GREAT YARMOUTH is a dog-eared town; a town in
decline; a decline that has accelerated due to the appearance of foreign
tongues, now in occupation of houses once described in Yarmouth's hey-day as
boarding houses which brought wealth to the town during the summer months, and contributed
to a fruitful holiday industry. Boarding houses that were then well looked
after and cherished by their owners; houses newly painted each spring in
anticipation of the summer months; houses decorated with colour in the form of various
kinds of plant life accompanied by the smell of bacon rending the air each
morning as breakfasts were served while I delivered them there daily newspapers
– each and every one; each competing with the other to display the No Vacancy
sign on their windows.
Each
part of the season was split into fortnights, such as Scottish and Northern fortnight.
All over the country at various parts of the summer season northern factories
would close for two weeks for the annual summer holiday; and it would be to
English seaside resorts that the workers would travel; and Great Yarmouth was
one of their holiday destinations.
Blame
it, if you like, on the late 1960s and the temptation of cheap family holidays
abroad, which is undoubtedly true; but then the town became, as a consequence,
merely a convenient stop over for primarily day trippers in the summer months
before and after they took their real holiday abroad. After all, in the 1960s
the owners of Yarmouth's guest houses also set their sights on Spain, paid for
through the earnings made from, primarily the British working class. In the end,
because of the cheap package holiday flights to Spain, this same working class
joined their boarding house owners on the same holiday destination; but the
boarding house owners fell into decline as a result.
Now
in Yarmouth, boarding houses, or the uber boarding houses that were borderline
hotels, have either new occupiers speaking foreign tongues; or they have
forests of cannabis plants waiting for harvest within their domains. This is
what the town of Yarmouth is exposed to. The local politicians, and the local
press have been silent witnesses to what their town is degenerating into. Which
is why Ukip has gripped the local indigenous community to its breast.
The
local people of Yarmouth, whether Tory or Labour, are beginning to show their
disgust at their local party representatives on the council. Last May Ukip
proved the most successful party on the town council. But all this lead to was
the Tories and Labour voting in unity to disbar Ukip members from joining the
various local council committees that ran the town.
GREAT YARMOUTH is my town of birth (I am now 64),
and for all its many faults, and until that is, its Brown manifestation, I had
always chosen the Labour Party as my preferred choice at the ballot box. But no
longer - and mainly for ideological reasons that belong to another piece at another
time.
At
the moment Great Yarmouth lies like a beached whale, very still and slowly
rotting on the sea shore. Our town leaders are vacuous when deciding what needs
to be done to regenerate the town. Of course they can come up with the odd
million or two, or three; or even 50. But to do what? Build an outer harbour
that has been a pitiful waste of taxpayers' money. At least we have the
compensation of a bi-yearly visits from HMS Dauntless: the towns adopted naval sister.
But who is available other than the Royal Navy to use the £50 million[1]
facilities; built for a grander purpose than these naval visits. That grander
purpose was a deep port that could be opened up to trade. We had, what was it,
three or four cranes built in and transported from China in expectation of a
renaissance in trade between our town and the near continent – the cranes no
longer exist, they were taken away; the bubble had burst – yet another reason
at the time to distrust local politicians from all the parties..
You
have to be of my age and generation to appreciate how this town has been left
abandoned; first of all to the social derelicts from cities like London in the
1980's; and now by immigrants. Our once proud boarding houses and hotels, are
now being used for social housing of immigrants from primarily eastern Europe; allowed
into the country by Tony Blair and the last Labour government; and the Tory's
have no plans to get rid of them; which is why many of us in Yarmouth are fully
prepared to switch out allegiances from Tory, Labour, and Lib Dems - to Ukip.
There
is nothing any of these local parties can do to dissuade many people locally
from turning to Ukip…especially those of my generation. For we cannot be fooled
into anything any longer, politically. Well; this is not exactly the truth.
There are among our age group some who are still prepared to vote for the three
main parties, despite what they have witnessed. These are blue, red, and yellow
rosette wearing monkeys who have their
support for the three main parties, written
into their DNA.
GREAT YARMOUTH is my first love. It does not deserve
its current predicament. But it is a predicament partially authored by the way
the local people have voted in the ballot box for the three main parties; much
of it inborn and generational, and therefore without any intellectual input
independent of romantic attachment to the three main parties.
Now
this attachment is beginning to break and more and more local people are
turning, like myself, to Ukip. At
least they are representing the views of the British people on the two great
issues of the day; which the people believe outweigh other domestic issues.
Europe
and immigration I believe, as a citizen of this town, are the two fundamental
issues that need seeing to; and none of the three main national parties
locally, at least, have any kind trust in them left. Ukip's priorities are mine
- and there solutions are mine.
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