Jolley interview

The problem with Grimsby is that our government aren't interested in us. They can find many millions to upgrade roads and railways and other infrastructure in the south,but we can't get jack sh1t to upgrade the A46 or provide us with a direct rail link to the capital. If Toll Bar roundabout was in London it would get the right amount of money to improve it, but here we only get the cheapest options available, traffic lights FFS! Lincoln is only a very short rail trip to Newark to catch the mainline to London. We have to travel 60 miles due east to Doncaster to catch the train south. Yet Lincoln can have a direct service, but we can't. If you check Wikipedia, the population of NE Lincs area is bigger than that of Lincoln, so why do they get the direct rail link and we don't?

It’s easy to call our area a shithole of a place to live if you’ve never seen the other “shithole” towns and cities out there, and it’s sad when you get some disloyal Uni-helmet geek slagging his/her home town off just because they’re in a place that caters for beardy hipster students, I actually take it as a positive we haven’t got throngs of these snowflakes roaming our towns centres and clogging up our roads in their beat up beetles.

Burnley,Halifax, Rochdale, Rotherham, Scunthorpe, just 5 places of the top of my head I’ve spent a good deal of time in to confirm that these are absolute shitholes in comparison to our area, I could think of many more including big cities like Leicester, Birmingham, Leeds, Bradford that have areas you wouldn’t want to leave a dog in never mind live in, and even London it used to be one of the greatest Capital City's in the world,  but not anymore it’s still ok for an expensive night out but how safe would you feel there now thanks cultural enrichment?

I love where I live yes it could be improved if we had a forward thinking council but when I think of the people, the parks, Weelsby Woods, our fantastic beach Which is better than many European holiday resorts, the promenade, the boating lake, the restaurants, two town centres to choose from, Abbeygate, sea view street, the many independent boutiques that have sprung up around Cleethorpes, the air show, scooter rally, a decent theatre and Auditorium, we have cheap affordable housing, we have great schools, we live in an area were skilled people are in demand, we have the Lincolnshire Wolds on our doorstep for great family walks/ bike rides, do I need to go on....yes there are bad area’s like most places but anybody who says N.E. Lincs is a dump is deluded.

I read somewhere, that for every £5 spent on regeneration in the North, the South get £100. The government aren't interested in areas like ours and the only way they will take any notice, is if the renewable energy sector really takes off round here and creates wealth and jobs. Then they will come sniffing.

It's only really been since the 90's that Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool and Newcastle for example, started to modernise and regenerate. I started going to these cities in the late 70's and they were pretty grim on the whole. Your modern day student wouldn't have wanted to live there in those days, that's if they became a student at all. I never thought of being a student when i left school in the mid 70's- it didn't even cross my mind and wasn't talked about as an option while still at school. The best we could hope for was an apprenticeship, which i did. The world and his wife goes to uni nowadays, which is a big change from when i was leaving school. We never got to know what it was like living in another city, apart from working away on contracts from time to time, which i did, but i never got the urge to move to these places when the job finished. Most cities just looked like bigger versions of home to me.

Just going back to what Grim 74 said about cheap affordable housing in NE Lincs,

He is right the prices around here near and in Bury St Edmunds is just plain silly,

You could buy 2 houses in Grimsby for less than the price of one down here.

I bet  MJ could not believe his eyes when he saw the prices,

We will have one of those he said to his wife.

I spent last weekend in Manchester and what i saw of it imho it was a massive shithole a very expensive one at that  

Quoted from ginnywings

I read somewhere, that for every £5 spent on regeneration in the North, the South get £100. The government aren't interested in areas like ours and the only way they will take any notice, is if the renewable energy sector really takes off round here and creates wealth and jobs. Then they will come sniffing.

It's only really been since the 90's that Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool and Newcastle for example, started to modernise and regenerate. I started going to these cities in the late 70's and they were pretty grim on the whole. Your modern day student wouldn't have wanted to live there in those days, that's if they became a student at all. I never thought of being a student when i left school in the mid 70's- it didn't even cross my mind and wasn't talked about as an option while still at school. The best we could hope for was an apprenticeship, which i did. The world and his wife goes to uni nowadays, which is a big change from when i was leaving school. We never got to know what it was like living in another city, apart from working away on contracts from time to time, which i did, but i never got the urge to move to these places when the job finished. Most cities just looked like bigger versions of home to me.

I think your assessment of the big cities in the 70s is a bit lopsided there Ginny. I was born in Leeds and at uni in the 60s and all the big cities in the north were attractive propositions. In the 70s I was living back in the West Riding for a while and Leeds in those days was just changing. I think it changed for the worse. It was already a great shopping centre based on the clothing industry and the market that spawned M&S.  But they knocked all the character out, built m-ways through it, flattened lovely department stores to build soulless malls and did the same as Grimsby did but bigger and more brutal.

The houses were demolished and the people shipped out to lousy concrete estates in the nice villages like Rodley, Horsforth and Bramley. Hull did exactly the same with Hessle Road to Bransholme and Grimsby did it from Freemo to Littlecoates and Nunny and Grange. They built eyesore retail malls that looked run down after just a few years. Developers have made a bomb but local people haven't. The waterfront in Leeds was a gold mine for developers and supposed to be a yuppie paradise. It turned into a benefits ghetto for singles.

There has been a colossal amount of money wasted for which ordinary people have seen little benefit in Grimsby but even more so in those big cities. Look at Sheffield. They had the tramway to Meadowhall and decimated the city centre shops by doing it. So then the developers made another packet on revamping that which altered the retail equilibrium of the area in Rotherham and Doncaster. Nottingham did the same with two great big malls and a tramway but ask Mansfield what effect it had there.

You have to start by asking why a town or city exists in the first place and work from there. You can't just chuck money at it and expect it to be the answer. Manchester is surely the prime example. Grimsby existed for fishing, not shopping. So we need to replace the fishing before the shopping works again not the other way round. But developers want easy money and that comes with stupid councils like NEL biting their hands off when they produce a new retail or outskirts housing plan. Nothing was learned from the crooked dealings of T Dan Smith and Poulson in the 60s.  Until investment is job centred, all the towns and cities of the north are simply throwing money away. Maybe some towns have to die off, who knows? Nothing lasts forever. If Grimsby is not sustainable economically then maybe we should concentrate on making Cleethorpes the most important part?

Let's be honest, there's no.place like home and that will always be Grimsby to me, I may have moved away but heart will always belong to the crest of the 3 boars...
If you look at it on a economical scale, in the last 25 years the town has lost some major employers, the likes of cautaulds, titans, fisons, salversens, findus, birds eye to name but a few have gone and never been replaced...They said Grimsby would be the service hub for the off shore wind industry but has generated the amount of jobs that have been lost over the years?..not a cat in hells chance, so until, as if by some kind of miracle, the local government can get their thumbs out their backsides and find a major company to invest into the town unfortunately the downward spiral will continue....one thing will always remain tho, I've said it before and I'll say it again....you won't meet a better person than a grimbarian!!

Quoted from Northbank Mariner

If you look at it on a economical scale, in the last 25 years the town has lost some major employers, the likes of cautaulds, titans, fisons, salversens, findus, birds eye to name but a few have gone and never been replaced...

Add to that list Jex closed in 2017 which employed around 200+ working there in 2005, around 170 jobs lost at Harry Carr Electrical in 2007, 100 jobs lost at Harcros head office at Imperial House next to the barge in 1993 which still had around 10-year lease already paid for in full and purpose built IT support office installed on the ground floor the previous year for the whole of the UK - crazy decision, HMRC tax office closing there 2020-21.

Nat West Bank seems to have less staff in there - two operating a front desk, looks like things are going more automated. Then the likes of Woolworths, BHS, Royal Insurance, Brittania Insurance all closing in Grimsby also. Pearl Insurance still on the go above Toni and Guys?

Quoted from grimsby pete

Alan Buckley
George Higgins
Matt Tees
Don Donovan
Gary Croft
Ron Cockerill
George McClean
Johnny Scott
To name a few I am sure there are many more,

Yes parts of Grimsby are rubbish but there are nice area's  as well,

Alan Buckley said it wasn't easy getting players to come to the area because of our geographical location.

Quoted from rancido

Alan Buckley said it wasn't easy getting players to come to the area because of our geographical location.

Mind you, that was in the days before satnavs.