It's a lovely word, a perfect word to describe the British as we continue to dissolve our heritage and absolve ourselves of what we used to stand for.
Redcar like so many towns in the North developed a line of business and staked its existence on a continuance of that trade. The woollen mills of Bradford, the cotton mills in many small towns in Lancashire, the car plants in the Midlands all subscribed to one major industry and when the economics changed and the product could be produced cheaper, thousands of miles away in Asia then the heart was ripped out of the town. They became ghost towns, a grim reminder, like the tumble weed desolation out west in the U.S., of man's transitory state.
The Buddhists have a term for it, "impermanence" which for them is the condition of us all throughout our lives.
"There's an ill wind that blows no good", and the contraction of the mighty Chinese economy which we in the West had used to pull us through the destruction of our financial stability by the Banking Industry seems to be coming to an end.
The clever people in the boardrooms of Gencorp and Anglo borrowed heavily to climb on board the Chinese express and now the train has slowed, they have been thrown off like a hobo riding the freight trains East !
The repercussions for so many industries and so many countries who depended on the Chinese miracle will be felt for many years. Australia is very dependent on its export of raw materials to China and one wonders how some of the towns that survive because of the mining there will survive. The gold rush is over for the time being and whilst there will be some stubborn critters who will continue to pan the mountain streams most will pack up, like in Redcar and talk of the "good old days".
Of course in a planned economy there are alternatives and governments come in to rescue or at least retrain the people and attract investment in other industry's into the devastated area. "That's a sure route to wholesale penury" I can hear some of you saying, "the Market knows best", but we didn't allow the Market to decide about the broken, insolvent banks 7 years ago, oh no !! There was too much Establishment money tied up there and so they simply took the money from you and me, without a by your leave and plastered the banking industry with "Quantitative Easing", printing Money to cover the debt, effectively devaluing your currency, making future generations poorer but what the hell they won't understand and with the media behind us we can wash the stench away anyway.
Redcar I'm afraid will not be the beneficiary of QE. They will hardly raise an eyebrow in Downing St.
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