"Anyone knocking at their door, especially strangers, was seen as a nuisance; an unwanted interruption to time well spent doing nothing." LOL Clap emoji
Maybe my index is off having grown up in the Tees area where economic stagnation was a basic fact, but when canvassing I never got the impression that Clacton was particularly deprived outside of the idiosyncrasies of a place like Jaywick (and even then, there was a level of friendliness and social solidarity among the people there that was quite touching).
On transport links, I think a lot of Clacton's plight is imposed by poor road and rail connectivity. To drive there from London you have to take the A12 (one of the worst roads in the country) and take a bottlenecked junction near Colchester. The only train there is the Liverpool St service the author took, with maybe 1-2x daily routes to Colchester going to Clacton. No rail link to Ipswich or any urban area in the east of England. It makes it unnecessarily hard to reach, which is a big challenge for a tourist town - although agreed cheap foreign tourism likely is a structural driver for the hospitality trade not doing as well as its heyday.
But in general, the constituency is a really nice seaside area populated by very friendly people. The low economic activity rate is pretty much entirely attributable IMO to early retirees and people with poor health choosing to live in a seaside town with affordable property/rental values.
Given its proximity to Harwich and Felixstowe, there's no good reason why Clacton shouldn't see some significant economic growth if its transport connections were better. In fact, there are some higher-end manufacturers of precision machinery and a Penguin Book Warehouse near the town - relatively high £/kg industries in terms of goods that thus aren't as bottlenecked by the poor throughput of traffic to the port since their consignments don't seem too large. Some better infrastructure could really spur significant development and diversification, if there was a vision to better plug Clacton into the national economy rather than being so inaccessible.
So it’s the Boris wave migrants who have got the jobs in the Subway sandwich chain in Clacton. The white underclass is actually better off by not working and claiming all manner of benefits.
"Anyone knocking at their door, especially strangers, was seen as a nuisance; an unwanted interruption to time well spent doing nothing." LOL Clap emoji
Good article- enjoyed this - thank you.
Maybe my index is off having grown up in the Tees area where economic stagnation was a basic fact, but when canvassing I never got the impression that Clacton was particularly deprived outside of the idiosyncrasies of a place like Jaywick (and even then, there was a level of friendliness and social solidarity among the people there that was quite touching).
On transport links, I think a lot of Clacton's plight is imposed by poor road and rail connectivity. To drive there from London you have to take the A12 (one of the worst roads in the country) and take a bottlenecked junction near Colchester. The only train there is the Liverpool St service the author took, with maybe 1-2x daily routes to Colchester going to Clacton. No rail link to Ipswich or any urban area in the east of England. It makes it unnecessarily hard to reach, which is a big challenge for a tourist town - although agreed cheap foreign tourism likely is a structural driver for the hospitality trade not doing as well as its heyday.
But in general, the constituency is a really nice seaside area populated by very friendly people. The low economic activity rate is pretty much entirely attributable IMO to early retirees and people with poor health choosing to live in a seaside town with affordable property/rental values.
Given its proximity to Harwich and Felixstowe, there's no good reason why Clacton shouldn't see some significant economic growth if its transport connections were better. In fact, there are some higher-end manufacturers of precision machinery and a Penguin Book Warehouse near the town - relatively high £/kg industries in terms of goods that thus aren't as bottlenecked by the poor throughput of traffic to the port since their consignments don't seem too large. Some better infrastructure could really spur significant development and diversification, if there was a vision to better plug Clacton into the national economy rather than being so inaccessible.
Don’t think that these businesses only will hire migrants instead of young clactonians
So it’s the Boris wave migrants who have got the jobs in the Subway sandwich chain in Clacton. The white underclass is actually better off by not working and claiming all manner of benefits.