Posts
So often we hear that new industrial units are the way forward for economically depressed areas, especially those on new land next to the by-pass roads and motorways, which together will bring life back to these hard hit communities.
I am fed up with these lies, which not only cheat the local people, allow land speculators to make big amounts of money, put up short term and cheap and unsustainable buildings, they also ruin the last vestiges of any unspoilt area in a community, taking out the last environmental bio-diversity and pleasant views and areas of green.
So carrying on with the theme of 3 debts, here is what the smoke and mirrors of inward investment in new roads and new industrial units takes us.
Nothing but a waste of the money, monies that should have been used to support local businesses and make the high streets the centre of a new economy, with local opportunity for all to make a living, and even prosper, rather than the better off and better connected laying claim to land speculation, and the building companies trousered all the money for highways, which clearly was a waste of investment, not as it was sold to the people as; the way to a new wealthy and an inclusive economy.
View over an East Lancashire valley
Sheds on the by-pass
Wanking over the politicians’ promise
And road builders’ wet false dreams
Of inward investment; that never came
Spurning the high streets
That were full of shops
Sheds on the by-pass
Gutting the businesses that once had got by
And leaving the old town centre to crumble,
The foot fall to die away
And the closed-down and shops-to-let signs
Sprout like spring bulbs,
Only they will never now turn into flowers.
Sheds on the by-pass;
The mono-crop now failing
Cheap warehousing
light business premises
Thrown up in a rush for rental value
Close to the by-pass and the motorways
The sheds on the By-pass,
Sold as the key to green-shoots signs of recovery
Are half empty, and themselves wilting
Marked by the seal of a motorway lead recovery
That would never come,
Except to the road builders and landowners,
The sheds on the By-pass,
Planted by the thoughtless chase for land price profit making
Sit there morbidly, empty eyed
Cast under the same spell
Of the dying town centre
And terrace empty housing clearance
The Sheds on the by-pass
Cast their economic false shadows
Across the flat lands of the valleys
And the landscape of the hearts of the people.
Wanking over the politicians’ promise
And road builders’ wet false dreams
Of inward investment; that never came
Spurning the high streets
That were full of shops
Sheds on the by-pass
Gutting the businesses that once had got by
And leaving the old town centre to crumble,
The foot fall to die away
And the closed-down and shops-to-let signs
Sprout like spring bulbs,
Only they will never now turn into flowers.
Sheds on the by-pass;
The mono-crop now failing
Cheap warehousing
light business premises
Thrown up in a rush for rental value
Close to the by-pass and the motorways
The sheds on the By-pass,
Sold as the key to green-shoots signs of recovery
Are half empty, and themselves wilting
Marked by the seal of a motorway lead recovery
That would never come,
Except to the road builders and landowners,
The sheds on the By-pass,
Planted by the thoughtless chase for land price profit making
Sit there morbidly, empty eyed
Cast under the same spell
Of the dying town centre
And terrace empty housing clearance
The Sheds on the by-pass
Cast their economic false shadows
Across the flat lands of the valleys
And the landscape of the hearts of the people.
