Gary Monro’s blog

Yep, I’m on holiday. Actually, I’m visiting family who moved up here some years ago.

It’s an odd town, Blackpool. The housing round here is beautiful; heavy red bricks (so heavy they can only be laid three courses at a time - the cement squeezes out otherwise), large, solid structures, big front gardens and some unique features. I particularly love the turrets at the corners of some of the houses that allow the occupants to see down two different streets from one vantage point. There are some very nice open spaces too, not enormous but well tended. The place has an air of class about it.

Now take a trip to the Promenade, the sea-front area that constitutes the tourist area and witness the opposite end of the scale, epitomised both by the people there and the facilities serving them. I am hardly exaggerating when I say the primary features of the majority of the people here are: tattoos, foul language, scruffy, ill-fitting clothes, football shirts or FCUK t-shirts (is this still regarded as funny by these people?), cigarettes drooping from semi-permanent scowls and the occasional loud,vulgar behaviour.

Other notable features are the increased numbers of non-white visitors, particularly Asians - from which I am not sure which conclusion to draw - and the overwhelming uniformity of the ‘food’ on offer in the ‘restaurants’ and cafes. With just a few exceptions, chicken or burger with chips is the staple diet in tourist Blackpool. There are few foreign food restaurants. In a place we stopped for a lack-lustre coffee there were nine main course items on offer. Six of them came with chips and peas (sausage chips and peas, chicken chips and peas, fish chips and peas - you get the idea). The other three offered the chips but, for reasons I can only imagine to be completely arbitrary, no peas.

As with the previous restaurant we’d eaten in we were bounded both sides by families who sat, vacant, unsmiling, their faces taut, their children actually well-behaved - if sullen silence can be regarded as good behaviour.

Perhaps most notable of all was how relatively uncrowded the sea-front area is. When taking into account that this is the middle of the school summer holidays and it is also a Saturday I would expect the place to be bustling. It’s not. It’s busy but there’s room for many more. My sister says the town’s dying on its feet. I am not going to research if this is truly so and, if so, why it’s so, but looking at the sullen faces, the bored kids and experiencing the general lack of anything truly exciting or dynamic (excluding a few half-decent fair-ground rides) I can’t help but feel that, the unemployment problems it will cause notwithstanding, its demise isn’t such a bad thing.

But what strikes me is that the decline - if there is one - is due simply to absolutely nobody in the area I visited actually making the effort to offer something different, something a little better than what is currently the norm. It’s almost as if they cannot conceive of the clientel wanting something different to what’s on offer - and have now found themselves bereft of ideas as the visitor figures slowly slip away. My primary feeling about Blackpool is one of sadness. It resembles a person, well-meaning, inoffensive but stuck in a rut, and, being not particularly bright, unable to get out of it despite a quiet desperation to do so.

Blackpool’s survival may depend on the government’s promotion and legalising of widespread and easily accessible gambling in the UK. Along with the equally socially destructive (but equally lucrative - especially for the government) promotion of 24 hour alcohol consumption it might be that its reincarnation as England’s very own Sin City could be its saving. As a copy of Las Vegas it might even become a classier place . But such a basis for a revival is a fragile one. A socially conservative government ought to cancel this government’s plans to fill its tax short-comings with the tax proceeds from alcohol and gambling. Doing so could ruin the town. It’s a lousy choice to have to make. I hope it can be avoided.

…will our disgraceful government even begin to act.

Tony Blair served notice yesterday that he was ready to renounce parts of the European convention on human rights if British and European judges continued to block the deportation of Islamic extremists in the wake of the London bombings.

It took 52 deaths plus four failed bombings for this monstrous government to overlook - partly - its lust for the Muslim vote. Based on its perverse belief that all British Muslims would stop voting Labour if we got rid of hate-mongering foreigners or locked up treasonous British Muslims who encouraged violence and murder Blair and co have been indifferent to the safety and well-being of the British people in favour of the safety and well-being of the Labour vote.

Now there are far fewer votes in pandering to Muslims and Europe so Blair turns his principles (I use that word loosely) on their head and chases votes elsewhere. This is nothing new for an amoral opportunist government. Once the vote for the EU Constitution fell away Blair suddenly decided that Europe needed to alter the CAP. Forget he had happily signed up for the rotten thing in the first place; when opportunity struck - and Europe was suddenly in turmoil - he cheerfully reneged on a deal he had partly brokered in order to appear visionary and strong.

He said he was prepared for “a lot of battles” with the courts, which have repeatedly intervened to prevent the Home Secretary from deporting “preachers of hate” and other foreign nationals regarded as a threat to national security.

“Should legal obstacles arise, we will legislate further, including, if necessary, amending the Human Rights Act in respect of the interpretation of the European convention on human rights,” the Prime Minister said.

Where was Blair when these people were openly preaching their hatred in Hyde Park? Where was his determination to do the right thing when these people were celebrating the deaths of our soldiers abroad?

The truth is that this government is as unprincipled as a government could be. Far from operating from sincerely held beliefs - based on a coherent understanding of people generally and of this country in particular - Labour sways with the wind,operating socialist principles under the cover of deception, always with an eye to its favourite voting blocks, always ready to make something from a bad situation. The occupant of Number 10 is an object lesson in behind the scenes manipulation of the democratic process, the totlatiarian manipulation of media and free speech and total contempt for the traditions and ways of this ancient island.

As the social fabric of Britain slowly falls apart he will grapple for excuses and appropriate soundbites while applying sticking plaster (sounds good - means nothing) applications to our various ills. Hence, when a significant section of our youth now has no connectin with the normal rules of decent behaviour and the public is at the end of its tether with frustration, this idiot creates a ‘respect’ agenda that fails singularly to even recognise the necessity of family life in their upbringing. As with Blears this week, they want to sound tough but they want to do nothing.

How the Conservative Party couldn’t remove this illness from our society is a shame - literally. I don’t know how much longer the UK can sustain Labour’s assault on its every vital organ, its very essence but I fear that the time for rebellion is not only nigh it’s almost too late. Some of the damage done is irreversible and with a government that only acts - and only in response to its instincts for oportunity - when it’s already too late the chances of us reclaiming this great nation grow dimmer with each passing week.

Britons must ask themselves what they can do for their country. We must realise that complaining - whilst being proof that we do at least care - is not sufficient.

I will address this topic soon in another post.