

Why are you still here? James Meek reports from Grimsby - happyscrappy
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n08/james-meek/why-are-you-still-here

======
petercooper
Ooh! I live 15 minutes from Grimsby! I hope I'm feeling like patio11 does
whenever a post about Japan comes up ;-)

Note that the question in the title seems to be aimed at why fishermen and
miners are still around, not why people are still in Grimsby ;-) Grimsby is an
interesting and rather _complex_ town, in my experience, but broadly suffers
the same issues as any number of other British cities that are getting little
investment (unlike Lincoln 25 miles to the south-west) and are struggling to
modernise.

One major issue with towns like Grimsby is constant brain drain. Young people
keep moving out, old downsizers keep moving in. I've been hiring in the area
and while I've found some gold here, it's striking how many young people
abandon these areas and end up staying where they went to uni or flee to
London if they want to "make something of themselves". The political and
institutional London-oriented "design" of the United Kingdom is _actively
harming_ towns like Grimsby in a way that doesn't seem to occur in the US (at
least, the intentional part).

As an aside, it seems like Grimsby may get some international recognition soon
as the guy who made Borat is basing his next movie on the town -
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimsby_%28film%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimsby_%28film%29)

~~~
untog
_The political and institutional London-oriented "design" of the United
Kingdom is actively harming towns like Grimsby in a way that doesn't seem to
occur in the US_

It does, it's just that the size of the US makes it slightly less apparent.
It's not that everyone is moving to one city, but everyone is moving to San
Francisco, Silicon Valley, New York, LA, and so on. It's practically a right
of passage to go try life in "the big city", then decide if you want to come
home.

~~~
petercooper
Good point, I should probably look at the US as an amalgam of 50 "countries"
rather than a direct comparison. The US seems to punch above its weight in
thriving focal points though - the UK's economy is only 5x smaller but almost
entirely focused towards one city.

------
mike-cardwell
Something weird about seeing my home town here. Especially as I'm visiting
this weekend. Anyone else here from Grimsby?

~~~
petercooper
Not _from_ but I've lived in Louth for ten years and both my daughters were
born in Grimsby.

------
concerto
I love this article. It aims to show the political spectrum through a detailed
study of a microcosm. While certain issues might be very specific to this
constituency, through the piece it details the wider picture such as the
battle between the hard left and the hard right for the same voters, and the
issues they hold in common. I love it. I wonder how true this is of other
countries or whether it is specific to the UK. Greece has had a similar
situation with Golden Dawn and Syriza, although to a much larger scale as it
is unlikely that UKIP or a socialist alliance/Greens could ever take power
given the first past the post system.

------
guard-of-terra
It seems to me that countries who "won the WWII" failed to make anything out
of it; save for the USA who took it all.

~~~
lmz
It's probably fair to say that's because only the US didn't get bombed to
pieces.

