Cast Away Their Cords...

 

This morning I decided to check out the recently completed promenade at Hirael Bay, in Bangor [pictured], which takes the line of the new flood defences that have been installed over the last couple of years there. Whilst the work on the storm drainage is yet to be finished, I was told by a Hirael resident that the old King George V playing fields will be restored on their completion, thus bringing weekend football back to the place after some time away. All I can say is that the promenade is rather damned fine, and includes a part of the Bangor cycle path along its length.

Recently, Bangor was voted the worst seaside town in the UK, and with good reason: the place has suffered from underinvestment and the ravages of corporate speculation for years now, with most small, private enterprises having been driven out by high rents and business rates and unfair competition from the loss-leader giants who came, stripped the place bare and then moved out of town into bigger and more profitable spaces. However, the council  finally appears to have been stung into action by that very public slating of the city - for city it is, albeit a tiny one - and much effort is being made to try and clean up the sorry mess that the High Street - the longest High Street in Wales - in particular has become. I really hope this is the start of the renewal of this once vibrant urban space and a return to thriving small enterprises jostling alongside each other for business.

Coincidently, I picked up a copy of the Times Literary Supplement later on this afternoon, and there was a review of two books - Torsten Bell's 'Great Britain? How we get our future back', and Paul Collier's 'Left Behind A new economics for neglected places'. Both argue for a third way in economic thinking - not a new idea, I know, but a strand of thought that has rather been subsumed in the noise of the Thatcherite decades, and little considered until recently in the mainstream of thought - going down the route of a mixed, socially-centred economy: something I've banged on about all my adult life, it seems to me. I'll quote the reviewer's [Will Hutton] comments in full, as they really focus in on the issues that need to be addressed if the new Labour government is to get to grips with the shit-show that all these years of laissez-faire Tory abuse and greed has left it holding, and to move forward into a new era of politics.

In summing up the commonality between the two author's views, and at the same time echoing my own, he says: 'Instead of a mystic reverence for shrinking the state and expanding untethered markets, they argue for a more sophisticated understanding of how capitalism works, in which intelligent, enlightened public agency is central - and, in the case of Collier, in which human motivation is recast as inherently social rather than merely self-interested.' And toward the end of the paragraph: '...economic dynamism is linked umbilically to socially cohesive societies...'. Couldn't have put it better myself. Let's hope for a brighter future built on such estimable ideas: it's been done before, so there's no reason to doubt that it can't be done again...