AIBU to ask what is happening in Middlesbrough at the moment?

The first stop is law. Effective law. Policing and law is under-invested - like everything else in this rundown country. It has been very deliberately done. And prisons. No more crying that there is no money in a country with so much of it.

The second and bigger problem is to present an alternative way of life. A real, genuinely real alternative. For people on the bottom who have nothing, so many people in power live in a very different world. Everything has to be genuinely accessible to those who have nothing, who now own nothing more than the clothes on their back thanks to Landlording. And this is problematic, tying into questions of how we are going to live in future in an age of globalism, of computers, of over production. I can’t give you a simple quick answer on Mumsnet in 3 short words!

You can look at simpler starting methods, which again involve investment - training needs to be free again, wages need to pay again, we need to rebuild an economy where ordinary working people can buy goods produced locally. Trades too, as others say.

But wider economic change is a challenge in the technological age. We may need lower populations with more living on the land as we did in the 1930s and accept that ‘economics of scale’ are often directly harmful to societies. I’d like to see a reversal of the whole principles of globalisation and more emphasis once again on local production and local resilience. People have written entire libraries on this topic so I’m not going to be able to provide a road map here, but it would now take some unpicking after 30 years of shifts the other way. Accept national boundaries developed for a reason and the one world system is doomed to failure for various reasons both economic and cultural.

Cultural change is more problematic still than economic. We also need to stop the influx of American-led shit culture, violent movies films and music which glorify gangsta culture. Accept that that is a problem. Somehow reduce the impact of the internet - fortunately it does seem to be its own downfall in a lot of ways.

Unpick the ridiculous system that has led to all the wealth of the world tied up in a very few men and leaves the rest of us trading debt. As I said no more crying that there is no money. There’s loads. It’s the distribution that is the problem.

Rebuild the economy, unpick culture and completely change the global trading system. Oh and reinvigorate local democracy. Simple, no?? Pick somewhere and start sweeping. Britain always says nothing can be done because problems are too large.

They only get larger when they’re left. As we see.

Where will the money come from?

@itsgettingweird

We need someone brave who will rip up the rule book and start all over again.

I've said this so many times on so many different thread topics. Constantly tinkering around the edges is just moving deckchairs on the Titanic and gets the country nowhere. Whether it's the economy, unemployment, education, NHS, police, councils, or whatever - nothing works anymore and throwing more money without radical reform won't solve anything.

The problem is so huge it needs such investment to undo.

Yes we need more doing trades and that needs to start at 12/13/14yo before we lose children because they feel like they aren’t worth it due ti not being academic (meaning exams aren’t where they shine)

Then we need to sort out uni. Spending years and get into 10’s of £1000’s pound debt to get a job. Jobs don’t pay enough because of paying back student loans, cost of housing etc. so it puts people off from even getting started.

Then there’s the low pay but just over the replacement threshold of jobs requiring a degree. The ones that come to mind that are essential for society are nurses, doctors and teachers.

We need someone brave who will rip up the rule book and start all over again.

Industry and mining was in decline long before Thatcher. More mines were closed before her than during her tenure.

People are crying out for decent tradesmen, there's a shortage of skilled/qualified engineers, motor mechanics, lorry drivers, etc. We may not have the mass low skill manual work in mines and factories of pre 1970s, but there's still a need for people who can make and do things. Trouble is that when they scrapped the grammar/sec mod system, they thought that everyone was suitable for an academic education, then we had the ridiculous scrapping of Poly's and adult education with the aim of 50% going to Uni - again, obsession with academic education.

What's needed is to make prison much harder. Forced labour. Only speak when you are spoken to. Only allowed to talk to other prisoners during one hour's recreation in the evening. Everything done at the double.

Thatcher was reacting to global economic forces and the shambles of the 70s. Mines would have closed regardless of her - as they did throughout the 70s. The steel industry would still be gone whether she was PM or not. It is not economic to make steel in the UK.

Thatcher had a massive impact that is still ongoing and there’s nothing wrong with remembering the origins and causes, you can’t adddress them fully without it.

The post I was responding to was massively simplistic and yes, childish.

Japan is a different culture entirely and has high levels of social etiquette with meaning enfolded into everything, you can’t just import one desirable trait here without looking g at the context.

@SomeoneIsWrongOnTheInternet
I never said it could be imported and neither can the culture that exists in Japan and Korea of not mugging people or dropping litter or shoplifting.
Do you think there is anything that could be done to stop the serious drug problem in UK?

More of an occupational hazard/inconvenience.

Exactly.

It doesn’t matter how long ago it was c it started the downward trajectory it’s relevant.

I agree with Blossom

Austerity was believed to be a good thing but some. Yes it started 16 years ago.

Now 16 years later those children are the ones we are seeing involved in county lines etc.

Everything trickles down and we don’t see immediate impact of neglect.

Unfortunately that also means we won’t see an immediate impact of any positive changes made either.

and it never will

Thatcher decimated great swathes of the industrial North and it’s never recovered.

Corruption in the north is aided and abetted by southern demands for more money at any cost. What were the Freeports but organised, institutionalised, corruption?

Japan is a different culture entirely and has high levels of social etiquette with meaning enfolded into everything, you can’t just import one desirable trait here without looking g at the context!

There are plenty of cultures that have the idea of bringing shame on their ancestors and plenty of young girls who still get beaten up and killed as a result. Which will you
import, can you guarantee? It has a name here ‘honour killings’ because it’s so common in those ethnicities. In India gang rape of girls in that situation isn’t unknown. Japan is much better but does not have an unstained record of women’s rights either (not that anywhere has for a thousand years or two).

@LittleBearPad you seem to have little respect for either history or culture. Thatcher had a massive impact that is still ongoing and there’s nothing wrong with remembering the origins and causes, you can’t adddress them fully without it. We do need new solutions now however. Places like Newcastle have been phenomenally inventive and adaptive in the past. But none of us can really compete in an era of globalisation and the ongoing problems of an exploitative elite in London which does not value anywhere in the country, and likes to pretend it has never heard of the problems of flooded local markets.

And the fear of being hanged. They hang gangsters in Japan.

For people like that, going to prison is a badge of honour.

Andy Burnham is going to fix this stuff. Maybe a 3rd Number 10, "Number 10 even further up-north" complete with another one grand door.

See I would call grand scale corruption neglect on the societal system.

That people will power taking away money from society who will benefit.

And I would say that investment is needed. If they money is there and
it invested it doesn’t matter where the investment came from or stopped. Who is responsible at what level for making the wrong choice. It’s the system failing people. The buck for those failures stops at whoever caused them.

And yes you do need someone with a desire. Whoever is heading up the scam in local government doesn’t have the desire to improve community as a whole. Just to line their own pockets.

I think you’ve misread my meaning.

I believe that in Japan, the prospect of bringing shame on your family is a huge incentive to toe the line.

Yes and also being shamed by the community and losing your career etc.

Interesting question

I believe that in Japan, the prospect of bringing shame on your family is a huge incentive to toe the line

Oh get a grip. It’s 35 years since Thatcher was PM.

Do you really think that had she not been PM the North East would still be full of happy miners. That the steel works at Redcar would still exist. The world changed. Steel businesses have gone bust countless times because it doesn’t work economically in the country anymore.

Yes new industries are needed. But you can’t just dance on the grave of Margaret Thatcher - it’s childish.

And once again, I'll draw your attention to the post by @GarlicAnything:

"There's some grand-scale local government corruption going on. Someone's been caught running a flipping scam on land marked for industrial developments, but there's so much more. Billions have probably been spirited out of the local government purse over the past several years"

It's not caused by "neglect in the societal system". It's caused by corruption and grift and fecklessness.

We don't need yet more investment. It will just be stolen and misused.

We certainly do need someone with the desire to do it. But that needs to come from within the 'communities'. They are people with agency, not passive or incapable children.

They need to invest in the area. Levelling up was meant to tackle this problem - except it was never done.

People need to know there’s jobs out there to feel education is worth it so achieve the goal of getting one of those jobs.

The problems we are seeing are as a result of years of neglect in the societal system.

we need investment to undo this.

We need someone with the desire to do it.

What’s the point of vocational courses when there are no jobs? The devastation of the north east is an absolute disgrace. Mining, the chemical industry gone and nothing to replace them. No wonder so many of us rejoiced in Thatcher’s demise.

we should n ver have scrapped rhe old secondary moderns and technical schools back in the 70s. We’ve now had 2/3 generations of non working households the benefits and crime lifestyles.