The Lifespan Fund plan - a state pension idea from the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change

horsewithnoname

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81988887#Comment_81988887

if your life is awful, you have no chance, no prospects, then getting off your face is appealing

Nothing that the likes of most politicians would understand 🙄

Veloflyer

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81989273#Comment_81989273

Politicians understand politics and little else. Therein lies the problem.

daveyjp

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81989005#Comment_81989005

Ditto Morecambe. For 40 years it has been used as a convenient dumping ground for people with very complicated lives .

Nebulous2

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81989005#Comment_81989005

Thanks for that.

My knowledge of Blackpool doesn't go back to the 60s, but in the 80s and 90s I had this idea that it filled the role that Benidorm did later.

Most people I knew had very little interest in the place, but for some urban Scots, mostly in post-industrial areas, it was the highlight of their year. Convoys of buses would decant for Blackpool on specific bank holidays, from Scottish cities.

My family were keen on fairground rides and wanted to try the Pepsi Max rollercoaster when it started so we had a few days in a hotel in Blackpool. It was like going back in time. Regimented meal times, mass meals of the same thing, fairly sad entertainment. Seeing all the old couples dancing in the ballroom in the tower was an experience, but the whole place felt as though the world had moved on and it hadn't.

Silvertabby

Back in the 1960s, we lived close enough to Blackpool to be able to take day trips there. My mum, dad and sister all loved the place, and it was deemed to be a big treat for them - but I hated the place. Money was short, so the outing was just a walk down the seafront, watching mum play bingo on the pier, and a packed lunch on the beach (or in a bus shelter when it was raining). As soon as I was old enough I begged to be allowed to stay at home with a good book - but mum would insist that 'this trip was costing them good money and that I had to enjoy myself if I liked it or not'.

Don't know where it came from, but I had a bit of a phobia going about the trams, which didn't help, and wasn't seen as an excuse for not going with them.

Albermarle

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81990154#Comment_81990154

My mum, dad and sister all loved the place, and it was deemed to be a big treat for them -

In fact for many working class people, living in smoky cramped industrial towns, it was a common aspiration to retire to Blackpool. Although usually not in the very busy tourist parts.

Bostonerimus1

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81989005#Comment_81989005

Any area that loses a major industry is going to see a drop in wages and a rise in all the issues associated with increasing poverty. So whether it's tourism, steel, ship building or coal mining the towns, and the people, become "hollowed out". Of course some people will escape through education, relocation or personal entreprenureship, but without a long term plan for investment and a strategy from government many places will just wither. The UK has not had a serious plan for developing and supporting the regions outside of the SE for over half a century so it's hardly surprising that places like Blackpool and Hartlepool have suffered.