Bishops Stortford

  Bishops Stortford

English market towns have an ambiance of their own, a mix of old buildings and a slow pedestrian pace.
Sitting in the Cote Brassiera I look out on a street which has come together, not the dream of a  property developer but the slow combustion of over 150 years of individual aspiration. The hight and the frontage of the buildings are each different, they reflect the preference of the occupant/builder who was as varied as the business’s which grew within this small hamlet 30 miles from the capital city.
Bishops Stortford, population 40,000,  came into being as a ford across the river Stort. A busy town it provided the stage coaches with a staging point on their way to Chelmsford an old garrison town dating back to Roman times.
Today the town is a dormitory Town straddling the A1/M11 motorway from the North, as well as providing a fast train service into London. It is still countrified in its proportions but in the last few years has suffered the blight of all small towns, the 'property developer', with deep pockets and a council who are prepared to tear up the established rule book in their quest for new rateable income. The squeeze the Tory government has put on municipalities in halving the grant from central government has meant not only cuts to services but a scramble to fill every available bit of space, every nook and cranny with houses or blocks of  flats some built on hallowed 'green sites', unheard of until Mr Cameron and Mr Osborn decided that they would leave, as their legacy, austerity,  the full impact of swaging cuts to virtually every service a civic authority could offer, and is still being felt across the country in all manner of ways.
Old people's homes bulldozed aside for upmarket flats, police numbers cut by a third just when the underbelly of society realised that doing time was ok. Youth centres closed for lack of funds, carers for the elderly given ever shorter periods with their frail customers, the elderly are now customers struggling to find recognition amongst all the other competing needs which the Council used to offer.  From school places to potholes in the road, from the availability to the drugs which might save a life to the unheard of  knifes in a street fight which takes it away.
Everything has a financial tag. On the one hand to allow our shaky  business's to prosper the state intercedes by providing in-work benefits to prop up the inadequacy of the minimum wage, whilst cutting the taxes of the rich who have become the super rich in this time of austerity. The 'social contract' instigated by the Attlee government in 1945 has been slowly shredded and in its place, a market economy beloved by Thatcher and each Tory government since. Taxes are an anathema to the modern Brit. The understanding that the finances to run a modern 'caring state' have to come through taxes but the concept of caring, as a societal responsibility is replaced by the individual liaise affair which opposes regulation or interference by government in economic affairs allowing only a market led 'free enterprise' system to operate, unfortunately to the exclusion of most of 'us'.
Bishops Stortford is a pleasant place to live and instead of returning in 1994 to my traditional roots in the North the clearly better off South was a good choice especially after leaving the shadowy prosperity of South Africa. The urban engine which is London provides work when there is non in the rest of the country and this in turn provides an optimism amongst the people who live here which a well paid job brings. Much of this is pending the outcome of Brexit but if an area is to survive it's this area with its commuter trains full taking the ants to their jobs in the 'big smoke'.