Mansfield

[.... 24]

I've now and again visited the town in the past, maybe because from Redhill, where I live, it's an easy little drive of barely fifteen minutes up the A60. At a bit of a loose end at the end of a Bank Holiday today and with no real plans, we drove up to the town centre and went to visit a food fair in the market square which had been advertised.

Now I have to admit to a little strictly light-hearted mickey taking of Mansfield from time to time:

Mansfield on't Telly Yooth

but on a more serious note I kinda have a bit of time for former honest coal mining communities such as the north Notts town, and that's by no means intended as patronising - more due to my late father being a pit man himself for many years. There's a kind of basic down-to-earth honesty that is not lost on me.

Parking up in the town and walking down Leeming Street to the square it was evident that the food festival was pretty low key and a bit thin on the ground. There were also some vestiges of what passes for Mansfield market these days with just a few stalls open. It felt kind of sad to see people making an effort in their local community but struggling along. Whilst always understanding that this kind of deterioration is happening in many high streets and town centres up and down the country it's all the same sad to witness it up in Mansfield.

Like many similar places, the town centre businesses appear to be thinning down and growing less in quality. Not that I've anything particularly against the JD Wetherspoon chain at all but there are three or four outlets in quite close proximity, perhaps a a sign of the times as to what can survive in decent old working class communities these days.

I'm not sure exactly what I want to say about Mansfield but I truly hope that things can pick up and regenerate up there one of these days. I think the town and it's people deserve much better.

[jackson 301]

An interesting piece of reporting Stu.

[poohbear 1,360]

I'm not sure exactly what I want to say about Mansfield but I truly hope that things can pick up and regenerate up there one of these days. I think the town and it's people deserve much better.

Few miles down the road...Shirebrook...The pits shut and millions of pounds of EEC money injected into the area to create new jobs.Gigantic sports clothes outlet opened up in a new factory and warehouse complex...95% of the workers there speak Polish....That was under Labour...so much for the overpaid politicians that run this country...they're not worth a toss.

Give them millions to create jobs and they immediately fill them with cheap foreign labour.The country would be better run under Al Capone.

[mudgie49 401]

You hit the nail on the head Stu,it was the same when an old pal of mine, drove me around Kirkby in Ashfield,and Sutton in A',on my last visit to the UK.

A few years previous they had been busy and bustling mining towns.

Sad to see the demise of a community,anywhere.

[.... 24]

Kirkby and Sutton very similar. I know that all too well through working in Sutton for a period.

It's a pretty sad thing to witness. I really don't know the answer and fear there isn't one. I placed a 3hr parking ticket in my windscreen there yesterday and after an hour was itching to get out of the place. I want to stress that's definitely not meant as a hatchet job on Mansfield, there are some pleasant places there, and it's partly due to the fact I prefer to be in the countryside in my spare time.

In spite of that I could see little to hang on for there for. In the past I've enjoyed visits to variously the Palace Theatre, the Odeon, the market and the odd pint or a football match. Driving away this time I didn't feel like ever going back and for some reason I didn't enjoy that feeling.

I cut my losses, jumped in the car and headed off for a very pleasant drive through Farnsfield and Edingly to Southwell.

A shame.

[mgread1200 141]

Having lived in these localities since the early seventies I know that you are of course correct, Both the material and social wealth of these areas was down to the coal mining industry. I still socialize with people that remember the good times and how things were. whats needed is work and the kind of security that some of us enjoyed in previous decades. "It's easy to say it's not so easy to engineer".

[Paulus 541]

Spot on mgread, once the money/job security vanishes the town centres die, people are forced to shop where there's free parking/free buses & 'guaranteed' cheap shopping out of town, in tescolidlaldisainsburyasdamorrison land

[mudgie49 401]

Those who were responsible for closing the 'pits' had no thought of replacing jobs,with new industries.

It looks, from some of the posts on here, that the government is importing 'cheap labour'.

Is there a job market for the 'home grown' youth in the UK?

[.... 24]

Is there a job market for the 'home grown' youth in the UK?

It's very difficult for them Mudgie. Undergrad degrees being required for quite mundane jobs. Few apprenticeships.

Our youth are sometimes maligned, sometimes with reason, but I have a lot of sympathy with them regards finding employment and a home. I never felt it was easy when I left school in the 70s but at least I managed to do an apprenticeship and eventually buy a home. I can't see where the answer is coming from for this conundrum.

[Ashley 288]

maybe it should change it's name to Mansfailed?

[mick2me 3,033]

As it is spoken in the Locale Ash

[Ayupmeducks 1,730]

The other thing those who killed an industry off was work related to the coal industry, for every mineworker ten others were employed in outside support industries.

Try Gullick, Dowty, Anderson Strathclyde, Dosco, Victor Products, Huwood, Wallacetown Engineering, Baldwin and Francis, Engart Fans, Meco-Moore, M&CS, British Jeffrey Diamond....List goes on and on. Most of the above companies are now owned by foreign companies who make millions in exports that the UK should still be making, jobs, skilled and unskilled, apprenticeships in turning, fitting casting and pattern making, electrical........

Thatcher and her cronies didn't just destroy an industry, they destroyed Britain's future.

OK, one argument is coal could be imported cheaper, argument against is most of the latter collieries were operating profitably and were providing hundreds of thousands of skilled and unskilled jobs in export industries...See the list of companies I posted above.

Sure not every Glaswegian wanted to learn a trade down a Glasgow pit, but he/she did have Anderson Strathclyde, Meco-Moore and M&CS within a busride from his/her home where they could learn a valuable trade.

Or take Nottingham, Conflow, do they still exist??? J.Jones Electric and Wilson Ford, who used to overhaul and rewind NCB/BC electric motors.

Incidently, I don't think BJD (British Jeffrey Diamond)exist anymore, Anderson Strathclyde has changed hands three times that I know of, a German company, a US company and another US company, most of the components for their machines, costing around 30 million dollars, are made stateside now, the Glasgow works just produces the gears, but for how much longer???