The final indignity
You don't even need to be a particularly alert reader to recall WoSland's worrying piece about recession-hit Bath just a few weeks ago, which drew thousands of viewers from all corners of the net to become one of the all-time top 10 most popular posts on the blog. But this week, Bath's fall from grace was rendered complete.
The image above comes from a piece in Monday's Guardian about dereliction and decay in urban England (click the pic to read the story). The feature talks about northern working-class cities like Bradford, Redcar, Sheffield and Preston, particularly the various consequences (and, it posits optimistically, opportunities) presented by long-term disuse, decay and demolition of long-term empty properties. The picture chosen to illustrate it, though, is of London Road in Bath.
It's not, admittedly, the most salubrious part of town. But Bath is more accustomed to being employed to depict the grand Edwardian age in period dramas. To serve as a passable imitation of deprived modern-day Bradford instead may well be seen by the city's inhabitants as its darkest hour since it was bombed by the Nazis in 1942.
They didn't choose the picture very wisely. Having been empty for years, that building has now been bought by one of Bath's big building firms and will get a long-overdue rennovation. These Guardian journalists just don't do their research!
Tsk, these bloody porn bots are spamming everywhere.
Ever been in the Longacre for a pint ?
I have not – it always looked much too scary for me. Even when my best friends lived 100 yards from it we never went there. And never will now, because I think it's become a launderette or something.
A foamy pint of laundry detergent with a fabric softener chaser, please.
The Longacre looks like The Dog & Hammer, the local of the Fat Slags from Viz. I bet there's a combined tattoo parlour/abortion clinic up that alley beside it.
The Longacre turned into a gaming parlour – you can go there and play dominoes but can't get anything proper to drink. Try the Piccadilly further down. But not the Porter Butt, it's all gone hi-fidelity.
It is going to get far, far worse before it is going to get better. That much is obvious to anyone with a memory longer than the proverbial goldfish.
So far no one is doing anything to change the course we are on. They aren't even talking about it. What we see in Greece and Spain is headed for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland too. I just hope that this time round we don't see the political nasties rise up with it (like every other time the economies hit the shitter). It's sad when you speak to people alive during WW2 and they talk about how things now feel just like it did back then (including a couple of Jewish decent that were interviewed too). All the nasty stuff kept down will float up like so much brown stuff – racist tension, facism, etc. or modern equivalents.
Enjoy the neo-liberal hellmouth opening up under the UK. I hope I'll be too old to care anymore when it gets hot enough to spill blood or at least long enough I'll feel I've had the best part of my life's worth of time, but I don't think I'll be that lucky at the rate this is going.