Depressing reading - Britain's forgotten communities

[shamrock_uk]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programme...ht/3757100.stm

I think this situation is mirrored across Britain (and indeed in other countries), I was just wondering if people had any ideas over what courses of action should be taken to improve situations like this?

EDIT: On a more encouraging note: http://www.frogforum.co.uk/

[ 10-20-2004, 07:09 AM: Message edited by: shamrock_uk ]

[Timber Loftis]

Tough question, not because there's no answer, but because there are too many. Lower taxes, special empowerment zones and tax increment financing districts, brownfields incentives, and government condemnation and rehabilitation have gone a long way to help some areas here.

With a declining population, some areas will simply be vacated and left for rubble, you realize.

This isn't a government problem. it is a Society/People problem.
It is people who cause the problem and it is only those same people who can make it better. Time after time we have watched communities try to provide problem families with low income or free housing, only to see those same people, trash the area. Baltimore City in the US is a prime example. Some people just do not want to be part of a civilized society.

People blame it on economics and on racism, or religious persecution....and some times it is those things that cause problems...but all too often we find that some people just do not want to play nice.

Shortof instituting a police state, there is nothing government can do to fix this kind of mess.

TL [img]smile.gif[/img] You are more of an optimist than I am

[shamrock_uk]

Thank you both [img]smile.gif[/img] And as much as i'd like to believe that economics would solve the problem, I can't help having a gut feeling that Magik might be right

[Timber Loftis]

Originally posted by MagiK: TL [img]smile.gif[/img] You are more of an optimist than I am

Well, I've seen it work. And, it takes less government oversight to put incentives in place that will bring developers to an area than it does to have the government go in and provide money assistance and public housing. My neighborhood was bombed-out 15 years ago -- the police wouldn't go there. But the near south side of Chicago is being revitalized because there's lots of land open for developers near the heart of the city.

I've been working to learn more about this lately, because in the face of waning government regulations on polluters, I need to find neat new environmental products to sell my services.

[Dirty Meg]

The north-east has never really recovered from the mass unemployment of the 1980s. There used to be a village around every mine shaft. The local economy was dependent on coal mining. When the mines were shut down, it didn't just affect the miners, it also affected shops, pubs and service industries in the area, because no one had any money to spend. The major ports in the north-east (Middlesbrough and Sunderland) were dependent on the ship building industry, which has been on a steady decline since the advent of commercial flight.
Anyone with any inclination to work their way out of poverty moved down south, the result of which is a kind of reverse natural-selection, where those with skills which would allow them to get work tend to leave, resulting in an ageing and unemployable population.