What happens to towns when the main employer goes under?

StevieJ

Generali wrote: »

There are 4 stories I know of:

- Yours
- Acronym for Prisoner Of Her Majesty (POHM)
- Acronym for Port Of Melbourne (POM)
- Short for Pomegranate, rhyming slang for immigrant

None of those relate to a current Brit Thing is it wouldn't be so stupid if the Abo's were using it

Pennywise

beecher wrote: »

The economies of coal mining villages around where I grew up have never recovered - they had the heart ripped out of them.

Those villages only grew around the mines in the first place, just like the railway towns that grew around major engine sheds/works, just like the mill towns that grew around the mills.

A complete lack of foresight (by everyone) meant that little, if anything, was done about diversification etc and everyone just assumed that life would carry on as it always had done. I.e. families just assuming that their children would follow their parents to the mines/factories, etc.

Sadly, these towns & villages do die. Some may be helped by diversification, but at the end of the day, history has shown that the population moves to where the work is. Recent decades have shown how govt actions messes up this process by artificially importing govt offices etc into such places.

mardatha

I can remember when the pits closed, miners who were big strong hard-working men used to having money, coming home raging about some "silly wee lassie in the dole" snootily telling them to go on courses for TYPING.
it would be funny if it wasnt so heart-breaking. That's why I hate Thatcher & her cronies so much and always will.

hullight

mardatha wrote: »

I can remember when the pits closed, miners who were big strong hard-working men used to having money, coming home raging about some "silly wee lassie in the dole" snootily telling them to go on courses for TYPING.
it would be funny if it wasnt so heart-breaking. That's why I hate Thatcher & her cronies so much and always will.

What's wrong with that? If a male administrator was made redundant and refused to take a position in a factory because it's a bit dirty he would be told to grow a set.

Generali

StevieJ wrote: »

None of those relate to a current Brit Thing is it wouldn't be so stupid if the Abo's were using it

I don't seek to censor you but 'Abo' isn't a very nice word really.

I have a lot of sympathy with the Aboriginal side of things. It's tough to know what to do about it. They have been (and continue to be) treated dreadfully. Until the 1960s in QLD if an Aboriginal came on your land you could use a pack of hounds to run him off.

vivatifosi

Generali wrote: »

I don't seek to censor you but 'Abo' isn't a very nice word really.

I have a lot of sympathy with the Aboriginal side of things. It's tough to know what to do about it. They have been (and continue to be) treated dreadfully. Until the 1960s in QLD if an Aboriginal came on your land you could use a pack of hounds to run him off.

Very true. When I went to live in Australia as a kid (as a ten pound pom), it was as part of the white Australia policy. Even though I lived in the middle of the second biggest city, in my three years living there as a kid I only ever saw one Aboriginal. What was more amazing was that he was a doctor. I remember the look of shock on the faces of the adults around me that this guy was wearing a doctor's whites. Heaven only know how truly talented that guy must have been to have risen that far above the racism and hypocricy, yet his mere appearance was still treated with absolute horror at the thought of being treated by a non-white.

Thank goodness Australia is a more balanced place now, but it still has some way to go in its treatment of its native population.

lostinrates

vivatifosi wrote: »

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Thank goodness Australia is a more balanced place now, but it still has some way to go in its treatment of its native population.

The debate over which of its travlling youth to step in and help over drugs allegations abroad has been interesting too, I don't have a postiion or enough facts to form an opinion on how bised what I've read is. A cousin by marriage had to return because the ''race issue'' was negatively impacting on her family- in an academic environment. Very sad.

ninky_2

Generali wrote: »

I have a lot of sympathy with the Aboriginal side of things. It's tough to know what to do about it. They have been (and continue to be) treated dreadfully. Until the 1960s in QLD if an Aboriginal came on your land you could use a pack of hounds to run him off.

i remember an australian female politician (think it was that lovely pauline hanson woman), saying there was no point leaving uluru (ayres rock) in the hands of the aboriginals since they'd had it for ten thousand years and failed to turn a profit from it.

i think things have moved on regarding attitudes in the cities but you don't have to travel very far into rural australia to find some absolutely shocking racism. i remember hearing some horrifically racist comments none of which i'd care to repeat here.

nz has a different attitude to the maori population with the seperate maori parliament but again the maori population is overly represented in the poorer socioeconomic groups.

some have said european colonialists had more respect for the maori's since they were a warrior society which they had more in common with whilst the aboriginals were nomadic.

Generali

ninky wrote: »

i think things have moved on regarding attitudes in the cities but you don't have to travel very far into rural australia to find some absolutely shocking racism. i remember hearing some horrifically racist comments none of which i'd care to repeat here.

The casual racism in the cities is what I find amazing - calling football wogball and all that stuff.

ninky wrote: »

some have said european colonialists had more respect for the maori's since they were a warrior society which they had more in common with whilst the aboriginals were nomadic.

Supposedly a lot of the distaste for Aboriginals comes from their nomadic ways: they didn't really have a concept of property in most (all???) tribes for example so the idea that 'squatting' was wrong was completely alien to them. Also, being a small number of people in a huge continent, clearing up after themselves wasn't important, something that clearly is important if you come from a place with back-to-back housing (as many early British migrants, both willing and unwilling, did).

StevieJ

Generali wrote: »

The casual racism in the cities is what I find amazing - calling football wogball and all that stuff.


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Not heard that one :cool: