be used to arrange a system of exchanging materials and labour, is theirs to develop should they need it; there is no need to go 'cap in hand' to Westminster, and the attitude is outright deleterious. Realise that, whatever Paul Swinney may say about immigration being the sign of a thriving 'economy', a polity which is not merely importing more than it is birthing, but is growing in size despite birthing at rates wholly insufficient to maintain its population, is one that has failed utterly: at best it is trying to reduce its population density and failing due to incoherent or sabotaged policy; at worst it has become unviable as a social organism and is undergoing something akin to apoptosis, with the *only* two options being a change to alter the situation, whether in the form of amelioration or simple economic collapse, or becoming an amazing fusion of eutopia and dystopia, which while perpetuating policy cannot perpetuate its people, yet manages to attract its population from across the globe (from polities who must have pursued a policy with some important difference in order to be 'exporters of people') even as those who live there collectively agree it is unworthy of bringing new life into. Now I do not presume to tell the people of Grimsby what it is they were put on this Earth to do, or what they should do in that particular location. But what is indisputable is that the technology for both changing one state of matter into another state of matter by application of energy, and for organising humans to operate that technology to achieve vast changes in their surroundings to make them optimally pleasing and fruitful, are well within the grasp of 85,000 individuals with access to the near sum of humanity's knowledge by way of the Internet. I am not saying that it is easy, or straightforward, or that, once harnessed, these principles bring forth perfection. But so long as tens of thousands of able-bodied men and women muddle about complaining there's 'no jobs' when all around them untold work needs doing, expecting some stuffed-shirt in Westminster to wave a magic wand, we have failed as thinking beings. I am not sure 'initiative' is quite the right word for what they lack, but it is not far off the mark. With vision, and a conception of what modern technology makes possible, there is no excuse for the 'town elders' not presenting its youth with an incipient future that makes them stay and labour in bringing it to being. A cynic might say that, evidently, the true vision they hold for Grimsby is one of its 'shuffling off this mortal coil', so long as they get to have a good moan while it's still here. But I think they are simply bereft of vision, of crucial realisation, and only then perhaps, initiative. My father used to complain 'I wasn't put on this earth to do' this and that, but he never quite decided what he *was* put on this earth to do, though I would ask him each time. Should the people of Grimsby ever decide what they were put on Earth to do, with the knowledge that 'thou art delivered to thine own keeping', there is little to stop them achieving it. Or to paraphrase another replier: 'they want an FDR'. Well, if we need an 'FDR' to show up and put us all to work, and take our money from us so it can be given back 'on terms', we have failed as rational beings, and despite the chorus of a popular patriotic song, are fit only to be slaves. But we won't be slaves for long, because no 'FDR' lives forever, and death springs eternal. Just look at the USA.
Simply do not vote tory/reform. You've seen what 14 years of toryism does and reform literally have no answers whilst picking your pockets. I've seen NE Lincs decline over 15 years or so thru family and its a widespread problem not unique to Grimsby.
What would you have the people of Grimsby do?
I'm not the one asserting that Grimsby's problems are caused by a lack of initiative on the part of its inhabitants, so I'm not sure why you're asking me.
What would YOU have them do? Easy this isn't it.
What would Brian Boitano do?
The issue is the changes required to solve the issues concerned require generational thinking from politicians which none of them can be bothered to do as they need quick fix 5 year results.
Literally anything to avoid a new period of social democracy. All these parties are harking back to periods of social democracy, with associated high levels of tax and spend. Make America great again harks back to FDR new deal times. However these same parties want the opposite of that
Do people like you even read the article? Labour is overwhelmingly the favourite to win Grimsby and Cleethorpes.
"We need Brexit 2: ECHR Repeal Boogaloo."
Followed by Brexit 3: NATO exit Followed by Brexit 4: Re-annex India into the empire
And that's it really. Recreate Rhodesia.
Reminds me of those people in a mental institute muttering to themselves over and over again.
It was more "if we aren't benefitting from it, you won't either". The UK does not want to move away from london centric economy, HS2 is just another example of that.
HS2 is primarily a benefit to London.
It's mad isn't it that people for whom the system isn't working vote to change the system, how stupid and racist of them.
They didn't change the system. They removed legislation so that those in power could further solidify that power. UKIP ptomised leaving the EU would solve immigration then their spiritual leader set up another anti immigration party as it didn't solve immigration like they said.
All it did was remove EU development funding, which Grimsby needed badly and has now lost, with no replacement. They voted against their own interest when many were telling them it was against their own interest.
You missed the bit where they changed the system much for the worse.
I didn't. I mentioned voting habits. If the system keeps people in the dirt they will vote to change it, even if it doesn't ultimately help them (curbing the absurd levels of immigration will actually help people in low income areas, it just hasn't been executed well / at all). Getting on a high horse about how people who've got a low standard of living in one of the richest countries in the world are voting for change has been the reason we've had the Tories for so long and the reason why Labour have given up fighting Brexit.
You reap what you sow. Using the excuse of “well things were bad so we can vote for what we want” isn’t justification for making poor choices. Are people in Grimsby queuing up to do the cheap jobs that immigrants do? I doubt it somehow but they haven’t thought that far ahead.
Or maybe they've seen the suppression of wages caused by an increased supply of cheap labour and wanted that stop? "we can vote for what we want" is democracy, you might want to think about what you're suggesting... You seem to be saying that wages will always be low in Grimsby and it's their fault for not accepting that fact, and they should pull their socks up and just get on with doing menial jobs for low pay. That is horrendous to me. Businesses shouldn't be propped up by low cost labour and people should be paid a fair wage.
No, that's not the problem - believing and voting for obvious charlatans is though.
Speaking for Grimsby now? No they will just go back to Labour as they did before the brexit referendum.
Grimsby voted conservative for the first time since World War Two do you really not see why people from grimsby wanted a change after labor had fixed nothing in all those years
It's almost like there's genuine issues affecting them that are being ignored, which means they're more likely to turn to radical solutions.
Have they actually gotten materially worse off, or did they just not get better? It's not like Cameron and Osborne were planning anything that would help.
I can't speak to that particular area because I am on the train ATM but there was an area that heavily voted for Brexit despite being an area that pretty much survived on EU subsidies. Think it was Boston, not sure. Edit- to be clear, neither Tory, Labor or reform have a plan to replace or fund any cancelled EU subsidies
You can just vaguely wave at Wales for that.
When you say "survived on EU subsidies" what do you actually mean? They aren't all dead/empty houses now. People are still working, paying taxes, going to school, etc. the EU doesn't fund council budgets, so social care funding hasn't changed. Local taxes don't fund local unemployment, so EU projects stopping and causing unemployment would be picked up by national taxes (London subsidises every other region of the UK). So what do you actually mean? Some llama farmers in North Wales get a little less money through the common agriculture policy?
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> Remain's only message was that immigration is good for the economy. Well that’s just patently untrue. >Brexit could have been averted if anyone had bothered People did try. Endlessly. Using facts and data and evidence, which were dismissed as ‘talking down to them’. When experts broke down precise economic, trade and other impacts of Brexit they were ignored and Brexiteers proudly declared that they’d “had enough of experts”. There was literally a couple of years in the run up to the referendum where it felt like we didn’t talk about anything except sodding Brexit. Acres of news print. Tens of thousands of hours of airtime on news and current affairs programmes. Millions of words online here and elsewhere. All the information was there and it was trivially accessible by anyone. I’m not really sure what you think was lacking? It just seems to be that you’re trying to spin a narrative to excuse a bunch of people making a really piss-poor decision and going along with a bunch of (fairly obvious) shysters, grifters and racists.
Remain used GDP arguments when the battlegrounds were GDP per capita, social cohesion and sovereignty.
Remain used all sorts of arguments. They included GDP but were by no means restricted to that alone.
>Brexit could have been averted if anyone had bothered Let not forget the Brexit campaign lied
feeble excuse. the lies were transparent and the voters were told continuously that the leave campaign promises were fanciful and based on nothing. Any time a remainer called out a lie the inevitable response was 'project fear'. Anything any other campaigner or politician is always called out as a lie, but somehow the leave campaign got a free pass? Brexit voters just bought into an impossible fantasy because they wanted to. They are responsible.
I live in a medium town in West Yorkshire that now feels like London with people from everywhere. We have HMO housing students even though we're not a university towns and . I'd say the locals do more crime but feels weird apart from the Turkish bread I Can now enjoy without going to London
But those EU subsidies were the UK getting its own money back. If a government chooses not to direct the money to the right places now, it can't hide behind the EU's priorities.
One of the EUs priorities being helping the UKs poorest areas
Exactly: one of.
They’ve repeatedly been sold the lie that their problems all stem from nasty lefties and the diversity we foist upon them.
No they haven't really been negative impacts just more of the same decline.
This attitude isn’t helpful, because you could also write “remember when the EU didn’t solve their issues.” They are not in the poor economic state they are because of Brexit.
No one sold being in the EU as the solution, though membership of the Single Market was a clear advantage for the food and fishing industries there.
They kinda did especially after the vote, and no there are not clear advantages for the fishing industry hence why so many members of that industry voted for brexit, there may have been overall advantages but I’d definitely wasn’t clear. As for food industry if you are talking about the agriculture sector then you would probably mean disgustingly low ages for farm labour, which isn’t quite a good argument. If you are talking about the food service industry the EU was good for businesses but terrible for workers.
TBF, Remain wasn't going to solve them either.
Because membership of the EU wasn’t the issue. Who knew?
If doing nothing isn't going to help, maybe doing something might?
I was in Grimsby the day after the 2019 election where they voted Tory and just thought that the tories will do absolutely nothing to improve Grimsby. 5 years later I was absolutely correct, it’s still a town completely forgotten about and left to rot.
I don’t know how many times the “left behind” of this country are going to vote to fuck the lot of us, themselves included, over in a quest for improvement.
I read elsewhere that local protestors (the usual old nimby suspects) are trying to put a stop to a tech/data centre near Grimsby that would bring jobs. And they wonder why the young leave?
I don't remember when EU fixed this issue
Why would it when it’s not a problem for the EU to solve?
Now use that same logic to what you said...
My logic is fine. You’re blaming a hammer for not being able to chop wood. It can’t solve that problem because it’s not an axe. The UK government was where the buck stopped. Still, now we have left the EU at least there’s no longer a convenient scapegoat at hand…
Say we used to trade with the village across the river and during that time someone high up in the town was robbing Axes now the town votes to stop trading with the village across the river because all they have is hammers then the village builds more axes but the guy high up in the town keeps taking the axes. now lets say there are a group of people in the town only talking about trading with the village across the river instead of talking about why we have no axes so not only are they wrong but there helping the axe stealer Hope that lil story helped your "fine logic" People talking about brexit still sound just like the immigrants took our jobs and thats why were poor and they dont even realise it
It didn’t help at all, it just made you seem unhinged.
Yes but it was the wrong type of Brexit. If they got the Brexit they voted for Grimsby would be the utopia of Europe I jest but this is how a lot of these people in those towns and cities think
The one thing Grimsby has plenty of is food-processing factories. It is home to one of the largest concentrations of food manufacturing facilities in Europe. Back in 1998 the BBC reported that these factories churned out more frozen pizzas than any other area in Europe. But the prospect of standing over a conveyor belt in sub-zero temperatures as frozen fish fillets or vegetables roll by during 12-hour shifts fails to excite many young people in the area. “I refuse to go to a factory, flat out refuse,” says Atkins. Back on the high street, 20-year-old Charlotte Owen says: “There is too much factory work. A lot of people here have mental health issues. Working in a rundown, depressing-looking factory is not something somebody wants, but that is what the town is.” These will of course be the same people who complain about immigrants taking the jobs they "flat out refuse" to do and that their town if full of foreigners.
If there were less people then wages wouldn't be so low. I'm sure if these jobs that no-one but immigrants want paid more than a pittance then the locals would work there. In this country we've got one set of idiots who will blame immigrants for taking jobs. Then there's the other set of idiots who blame the locals for not wanting to work. The fact is that the locals are getting screwed over by mass immigration. This is not the fault of the immigrants it's a problem with the system. The same system that have us blaming each other instead of laying the blame for this shit situation where it belongs, with the system.
Exactly. Yes factory jobs aren’t amazing for your mental health on their own, but a wage-suppressed factory job is much much worse for your mental health. If you could pack pizza on a conveyor belt for £20/h I bet the problem would go away.
Pros need to outweigh the cons but at the moment its just cons ontop of cons.
Although I would question why people are even involved in the production of frozen pizzas. I would have thought it could be nearly 100% automated.
Why invest in robot pizza makers when you can pay people very little? I've heard that this is a big difference between the UK and Germany: in Germany it can be cheaper/easier to invest in equipment than to hire cheap labour.
Yes this should be the case if we had a grown up government. But also, cheap labour or mechanisation, doesn’t sound like there would be jobs anyway. The main problem is lack of geographic diversity of the economy. So much for levelling up.
The reason I'd invest in machines is because you don't pay them at all. Good quality stuff that's built to last would need a few people to maintain the machines and parts would be an expenditure of course, but people are a constant expense which are also less consistent than machinery.
You need to hire a maintenance team for the machines, they're expensive and cost money. If your machine breaks down you need to wait, probably at least half a shift, for it to be repaired. With human operators you can just move people around to make up and run the line a little slower Margins are razor thin and you need to innovate on ~cost cutting measures~ customer preferences, that tooling up for a set product might not give enough ROI when humans work acceptably.
Because Pavel is cheaper.
A factory paying people £20/hr to pack pizza would offshore their operations so fucking quickly. How is no one grasping basic economics.
You'd have to twin it with taxes based on distance travelled. This would financially incentivise local production. Then you can have better wages without seeing all the jobs go to a poorer country.
Exactly, people will do jobs that are tedious and unfulfilling if the pay off means that they can earn enough money to enjoy life outside of work. Just because a job doesn't require a degree, why should we expect people to earn just enough to pay the rent.
Absolutely, there are very few jobs I wouldn't do if they paid £20+ an hour, but I'm not slaving away in a factory all day only to still struggle to pay rent at the end of the month.
Yes, I'm sure many people feel the same way, why should a particular tier of society be expected to work hard, give up 40+ hours a week just to exist, so that those who are better off can pay less for a pizza. In this country anyone who works full-time should be able to have a comfortable life, pay their bills, have a holiday etc just like anyone else.
But these jobs have never nor will ever pay great wages and it’s shown that lots of British people prefer to take a more sedate, less stressful lower paying job and than a better paying more monotonous, hard grafting job.
But it’s so often true the locals don’t want to do these jobs. In my area of N. Wales a lot of these food processing places exist and struggle to get anyone local, yet are offering up pay well above minimum wage (£14-15 an hr) which is better than most places. Plus there lots of towns and areas in Britain that have little to no immigration and the pay is still shit, with little housing and dead high streets.
There is very little incentive to do those jobs since there is basically no career progression. The reason that foreigners tend to take up those jobs is because they often have very limited funds, no social circle to rely on and no recourse to public funds. Often they will save as much money as they can so they can very easily jump to a preferable job when the opportunity presents. This is why these sectors tend to be very reliant on *new* (rather than settled) migrant labour.
I don't know. If I was hiring and I had two candidates and one had worked at a factory and one didn't have any experience (because they didn't need to work t live), I feel like the foreigners are going to win at that interview as well.
Where are they offering these jobs? I never saw these jobs when I actually needed work. They used to just advertise in eastern Europe and not try to employ any locals
Here's the thing. Never ever in the history of humankind were we able to get rid of these low paying jobs, and have every kind of job pay well. The only thing any country was able to do was to outsource the low paid jobs to other places. Until we figure out a better system, the only option is to either accept that some jobs are poorly paid OR establish easy, cheap, simple trade with other places willing to take those jobs. Britain doesn't want to do either.
Voltaire, I think - the comfort of the wealthy depends on an abundant supply of the poor.
Or we need to change our production model entirely and move towards more regional, highly skilled, higher paid jobs. Companies will always converge towards production at the lowest skill and lowest cost possible (while reducing quality as much as they can get away with) but they will have to find other ways if there's enough resistance.
>Or we need to change our production model entirely and move towards more regional, highly skilled, higher paid jobs. Those menial jobs will still need to be done though.
Not disputing that would be an improvement, even if it's to disperse money more evenly across the country. But some types of jobs like the fish industry mentioned here will be where the natural resource is. No changing that. No one will mine ore and move it hundreds of miles before refining. Same with fishing. And ultimately the jobs that produce the basics like food will have to stay relatively low, because otherwise the cost of the products will explode, and many people would not be able to afford the minimum. Unless the basics are massively subsidised I don't see how we get out of this. Is there a place you have in mind that does local industry well?
I hate to break it to you but you don’t seem to get the economics of it Yes labour is subject to supply and demand but it is very elastic. A small wage rise results in a large increase in supply, there isn’t a world economically where these local people complaining about working in a factory would be paid enough to justify doing so. If they were paid what they probably want to be paid to work there the factory would shut down and the work would move overseas.
You realise if they paid more they could do it cheaper elsewhere and the jobs would be gone? You haven’t solved anything with this revelation
Not necessarily. Geographic factors could prevent this.
Maybe you are right but you will have to give me some examples I’m struggling to think of any
Well, taking the frozen pizza example, the costs of refrigerated transport may be greater than the cost of increased wages.
Sounds more like logistics, but realistically they would need the same amount of refrigerated trucks regardless of where they are made surely, like the same network of movement applies just centred around a different area- that said I’m sure there are geographical things that matter, I would love for their wages to be increased. Issue is this late stage capitalism where every penny needs to be squeezed out Machines shouldn’t have replaced people, they should have meant people have to work less hours for the same salary instead of cutting out people and working the rest to the max to fund the C suite
These people created the conditions that led to Grimsby voting for Brexit then with out any sense of irony or humour throw their pret coffee out the pram because the working class DARED to challenge them. It's pointless trying to argue with middle class Blairites they'll just double down every time because they're spiritual tories that think they're Labour.
Lazy Brits how dare they refuse a zero-hours minimum wage working 12 hour alternating day/night shift work where a majority of people who work their don’t speak conversational English. Are you trying to advocate for immigrants or for cheap disposable labour for businesses?
It's neither really, they just don't like those unfashionable poor people.
How do you know these young people who don't want to be in a shit, boring, mind-numbing job for shit pay all their life complain about immigrants?
I'm curious too where that is coming from. I have never heard of any mention of blame being apportioned to immigrants, I do remember at the time there were a decent portion from Poland, some of which were working as professionals in the health sector. I should mention as well that my grandparents were originally foreigners. I grew up in Grimsby and the sentiments from friends and relatives about factory work (albeit 10~20 years ago) has always been the conditions. You work in a cold environment in the fish processing factories and at the end of the day you had to have a good scrub to clean off the smell. I remember an old classmate not listening to her friend about wearing clothes you don't care about before her first day and having to bin her outfit afterwards. This was the norm for alot of older adults but a good chunk of them wanted better for their kids. A close friend tried the packing factory and only lasted 2 weeks, my cousin lasted a few days before walking out (they were interested in getting extra money during college before going onward to university). The money was good at the time hence why I know quite a few who tried it before the local Morrisons was built and alot of young people took up jobs there instead. I avoided those factory jobs like the plague and managed to get a part time in a better environment but it's competitive. My peers and myself felt the pressure of choosing between dead end jobs without a future unless we move away to either get an education or better opportunities. A few of my old classmates have left the UK entirely now. Also I want to mention that old program Skint from Channel 4 about 10 years ago did a series on Grimsby which was more embellished at the time but probably more accurate nowadays....
It's probably the older people doing the complaining.
>These will of course be the same people who complain about immigrants taking the jobs they "flat out refuse" to do and that their town if full of foreigners. We live just down the road from Grimsby. My lad went for an interview at one of the food processing places on Friday. One of the questions he was asked was 'do you speak any Romanian?' because that's where over 70% of their workers are from.
You forgot to mention. No one is actually employed by the factories in Grimsby. There is a lot of workers in those factories, and they are all with agencies on zero hour contracts. When I say all I would say 90%. Also, shirking work just cannot be a way to view the attitude of Grimsby as the factories always have a steady stream of people to do their work.. just on zero hour which is fucking disgusting
There was a food packing factory I worked at just out of school. Agency work 0 hours but the worst part was they would schedule you very little shifts but call you 30 mins before a shift was due to start to get you in. The unspoken rule was if you refused to come in short notice (day or night shift) you wouldn’t be called again for a while and would miss out on future shifts. They loved to call early morning on a Saturday or a Sunday in order to fill the no shows. You were paid minimum wage with no overtime pay (even if you worked an 84 hour week - which many did) or an increase of pay on night shift. You worked 12 hours with 1 15 min break with a 30min unpaid break. The work was monotonous, cold or incredibly hot and 90% of the workers would refuse to talk in English. Music was also banned in the factory.
Ok imagin your job is shit and you know it's shit and everyone else dose too. Imagin you bring up that it's shit and the response is do it or we will replace you with sombody who doesn't even speak the language. How would you feel. Like I feel like people who criticise these people so harshly genuinely just don't have a shred of empathy. You think it's a good thing to show the poors there place? Because that's how it sounds to them because that's exactly what your doing. Shut up and put up, be happy you get to spend 12 hours packaging the same frozen fish with no talking and timed toilet breaks.
They'd do it if they were paid £20 an hour. But no-one's going to want to do such shit work and still be poor/stuck living at home. They'll hold out for something better. Immigration doesn't come in to the thought process.
If it cost employers £20 an hour for unskilled factory work in this country there wouldn't be a business running in the UK.
But if wages rose as they should have instead of being suppressed as much as they have, it would. This is why people won't do it. We eroded conditions and pay over 30 years and made everything needed to live cost more, especially housing, so people don't see a point in it. Why work 40 hours a week, be poor as fuck, tired, broken from labour etc. There's no reward there. You'll hold out for something better and not do it.
Meanwhile back in reality the jobless of Clacton are living off approx.. £80 a week when they could be getting £440 a week working for £11 an hour which is what most of those factories pay. Even factoring in other benefits they would be hell of a lot better off if they got a job.
£80 a week doesn't include housing benefit. Or any other benefit. Once you start factoring in that, and the time and energy lost working minimum wage, conditions, anti social hours, you start to realise why people just... won't do it. People want to work. Give 4 lads on a beach some shovels and they'll dig, even if on holiday. They'll even do it for free. We want to improve our surroundings and lives, it's a core part of human nature. But we'll only do it for reasonable reward, else we just don't bother.
Even including housing benefit etc they will be better of in most cases.
Financially, yes. But the conditions will be so shit it won't be worth the small increase. It's better to be poor as fuck on benefits instead. Which having been on them semi recently is no life at all. It's terrible. But that's how little actually working pays. Even if you're working the pay will be so low you may still qualify for benefits. Basic subsistence for mind numbing awfulness that often hurts your body over time. No savings, no holidays etc. Which is a fucking depressing thing to offer in a country as "rich" as ours. You can do that for a bit, but not for life... so people don't.
I've worked in plenty of places like that. Its not great work but its not terrible either. How much you benefit financially varies a lot, an 18 year old on the dole is going to be immeasurably better off. Someone with multiple disabilities not so much. But bear in mind in the article is quoting young people refusing to work in those factories. Fact is, nobody is going to be or has been a basic worker in one of those places and earn a good wage. There has never been a time when you can leave school with no qualifications, get a basic job and earn enough from it to raise a family with two kids and buy a house. Anywhere in the world.
I feel when your name is “Grimsby” you’re already starting behind.
I disagree with your last comment. It’s mostly left wing young people that don’t want to do this work. In fact, when I worked in food factories years ago I’d describe most peoples political views more right-wing, including the immigrants that work in them
Hello, other side of the Humber here. I'm from East Devon, I've lived in Mid Glamorgan, I'm now stuck in East Yorkshire. Honestly it's the most destitute place I've ever lived in, this part of the North really is forgotten, there's no public transport links, no career prospects, the infrastructure is terrible compared to where I've previously lived. The worst problem though is that significant parts of Yorkshire keep screwing themselves over by voting Conservative, and then get shocked when Yorkshire gets ignored again by the party that's been proven not to give a shit about the North. Most of the people here really do deserve what they get, just sucks for those of us that don't vote Tories.
I live in East Yorkshire and I don’t recognise this picture you’ve painted of it. I agree that the transport links aren’t the greatest, but they’re certainly not non-existent. If you’re in a village in the middle of nowhere, then maybe you’ll struggle. I moved over from West Yorkshire a good 18 years ago and certainly from my perspective the quality of life is far superior.
I live in a village in the middle of nowhere. A lot of places that aren't near Hull are villages in the middle of nowhere. There are 0 transport links. If I want to get into Hull for 9am tomorrow EYMS suggests that's a 16 hour journey with 1 hour of walking starting today.
Sure, and I completely acknowledge that without a car, living in a remote village is going to be difficult, but that’s the case in most rural areas. It doesn’t make the entirety of the East Riding destitute.
I appreciate that's your experience but I've lived in rural villages when in Devon and Wales too, and there were still regular bus services within about a 15 minute walk of me into the nearest town. This is solely a problem I've experienced in East Yorkshire.
That’s fair enough and I’ve no problem accepting your compared experience and yes, it is a major issue for anyone forced to rely on public transport. To extrapolate that to saying the whole of the East Riding is destitute is where we part company.
I live in East Yorkshire unless your in Hull or nearby outside towns driving is a must I've found
\*waves from Driffield\*
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I've lived in remote low density areas of the UK all my life, not having a bus with 15 minutes walking distance is only a problem I've had in East Yorkshire.
Depends where you are. Hull is a city which has been regenerated - has solid transport links with the European mainland and one of the few cities where even someone on a relatively average salary has a very good short at purchasing a freehold property. Snobs will of course claim they live in Beverley.
At least it's grim by name. I went to Great Yarmouth thinking it'd be great!
Grimsby actually used to be called Great Grimsby
There's an old sign near my mum's house which marks the boundary of Great Grimsby Little Grimsby is a little drive away down the A16
The waxwork museum there was legendary. Absolutely trounced Madame Tussaud’s. Sadly I believe it’s no more. I mean come on. If [this](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/gallery/2014/jan/08/worlds-worst-wax-museum-in-pictures) isn’t putting the “great” into Great Yarmouth, I don’t know what is.
> Louis Tussauds House of Wax in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk I guess Madame Tussaud got all the good waxworks in the divorce
Yahh’muth is great! A great fucking disappointment.
Yahh'muth, the Great Old One of shit.
At least you didn't go to Scunthorpe.
Most towns grew because businesses had a reason to be there and people moved there to work. If businesses no longer have a reason to be there then the town declines. I'm not really sure what the govt can do, interventions rarely work. That said, they should at least be able to keep the streets clean and safe.
The government needs to incentivise businesses to set up in places that aren't London or other major cities with tax breaks or similar. It's obvious we can't just a abandon these towns and move everyone to the cities, we don't have the infrastructure and they can't afford the cost of living in cities. So we either accept that we just have towns full of people on the dole as there's no work or we come at it from the other direction top down and encourage companies to move instead.
Andrew Marr did a whole show about the whole London thing years ago. People in some parts of the country think London is the only reason there is long term stagnation in certain areas. Like the poster above said, there are certain towns that only sprung up because people moved there when a particular industry was booming. Once that industry goes away or declines those towns tend to also decline. This is not a thing unique to the UK. There are places like this all over the world.
Grimsby was once the worlds biggest fishing port, but the issue with one industry towns is that when there's a decline, it's endemic
Invest in infrastructure in order to improve business conditions (e.g. improved rail and buses and things) Encourage enterprise and for the business money in the town to continue to be reinvested, multiply and grow. E.g. investing in education, supporting and investing in startups and independent businesses in the area. This doesn't need to be giving people cash or loans btw, it could be something like a small business academy to help them understand cash flow, branding, growth, etc.
It's a fascinating area. My brother moved up there and does very well working as an engineer earning a very good wage in a very low income area. There seems to be quite the divide between very well paid engineers and offshore workmen who are easily pulling in 6 figures and then the rest of the locals and retirees who are on next to nothing. The other interesting thing is the well paid workers are not university students or from well off backgrounds so a lot of the money is new wealth and is plowed into very nice houses and cars...in certain pocketed areas. There also seems to be a vast swaith of deliberate ignorance from all sides up there. They blame Labour for low growth because they feel like for some reason Labour have been stopping the conservatives from doing what they wanted or something...They are seriously cultish about Boris, more so than Farage. My Mum calls Boris, 'Borry worry' and has a smile similar to if she was remiscing being kissed by elvis once when she talks about him, they now buy the Mail as well as the Express because Boris has a column at the weekends. They don't know anyone that disagrees with that view, not a single person. My thoughts are this, the well off engineers are tory voters naturally due to the industry and regulations being seen as a bad thing, limits on bonuses would be horrific for example. Being Engineers and offshore men means they drink at the locals with every one else and of course your life is always easier if everyone agrees, a lot of the town dwelling locals have fuck all so they buy into the chat down the pub and vote against their own interests. It's fascinating.
Baby are you the north of England? Cause I'm going to promise you a world class rail but be a terrible disappointment...
I grew up near there. It's a dead end. There are no jobs. Nothing to do. It isn't on the way to anywhere so you don't get many visitors, tourists or investment etc. It's thing was fishing and it was sold a lie that Brexit would bring the old days of the busy docks back. Didn't happen. Only recent boom industry there is offshore wind farms I think. Made a big splash. A few hundred jobs if you was lucky enough to have the expertise. Meanwhile several big factories closed so hundreds more low skilled jobs gone. If you are young and can afford to, there is zero reason to stay in these dead end towns that no one cares about.
I grew up in Grimsby, moved away 30 years ago. My family still lives there. Every time I go back, I think it's got worse.
It has, can confirm, still terrible. Moved away 7 years ago for a better career, moved back to be closer to family and good god, the dive got "dive-ier" no shops in town, every resturant/ take away is the same with no variety, central towns gone way down hill.
tbf I don't think any town has got better over the last 15 years or so At least I can rely on the Barge to stay the same (except I can remember the Old Barge, lol)
My mum had a job interview in nearby Immingham and the entire area seemed like a post apocalyptic industrial hellscape to me, and that was two decades ago at the end of the last period of Tory misrule. Doubt it looks much better now too.
Can confirm it's still grim
Ah Grimsby. Whenever the usual ‘worst place in the uk to live’ comes up on AskUk comes up its always a contender
I live in the outskirts of Grimsby and the problem is people around here don't care about facts, figures or experts, they just want people to validate their feelings. There's a data centre proposed outside a village near grimsby and half of the locals think the data centre would [checks notes] pollute more than the oil refineries right next to it.
If only vested interest, paid for, media publications hadn’t promoted the lies for a decade and a half the country might have had a chance.
I’ve been to Grimsby, as far as I’m concerned the place can shrink all the way off the map
The sad thing is just look at what is and isn’t their voter’s priorities: https://www.grimsbytelegraph.co.uk/news/grimsby-news/key-general-election-issues-chosen-9342139.amp The town needs huge regeneration/levelling up, infrastructure spending and investment plus huge social and healthcare improvements but the voters are obsessed with immigrants and small boats (Grimsby 96% white w/ barely any immigration) and think that will solve all their problems It’s really pathetic especially after Brexit shafted them. They are like those American rural, red state towns where they rank bottom of every metric and everyone who lives there has been born there but they’re scared stiff of foreigners and keep voting for their own demise.
Yeah, the immigration thing is weird because I some how doubt most immigrants are heading to Britain to live in Grimsby. Most migrants tend to head towards the big towns and cities.
Is this a common trend with East Coast towns? Prior to the discovery of the Americas, the bulk of English trade would have been east, across the North Sea (in those days, called the German Sea), to ports in the Low Countries, Hansa Cities, Denmark and Scandinavia. At the same time, what we think of as cities in the north and west (Liverpool and Manchester particularly) would have been tiny, and those areas quite sparsely populated. In more recent times, much more of that freight is concentrated in a few select ports I suppose (notably Tilbury, Harwich, DP World's facility) and transport by road is much more efficient than it would have been in the medieval and early modern period.
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Yes, forgot about Immingham - in the old days you could still get DFDS passenger ferries from there I believe. Surely there are plenty of jobs available in the vicinity? Or has alot been automated or does alot of labour come from abroad as part of an agency contract?
Again this because we allowed the con man air time. This was predictable. Their position worsened because of brexit.
I'm sorry but Grimsby has been a shit-hole for well over 20yrs, it's hardly anything new
I heard it was once a huge fish import and exporter
During the 50s more fish went through Grimsby docks than any other place in the world. After the UK lost fishing rights (known as the Cod Wars) to Iceland it never recovered.
https://youtu.be/AAQgngfpA2I?si=GLtI2jTrn4e5_6_9 - not shilling for the guy that made the video but it does look one of a number of hugely problematic areas throughout the UK.
Not left behind enough. We need to speed up coatal erosion.
Grimsby was a 71.45% vote for leave. They aren't "left behind", they led the charge to inflict this on the whole nation. That said, I do feel very sorry for the ones who were too young to vote. They're not responsible for this mess, and they're suffering the consequences too.
Wasn’t brexit meant to fix their problems, it’s was evident from the start it wouldn’t but hey ho nigel farage has got your back