50 Years of Labour

[marky]

Thought provoking to say the least. Other than the obvious changes in fashion, culture and attitudes, it's frightening to see how little the prospects of the people of the town have progressed in the last 50 years.

http://www.hartlepoolpost.co.uk/50%20years%20of%20labour.htm

[testing times]

Part 3 and the second hand shops in 1964; today Charity Shops and modern day Pawn Shops. Nothing much has changed. And still the same talk of us all moving 'down south'. Imagine what would happen to southern house prices if everyone moved down there though come to think of it, who of us could afford to sell up and buy a house there as it is?

[fred c]

Apart from upgrading Cmdr Kerans DSO to a VC the article & video clips are  perfect examples of what happens to a town when it becomes a "Nailed On Safe Seat"

The holders know they don`t have to do anything to keep the seat, we have seen that for almost 2 generations of labour control, couple that with a council that panders to the minority of town residents by providing grant funded aid in labour wards & what do you end up with ?

Hartlepool

[for fawkes sake]

How depressing this is; essentially 50 years of treading water.

While our own fathers and grandfathers may have been victims of being caught in declining industries it's very difficult to justify such persistent low levels of employment and genuine opportunity. Fifty years is easily long enough to have resolved the situation if there had been a genuine commitment to do so.

The main change, as I see it, is that while Governments of both persuasions have done very little to provide the jobs needed to replace those lost in the old industries, both have instead focussed on a plethora of hand-outs to create the illusion that they care. Consequently over the years we have had a plethora of public funded schemes aimed not at solving the problem but at managing the deprivation which results from it.

What jobs that are available largely consist of low wage, often part-time work which may get people off the Job Centre statistics but which do little to get people out of poverty. And now we have the evil of zero-hour contracts as an additional way for employers to avoid their moral responsibility to pay people a decent wage.

CAB's 'Vision' seems to be not much more than an extension to this consisting primarily of low wage 'tourism' work - bar staff, hotel cleaners as pin-money retail jobs. This isn't exactly going to inspire youngsters or even keep them in town.

The town appears to have been in a coma for 50 years with only a drip-feed of minimum wage work to keep it alive.

I really don't know what the answer is but after 50 years, I think we can safely conclude that it isn't Labour.