@@nigelwatson2750 A number of years ago I came across an obscure Internet article in which the author quoted a high-level "conspiratr" saying (with a sardonic laugh), that the Freemasons will help to bring in the new order, but that they will also die. I've wondered why. A possible explanation might be that there are by now just too many Freemasons -- too many for a satisfactory division of the booty.
Government failure. The people who are attracted into politics tend to be the type of people that are least suited to trustworthy positions where there are big budgets to spend.
This is happening in every council up and down the country. My town, St Austell in Cornwall, used to be busy and was thriving. We now have phone shops, coffee shops and barbers. So many stores have closed, first one to go was Woolworths, I think that was in 2009. Since then independents have come and gone, we are losing Wilkos, Shoezone gone, Burtons and Dorothy Perkins gone, Clintons gone, independent card shops gone, a big toy shop that had been in St Austell for ever went not long after Woolies, We had little shops selling gifts, proper shoe shops, hardware shops gone, We had a cooked meats shop, a tesco in the town, a M&Co ladies clothing closed, Edinburgh Woolen Mill, Closed, Poundstretcher is closing permanently, and I believe New Look might be going, haven't heard about TK Max. Our town council got a local artist to build a huge totem pole structure just outside Argos, think it cost £80,000 to bring in shoppers!!! the shops are shutting. I'm so annoyed that our high streets are dying like this. How do we hold our corrupt councils to account?
The death of all Countries are big government and benefits. I worked in the Cotton mills around Rochdale in the 70s, when Labour were mainly in charge. The biggest mill owner was given government grants to modernise its cotton mills. We would complete the modernisation and 3 months later they would shut the mill down, dismantle it and ship it to India. My foreman electrician actually went to India as part of the installation teams. Rochdale is now just a run down town in Pakistan.
cant compare to Pakistan town, the buildings are planned and fairly modern and bustling with shops and people. Blame rothschild of city london banker usury.
I went to Rochdale a few months ago to get a diversity dash camera installed in the car. I was shocked when I went into the town centre. One street was absolutely like going to a foreign country. The nicest area was where the new M&S was. The whole place feels like it has been colonised and gutted. It’s very sad. Wow that hole in the middle of the town. They paid to actually create it!! It’s costing the taxpayers £200,000 for the next 40 years! So that’s £8,000,000!!! Seriously this reeks of some form of corruption.
Pick a town, any town in the North, and its pretty much the same story. Industry gone, crap councillors, indigenous population declines, and the towns turn into a s#!t hole. The only exception and only just are farm towns.
I always questioned the logic of pumping up the housing bubble for exactly the same reason. The Ponzi scheme destroys the discretionary spending of those joining the scam at the bottom.
pump up the cost of housing get a nice lump of stamp duty , create epc ratings have a whole load of people paying tax at home owners expense , bigger slice for estate agents more tax live less than150m from a river, flooding survey etc etc
like our man says though, they are putting the cart before the horse. ready to take the taxes, before anything productive is even created. -0 laughable@@snakeplissken5480
We must remember that this is the aim ultimately to close small businesses and many shops etc in general. The problems with parking and even being allowed to park anywhere near the shops is also a factor which has all been carefully thought out and planned against us the ppl for many years
A number of councils in.the UK have declared themselves bankrupt. Wonder what's going to happen next. It's sad seeing so many empty shops but it's happening all over the UK. I enjoyed the tour round Rochdale. I remember meeting some lovely Christians there back in the day. Good tiimes. They should have someone like you in charge of Rochdale Council. Thanks for another great post.
I made the video on Saturday 2nd September - so before the announcement about Birmingham's 'bankruptcy'. I can easily see Rochdale Council also declaring itself insolvent.
My local council Northamptonshire went bust a few years ago. Was the first one in ages to actually go bankrupt. They got a couple of Government advisors in at great expense. They then merged some of the borough and county councils into two unitary authority councils. But then set up town councils we didn't get a vote or say on this obviously. It's the same shit, corrupt chiefs in charge all that happened was a rebrand and logo change and we only get statutory services. So some libraries were closed. Many street lights turned off and so on. They invented new charges to add onto our council tax ontop of the main council tax. 🤦🏻♀️
Since as far back as the 1970's conventional town planning has been anti car. IMO this is the single most destructive policy leading to the downfall of town and city centres. Rochdale looks like many other towns with aces of empty concrete (or fancy tiles which invariably become loose and broken due to lack of maintenance) with nothing happening on it. I believe if much of this was turned back into parking (with at least the first couple of hours free) business would begin to pick up. It certainly works for supermarkets. One thing you said which I completely agree with and doesn't get said nearly enough, "Rochdale tries to do too much" Yes! Everywhere seems to have a constant scheme of grand "Regeneration" projects which do little other than cause months of disruption, driving even more shoppers out, who don't all return. These then have to be repaid with rents and rates which only national and multinational chains can afford. Eventually even they can't afford them.
@@nigelwatson2750 I expect there are times when they get grants from the Westminster government (or the EU), especially if they're in a "Deprived" area. Big schemes make good photo ops for politicians too when they're completed.
Anti-car? They've done a shit job then. We build far more road infrastructure in this country than anything else. We need fewer cars on the road and more pedestrianised places in towns and cities. People walking around increases footfall. What's missing is investment in good public transport. We need London like transport everywhere in the UK. Manchester needs an underground system. We need a Crossrail from Liverpool to Leeds. Rochdale failed largely because of its reliance on cars to get to it compared to places like say Bury, which is far easier to get to on public transport. They missed the boat with the tram when it was first being built out and suffered heavily for it. Bury and Manchester had massive booms in their local economies when they built it, then with the extra investment in Manchester after the IRA bomb Bury benefitted by being so easy to get to. Bolton has suffered the same kind of downfall due to less than ideal public transport links. The problem this country has is that the people holding the purse strings all live and work within the M25 where this kind of depravation and under investment doesn't exist, so they don't see it as being needed. It's not a problem to them. Nowhere outside of London has the power to raise capital either for large projects like infrastructure. It's taken years to even just get the busses back under local control, but Greater Manchester still lacks the legal power to generate capital to do what the region really needs. This is why London gets things like the Elizabeth Line and we get fuck all. They can fund it themselves because they don't have to rely on the central government and the treasury to agree to it. Just look how they fucked the whole country north of Brum over with the cancellation of HS2 beyond phase 1. We needed them to build that entire thing so we could have built the trans Pennine high speed line from Liverpool to Leeds. It was supposed to use some of the infrastructure that would have been built as HS2 like the expansion of Liverpool Lime Street, Manchester Piccadilly and Leeds Central. But nope, we can't even do that now we don't have those vital parts of the plan. That line would have also released capacity on the existing network by taking the fast trains off it, so far more commuter and regional trains. It would double or even quadruple capacity over night if they actually built the damn thing. Which they will, at some point, they'll come to the same realisation that it's actually desperately needed as the population grows and we need to make a modal shift away from cars due to all the traffic already clogging up the roads.
Thanks for showing us round present day Rochdale, Nigel. It was interesting comparing the place with Birmingham whose council has just declared itself bankrupt. They are criminal in the way they are destroying livelihoods and causing massive social misery. I remember Rochdale open air market as I visited it in the 1950s with my grandmother. I also remember visiting a still working mill - very noisy machinery. I can still remember the distinctive lanolin smell from the fabric they were making. My mother (from Rochdale) who is in her 90s can remember from her childhood in the 1930s seeing a very old lady dressed all in black and wearing a shawl and clogs. That's how the working women would have dressed in the 19th century when the town was prosperous.
Rochdale wasn't killed by politicians. Don't you ever wonder why towns in the UK now feel like one another and why they all made the same terrible mistakes all at the same time regardless of which party won the election? Local Councillors and MP's are the human shield that Local Government Chief Executives (the real council bosses) and national Civil Servants hide behind. These policies have been introduced nationally across Britain by members of organisations such as the Association of County Chief Executives (ACCE) and the Executive leadership of the Civil Service. It's no coincidence that multistory public housing sprouted across Britain at the same time, roads networks and housing clearances, shopping malls, then a variety of cycle paths and pedestrian precincts followed by out-of-town shopping centers. It's all organised at the center by non-elected government officials and presented to politicians as a good idea. The next idea coming your way is the compulsory installation of air sourced heat pumps (which don't keep you warm) and a cashless society. No-one voted for any of this. The politicians are on the whole a certain "type" and they approve anything that will get their pictures on the news. It's all a sham. These decisions are made by a cabal of overpaid, career, government officers and passed by Councillors and MP's who have been put in place by obscure political party managers. We have more in common with the USSR than we realize but don't expect the BBC to make documentaries about it. They rely on the system to keep their funding.
it’s like the government has been sold an idea of what towns should be and councils are having to all fall in line.. what don’t get is why are we all putting up with it???? I can only assume because everything is so inflated and expensive we are all to busy to learn and listen and look into what is going on this is a reason they are closing so many pubs so people can’t get together and come up with a solution
Good morning from the UK. Bath/Bristol area to be exact. Fantastic video! This is the same up and down the country in every town and city. The tax payer foots the bill for everything. The country has lived above and beyond its means Economically and militarily for decades! You are living in a third world country ladies and gentlemen. It’s going to get worse believe me - I have worked in many countries from 18 to now 38. (Oil/gas) and military. and I can honestly say driving through the towns and cities of this country the last 5-10. It is the same as driving through some of these countries. I.e - Iraq/Afghanistan/ Libya/ Somalia. I’m not talking about the people: I’m talking about the sheer decay and appearance of the places. Wake up people!
The potholes would be a start lol... people just buy a 50k 4x4 till they tell them they can't use it so they buy a 60k electric 4x4 and everything's good again 😅
I lived in Bolton for 15 years and they used to call Rochdale the assole of the world by the time I left Bolton had turned onto the assole of the world I now live 3 miles from reading and quess what this place has turned into?. The moral of this story is don't follow me around 😅.
What is the purpose of a business tax if it results in businesses leaving the area 🤔 Will Rochdale council be the next council to go bankrupt, you pay for services you won’t receive, time to stop paying council tax.
Perhaps going bankrupt will be the only way these profligate councillors will be brought to heel. If they can't manage their budget they should be sacked wholesale.
I worked in town centre's all over the UK in the 70s, 80 and 90s and they were VIBRANT. Almost every town in the north of England is just like the ghost town of Rochdale now, with just glimpses of the grandeur of yesteryear remaining in small pockets, and hidden amongst the concrete monstrosities that became popular with councils from the sixties onwards. Shops that traditionally sold good quality British products by knowledgeable loyal staff were pushed aside by stack-em-high-sell-em-fast cheap import stores and then quickly followed by the big box stores and all pride in both products and services was lost. It will take a huge effort for it to be challenged and changed but I have faith that there are good people in every town who, when pushed hard enough, will find the strength to stand up and regain what they have collectively lost and clear away the freeloaders of society. Great video, thanks.
When pushed hard enough, citizens might stop spending time on the myriad of distractions on offer (sports tournaments, television shows etc), and focus on standing together and organizing themselves to get rid of the looters who are trying to weaken and enslave them. There are so many ordinary people that the overlords will probably try to bring down their numbers first, though. As they have already started doing.
I commented on your last video that I recently visited Rochdale for the first time in 14 years, water street hasn't changed apart from the new bus terminal. Manchester city council also built new buildings and an entire street complete with useless modern art statues, they didn't want to use the old town hall....that was left to the lowly council workers such as civil enforcement officers, street cleaners, maintenance workers, we had to use the old dungeon as a break room, along with the mice and rats. Andy Burnham has nice plush modern facilities though, they only serve themselves.
Great video. It's clear that our country is in terminal decline. Only a blind person couldn't see it. The same is happening all over. I was in Skegness over.the weekend and it was in a bad state tbh. In stark contrast to holiday destinations in Spain that I visited last month, which were booming. Loads of little unique shops selling all sorts. In Skegnees everything was shut by 6pm on a Sunday. The food was mostly fish and chips. It looked run down
i don't think it's just the UK. i live in the NE of the US and it's the same pattern here. There are GulagTube channels walking through "dead malls", some built not too long ago. A company i used to work at, which had $250B in real estate assets, "went bankrupt" in 2020 and is now owned by the mall owners! the tails are wagging the dog.
Very interesting Nigel. It is becoming more obvious each day how this degradation of towns and cities has been planned but this connected a few more dots for me. The extent of corruption more obvious. Anyone else remember this lost world where food shopping was different in the late fifties and early 60's?... My parents were not well off, my Dad was a mechanic and my mother was a housewife, they had recently bought their first house, we didn't yet have our own car, I can remember being a pre schooler/infant and walking next to the pram to a local shopping street in Bristol to queue at the 'Home and Colonial 'for butter, cheese, cut with a cheese wire to order, Tate and Lyle sugar in blue bags, and other basics, then a visit to buy fresh veg- potatoes and carrots in sacks still with the dirt on them, (natural not sprayed with chemicals), followed by a visit to the fishmonger, and then the butcher where we bought a beef joint that provided rich juices and proper dripping to spread on bread, as well as two main meals for the family. All of whom served the customers individually and knew them. Meat and fish and veg wrapped in paper or in paper bags. Then Sainsbury's moved in to Bristol and things changed by '64 when we moved away. When my children were that age and we lived in a Surrey town. We still had a good butcher on the High street, a knowledgable fishmonger and a fruit and veg shop where we got served, then gradually a big supermarket moved in and the high street was dominated by Estate Agents. Food comes from supermarkets or is delivered in a box to my grandchildren. Unsprayed food now up market!.
Up until recently, even places like Croydon had a fruit and veg market. There were also independent butchers, bakers and fishmongers. It's a case of use them, or lose them. Processed industrial food is poison, and only fools rely on it.
@@nigelwatson2750 Absolutely Nigel. Research into cancer prevention and nutrition was my way into learning truths right back in the early nineties. Learning that there were few minerals and vitamins in the soil anymore. That our body can heal itself by improving proper nutrition and cutting out toxins. That cancer treatments were cancer causing etc and the rabbit hole got wider and deeper from there! I learned a lot from Phillip Day of Credence (still do) and Dr Samuel Epstein. Dr Mathias Rath, etc. Phillip's book 'Why we are dying to know the truth' was a great start. Another of his books revealed the AIDS scandal and Fauci, years ago.
@@DaveBeaven-tx2tp that's true enough. My home town which has been destroyed and has only Turkish barbers in the once vibrant town centre is to have it's library demolished. It's ok because on the site they are going to build housing, industrial units and another library. Im not sure how they are going to squeeze this lot in as the library only has a foot print of 1500ft2 🤔.
Each time I'm in the UK I notice how there is constant interest on spending but with cash financed through debt. It's a lazy action to think that commerce and shopping is going to lead to prosperity. They are puddled. Indeed, they employ far too many lackies in local government too.
I'm a Brit who lives in Romania, here it is rare to see a shop boarded up. There are many more small independent businesses, not just huge retail chains. What you have to remember is Romania is a low wage, low tax economy. The average working Romanians disposable income is far lower than their British counterpart, but taxes are far lower. For example property tax is just 5% of that in the UK and personal income tax is 10%. To me, Romania feels like the UK of the early 80's
This happy situation will.change..housing is becoming a lot more expensive..the multiple are eyeing it up Romanian WEF political shills are pushing to get into the EEC..when they get their way Romania will be stuffed..Look at how the culture of France has changed..huge supermarkets, mc Donald's change sandwich outlets.
Poor Rochdale, it's not somewhere I've ever visited , once the textile industry went , that was it . Liverpool was lucky, when the shipping went , they reinvented themselves as a tourist hub .
Think of their contractor mates 😱 it's Kier where I am. They keep building new industrial estates even though the old ones are over half empty. And they moved the University across to another part of town. 🤷🏻♀️ Our town centre is a grimey foreign shanty area now.
Not just the North chaps. My town, Gosport, on the south coast was completely obliterated by communist councillors in the 60's. What was once a pretty Georgian seaside town was turned into a soviet style s. hole. Historically important buildings which had miraculously survived ww2 ( being within a mile of Portsmouth dockyard) we're replaced by tower blocks. One of the worst things is the town hall which previously had been a friendly looking red brick building was replaced with what resembles the arse end of a star destroyer. Funnily enough all the buildings you can see from inside are existing old architecture, including the con club, what a shock! There should be accountability for these acts of architectural vandalism, but thats wishful thinking.
Very sad and very familiar, Rochdale story is a mirror image of many towns and cities across the country, the two biggest near me Hull and Doncaster it’s exactly the same story. Deliberately brought down over the last 40 / 50 years, they start with taking away the local industries and everything else just falls into place for them 🥲
Id say the real collapse began In 2000 which coincides with banking deregulation, the introduction of buy to let mortgages and the export of jobs to China. Fast forward to 2008 and that was the final nail in the coffin of town centers.
@@nigelwatson2750absolutely. This teat comes with conditions...pure marxism. They create a symbiotic relationship but the host could be killed off...if we detach from it. This is not capitalism...it's communism with shiny goods. It is NOT what we are here for.
Life in a Northern Town / Lyrics A Salvation Army band played And the children drank lemonade And the morning lasted all day All day And through an open window came Like Sinatra in a younger day Pushing the town away Ah Ah-hey-ma-ma-ma Dee-doo-din-nie-ya-ya Ah-hey-ma-ma-ma Hey-y-yah Life in a northern town Ah-hey-ma-ma-ma-ma They sat on the stoney ground And he took a cigarette out And everyone else came down To listen He said, "In winter 1963 It felt like the world would freeze With John F. Kennedy And The Beatles" Yeah, yeah, yeah Ah-hey-ma-ma-ma Dee-doo-din-nie-ya-ya Ah-hey-ma-ma-ma Hey-y-yah Life in a northern town Hey-ma-ma-ma-ma Ah-hey-ma-ma-ma Dee-doo-din-nie-ya-ya Ah-hey-ma-ma-ma Hey-y-yah All the work shut down The evening turned to rain (The evening turned to rain) Watched the water roll down the drain As we followed him down To the station And though he never would wave goodbye You could see it written in his eyes As the train rolled out of sight Bye-bye Ah-hey-ma-ma-ma Dee-doo-din-nie-ya-ya Ah-hey-ma-ma-ma Hey-y-yah Life in a northern town Ah-hey-ma-ma-ma (Life in a northern town) Ah-hey-ma-ma-ma Dee-doo-din-nie-ya-ya Ah-hey-ma-ma-ma (All the work shut down) Hey-y-yah Life in a northern town
There's usually some ugly "art" in these towns. Some hideous sculpture straight out of a bad dream plonked in the centre of town or on a prominent roundabout. This crap-art costs a fortune too
It IS art! you just don't appreciate it. You need to go to art college to get re-educated. People like Turner & Constable aren't needed, we get our inspiration from 3 year olds now!
Everything your saying Nigel mirrors The City of Leicester, Leicester too was once a thriving City in textiles. It will come of no surprise to me if Leicester soon joins Birmingham to declare it's self bankrupt! I can't help thinking it's all by design to bring in what's coming!
I think Rochdale will declare itself bankrupt too - fortunately, all the building projects have been done, and the funds have been transferred into the right bank accounts.
Absolutely -- "Novus ordo seclorum" -- a "brave new world", a "new golden age" (which will -- and is intended to be -- the opposite of all that is righteous and good). We're in the time of the feet and toes of iron mixed with clay.
I think less is down to some kind of all mighty plan and more incompetence and lack of thinking beyond the next election cycle. So the exact opposite really. I find it hilarious that people think governments, ours especially are somehow capable of some kind of big long term masterplan. This lot we have now couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery or run a bath without massively cocking it up.
It was not just the increase in biz rates that killed business, it was the inequality in competition where everyone switched to online shopping. This was by design - Bez’hos has twice now suggested he can see the day Amazon collapses. shoppers choice in one basket then the plug will be pulled.
Substitute Rochdale for another Town or City and you could be describing 99% of any of our Town and City Centres. Yes , its quite clear that our Prosperity was finally ruined when we got involved with 20th Century Wars. In 1945 we were skint and became Vassal State to the USA Corporations and their crooked puppets in Washington. We actually closed a complete Mainline Railway in the 1950s !!! We then joined the Common Market in 1972. All the Major Industry , Steel , Aluminium , Mining , Shipyards , Trains , Car Manufacture, Motor Bikes , Machine Tools , Heavy Engineering , Hand Tools , Foundries etc finished in 10 years..
The major problem we have today Nigel , is that we are not in control of our destiny. The Wealthy Individuals who run the globe are in charge. For example , there has been a Coup. They put Johnson in for Vidco 19 and then moved him sideways away from the damage , party gate ( which was all rigged ) same as Han-cock. Got rid of Truss to show us who's the real boss and put Sunak in without a second thought..@@nigelwatson2750
The only place you don't really see this kind of depravation and downward spiral is London. The people in power with all the money live and work there so they don't really see the rest of the country and how much investment is actually needs. The stupid thing is that if they invested more around the country, the WHOLE country would become richer, and so would they. But that involves spending money now to benefit later rather than just taking it all now and hoarding it in some off shore bank account where it's not going back into the economy. And thus we have high inflation. And not because of wages like they always love to tell us.
My hometown. As a kid in the 1960s and 1970s Drake Street (3:28 to 4:45) was packed with shops and shoppers. The shopping centre (5:53) was built in middle to late 1970s. For traditional market shopping, most people head over to Bury, 6 miles to to the west. My mother goes there once/week - Rochdale loses her cash, and that of many other Rochdalians.
So upsetting but oh so true. I find shopping in Bury a necessity these days. I used to love doing a little shopping in Rochdale,keep it local and all that. But the loyalties have had to go and the practicality is now Bury.
Britain has no primary or secondary industries, and is dominated by tertiary and quarternary sectors. That's what globalism is all about. Offshore everything of real value and have these fake "knowledge" economies taking their place. All by design it is, but too many Brits buy into this nonsense and that's why we find ourselves in this situation. All I hear is people whining about the symptoms, but they never want to address the causes. We're screwed actually - and the reality and scale of what's to come is only just beginning in earnest.
The entire British economy is located in two, tiny parts of the country. The City of London (as in the square mile) and the Docklands. We have no other industries. It's entirely the finance sector, everything else is a rounding error. This happened because they decided to regulate the banks and turned London into the worlds laundromat and one of the real reasons we left the EU. They were bringing in finance transparency laws and closing a number of tax loopholes with regard to offshore banking etc, which this country does on an industrial scale. There's a reason we're so flush with Russian and Middle Eastern oil money. It's all sent here to be cleaned. Successive governments (Tories far more so) have put all of our economic eggs into a single basket. If they invested into the rest of the country we could diversify the economy so it's far more robust against collapsing if the single thing that props it up has a bit of a wobble as almost happened in 2008 (and more recently, for different reasons with the lettuces mini budget).
The things you discussed here in your video are some of the same things happening here in my American town . Our downtown area was a bustling center of business in the 40's and 50's. After many years of decline, there is little production of goods as they once were. In three of the towns in a two county area, there was ship building before and after World War 2. Fortunately, there is still chemical production and oil refineries in most of the old plants. However, these places require highly trained, skilled , experienced and well paid personnel. The vast majority of the population are older pensioners and those in entry level jobs. It is difficult to sustain such an economy unique to our local population.
The education system has been trashed in places like Britain, so it would be very hard for the UK to reindustrialise: the rights skills and personal attributes are not widely found amongst the young anymore - the school system has made that possible.
@@nigelwatson2750 We'd have to bring in capital controls and be super protectionist at the start to grow what industry we have left whilst spending a lot on re education (for actual real skills instead of the fakery you get at school) and would also probably need a recession so there's unemployed people with an incentive to get into industry (why would you when unemployment is 3.5% and you're working a bullshit job doing next to nothing every day as current for so many?)
Great video mate and absolutely spot on ,,corruption greed and ignorance has been the downfall of Rochdale and thousands of towns like it throughout the UK,,it’s a great shame,,if I do venture into the town , which isn’t very often , I come away with mixed feelings of sadness and anger about the way this has been allowed to happen ..Still, Up The Dale
Nigel, I lived in Rochdale from 2015-2016, and it was already decimated then. It was a showpiece for every single problem that plagues the Western World: malevolent politicians and their weaponised immigration, offshoring and outsourcing, an apathetic population with a high alcohol and drug consumption. I remember visiting the local council swimming pool and being told by an arrogant council employee that it was extra money to use the sauna. To me,that encounter pretty much summed up the town's demise
Great video, looks like Rochdale got “reset” but not in a “great” way!! Would be interesting to compare Finnish town’s business policies/ council projects…
Hi Nigel, what is happening in Rochdale is beginning to happen everywhere. Many American & possibly British companies are going on line, & emptying the high street. They are being taken over by restaurants & Uber-eats. (They are so many, it becomes unsustainable & what happens when the price of energy goes up? ) The pubs are closing, & it appears that any new antrapreneure has to be pretty special before it takes off, some just don't open. Any local retailers or good old fashioned trustworthy shops, gone. It's like that here in London as well. The sad thing is British was a trusted brand once, now everything has been marketed out to China & Asia. It must be a good 20 years since I visited a great shoe-maker cobbler, who could turn an old shoe into something good. There are repair shops around, but not quite the same. Finland looks a cool place to live, envy the clean air & surroundings, Scandinavia takes great pride in the environment. Thank you for your talk about Rochdale, Britain is in decline by appearances, maybe intentional by the powers that should not be, sad really, so much History that was. 🥴God bless you 🙏🌹😅
If you think it's bad now with China and India receiving the industries and work, wait until these morons in the west push further on with this "net zero" lunacy. China and India aren't interested and will happily absorb more and more from companies and industries exiting the west. That c o mmie policy for you. Redistributing the world's wealth (but not ever from their own pockets, of course).
Fair comments Nigel, a few points I’d like to make , 1- we are cursed by geography being only 10 miles from a city that sucks in all investment while dishing out scraps to outlying towns & 2- I completely agree about successive corrupt councils, there was no need to build their current £30 million monstrosity , the council could have moved their back office staff into Newgate House which had been closed for several years & put customer facing services in one of any number of derelict large stores but they preferred to spend a fortune while neglecting social housing & job creation! From a once proud Rochdalian.
Well done for being willing to accept what happened - much love from a fellow Rochdalian. Sadly nothing will change because far too may are still in (angry) denial.
At least is Rochdale you have managed to hold on to many grand buildings. My home town of Bradford, and it's brave of me to admit to this, has changed beyond all recognition. I haven't lived there for 30 years and I won't be revisiting anytime soon.
@@nigelwatson2750 Even in almost entirely white places pubs are still closing at a rate of knots. Costs are too high for starters thanks to no caps on energy bills for commercial properties and younger people just don't drink as much. People also have far less disposable income these days due to wage stagnation, yet everything keeps going up in price. The average house was 2-3 times the average salary 30-40 years ago, now it's 8-12 times.
It's the same all over the UK every industry was given, not sold, to Asia, not only that, but they were trained and instructed on how to use that technology. Every town or county was noted for their excellence in some field of industry, and now it's all gone, together with the prosperity and employment that went with it. The saying that we are a nation of shopkeepers has never been more accurate, except for the fact that those high street shops have been replaced by online sales, and even those are now as flat as a pancake because of the dreadful state of the economy. The point is that a service economy can never provide a good standard of living for its people, and that has become painfully evident. This may sound very cynical, but I make no apologies for it. The best industry to get into in the UK must be the manufacture of mobility scooters.
@@nigelwatson2750 Yeah, they are well underway with it, and my reference to mobility scooters is that in the UK especially, the system can be turned into a social credit scenario at the flick of a switch. Such is the dependency culture that now exists, even families that have two parents working are so dependent on various benefits that they can barely function without them, and so you have the perfect mechanism for state control. However, the number of people receiving some sort of sickness benefit is colossal. I have never seen so many young people running around on mobility scooters, they even take their dogs for walks on them, It represents a very lame society, the state will step in, at some point, and make some very hefty demands on people in order to keep those benefits, it's inevitable.
Other towns covered by Rochdale MB, Middleton and Heywood have not been developed in the same way as Rochdale, we can expect our Council Tax to increase again in the new year. A good explanation of the current situation.
Thanks, I'm unmonetised, and doing this purely to spread information. Feel free to reuse this video so more people start to think about what has been done with their money.
Excellent diagnosis of Council mismanagement. Same happening in lots of Southern Towns. Question is.. how long before the pack of cards does collapse financially, or if ever with money printing. UBI anyone?
There are limits that's why they want cbdc more control but of course it fixes the inflation problem for them which ultimately collapses their usury eventually.. Thing is people can't fathom brics is just them starting up again they like to dangle the golden carrot it makes sheople excited
I am lucky enough to live in Dawlish in Devon. It is lovely living here (3 years) after spending 23 years in commuterland in Hampshire. Fleet was our nearest shopping centre and it too has a very empty shopping mall and Basingstoke is going that way too. Dawlish is no doubt supported by the touist trade and still has independent retailers, bakers, grocer, butcher, teashops and pubs. But those staying in the holiday camps in Dawlish Warren are being squeezed financially and do not have the holiday spending power that they used to. It is all very sad. So glad I am 69 and not 29.
I'm from and still live in Rochdale, found you channel via AA's twitter a couple of weeks ago and been binging your content since and it's tragic what's happened to the town just in the years I've been alive. Drake Street used to have lots of good shops on it but now it's all takeaways (and worse). The last hold out of the good shops was Dennis Hope which moved into Norden a few years ago and now there's literally nothing left in the town and no point going. The most tragic part of it is that Rochdale could legitimately be a great town again if it was being run well (and the countries demographics weren't fucked) it's at the intersection of a lot of the surrounding towns, Bury, Manchester, Burnley, Oldham, Halifax and Huddersfield. Sadly the council is completely gone now no saving it the people in it are moronic or ethnics play ethnic favourability to their own. The McDonalds had to close iirc because of problems with the kitchen but that could have just been rumours spread due to cope at how things were degenerating. The 3rd shopping centre was inspired by what Bury did with The Rock Shopping centre which was a success (at least at the time when planning for the Rochdale one started) but why they had to build it with such awful architecture is beyond me. If they did actually get the economy running well again I'd say the 3rd shopping bit would be a good thing as the area it is in was really ghastly after the council redid the bus station and council building and pulled down the black box but there was no need to do this in the first place. The weed problem has gotten a thousand times worse since the lockdowns, I don't recall smelling weed at all beforehand but now I smell it all over the place even in my village which is a nice part of town. Lockdowns were really tragic for the country the whole place, no matter where I go in the country, seems to have aged 10-15 years in the 4 years since the start of of lockdown.
you have this spot on such a shame that Rochdale is being killed off jail the councillors I paid £1,200 per month C.tax for a pub to Bury, between 1996 & 2006
Excellent video, Nigel! Very interesting. All city and town centres, continue to be - or have been - ruined. There is increasingly, little incentive to go into town, when so many of the shops (including those that sell high quality consumer goods and cater to specialist interests or needs) and entertainment venues have gone. This effects tourism too.
Oh and another thing that really pisses me off is they ripped down our old lovely Victorian swimming baths that we had for a modern soulless monstrosity instead of refurbing the old baths, that was something that stung a lot considering I learned how to swim in there, had our school swimming competitions there and loved the architecture of the place.
left Rochdale in 1970 to emigrate to Australia,. at 1,03 on your Video, the brick paving was not there in 1970 and it was a huge car park. we stayed at the hotel near to the steps to the church. the world has changed and not for the better. My thoughts Marty.
Hugely interesting take on a local area. This town is no different to so many other overspent towns with white elephant projects throughout the UK. Such a shame. No common sense steering based upon the reality of life & proper private enterprize. Maidenhead town Berkshire is a classic example of so called regeneration that has wiped away its history in the 60's so even the 1990 regeneration attempts are being knocked down & replaced.
My father in law was an engineer at RW Riley’s. He went all over the world setting up the cotton spinning and weaving machines in China, India, South Africa etc. this was as late as the sixties and seventies. We used to be taken round the mills from area Brook School. There were and are old mills on Bridgefold Road. Not one to harp on but the town was never the same after they closed the old market.
Same here in Croydon. The council built themselves a lovely glass building whilst promising scheme after scheme that failed. Corruption everywhere we look i believe.
I remember MC garbage leaving Rochdale. I left here 12yrs ago. I cannot believe they've built another shopping center!!!!! PS is the bus station still there? I see another Birmingham here?
Liverpool did the same. Destroyed the independent outdoor markets to create st johns shopping centre. They then decided to build another one in the 90s which is now mostly closed just like at johns. They have since then build the Liverpool 1 shopping centre which has all the same shops as the 3rd one in this video. This is not an accident.
It boils my piss ! My first day at work was on the black box, we had a new shopping center, bus station, indoor market, people wanted to visit, the only thing i think about now is dodging fake beggars ,
I have lived in Rochdale since 1998. It's so depressing to see this town crumbling. The wheatsheaf could have been used as a food court, with loads of different foods from all over the world. But as the council are, very greedy. I miss the market, it was huge indoors. Now there's bailey ten stalls.
What would be interesting. The goods imported from abroad say India and Pakistan, Are they imported from families of councillors working in Rochdale selling their family goods made in India and Pakistan in which they have an undeclared financial interest.
In terms of manufacturing & Rochdale, Rochdale does actually have a fair few globally known manufacturers and facilities in and around the town but you are correct the council keeps raising the business rates so they have to move elsewhere and this is happening every year with less businesses choosing to stay in Rochdale because the council are out of touch with the real world
It will be the 'Stakeholders' that make the money at either end - they get taxpayer cash at every decision and failure - then they move on to the next thing -
I thought Wakefield, Barnsley and Huddersfield were bad but not that bad or did you just show us the high spots Nige? 😃Thanks for a break down of what "they" have been doing to us worldwide for decades. I'd guess considerably more than 33 years!!! God bless you.
This is happening to most Towns & Cities all over the UK. There are very little Job / Career prospects and for those in work, the threat of getting axed is always looming over you. There is a way to resolve part of this “Trend” and that is, Proportional Representation. Running down my Country to this sickening level is criminal just so that an already privileged group of people become even more wealthy at the expense of the vast majority. Politicians that have been in Parliament for decades and have been a part of this running down process are just as guilty as if they themselves, had been Prime Minister. People like Harriet Harman, Margaret Beckett, David Lammy, to mention a few. The Conservatives should be thrown out and membership of the Conservative Party should be Criminalised, because None of them act for the benefit of the UK as a whole. They act for themselves, lining their own pockets. The UK is better than this Group of thieves we have in 10 Downing Street.
Good video and you are spot on, Nigel. How can the senior people at the Council (a bunch of overpaid public sector lifers) be made to understand simple economics? I also think that while Councils have allowed many retail parks with free parking to be developed, then all town centres remain disadvantaged. To rectify, they should either a) make town centre car parking free, just the same as at the retail parks, or b) introduce car parking charges that are the same as in the town centres at the retail parks.
Yes, research for example the recent Leader of Liverpool Council (aka 'Chippy Tits'), its Head of Regeneration, and the police investigation into corruption there. But for most part, I think its the generous councillor allowances for just attending meetings, and the ability to waste taxpayers money without consequence that attracts them@@nigelwatson2750
What motivates people to become councilors? They have big budgets to spend, and I'm sure that the councilors are very well treated by the companies that they award contracts to.
Rochdale desperately need a new council if things are going to improve. The new council offices look awful. The black box building looked better and should been refurbished. I don’t know why it’s cost a lot of money to open the river up. Rochdale just went through a PFI scheme to renew all street lighting 10 years ago but will now be wasting money converting to LED. PFIs were one of Blair’s projects. The person is right about manufacturing which desperately needed not just in Rochdale but all over the country. Why are we buying from China? He’s also right about business rates as well. I always thought business rates was a Labour invention as a way to punish business owners who Labour see as the enemy. I remember the McDonalds in the comer building in the town centre. It had a basement that smelt damp. The new shopping centre looks abit like Liverpool One with a life expectancy of 15 years due to the shoddy construction. The problem with all these towns in Greater Manchester is they see one town doing something so they have to copy it as well. Wigan looks dreadful at the moment as the council have handed a large site over to a Chinese developer with links to CCP. The rents were deliberately put up so business’s move out. Blackburn, another Labour run council ( and is under investigation) ran the old market down so they could argue for its closer and demolition and then replaced it with a smaller market with sky high rents. The region had the corrupt Northwest Development Agency which was another one of Blair’s public tax funded projects that only looked after Chester, Manchester, Liverpool and Preston. The remaining towns like Bolton, Burnley, Blackburn and Rochdale missed out on the equal share. Blackpool another Labour run town probably has the worst town centre in the whole of the uk. Somebody has come up with a solution to sort out the high unemployment problems Blackpool faces as they can’t just rely on tourism as a sole income. Morecambe suffered as an independent seaside town when it came under the durysdiction of the newly formed Lancaster council in 1974 that only look after students in the city of Lancaster. A long term solution for Rochdale is to create manufacturing in the town and build a new college that specialises in engineering apprenticeships for school leavers.
You know things are bad when even Poundland can’t survive.
Low margin there for profits it was always a case of when Is a pound worth half as much
Mc D’s also pulled out of town centre. Very sad.
Parasites eventually overwhelm the host 😢
This is EXACTLY what has happened. The host is practically dead. And the parasite will die with it.
@@nigelwatson2750 A number of years ago I came across an obscure Internet article in which the author quoted a high-level "conspiratr" saying (with a sardonic laugh), that the Freemasons will help to bring in the new order, but that they will also die.
I've wondered why. A possible explanation might be that there are by now just too many Freemasons -- too many for a satisfactory division of the booty.
There is literally no end to the insanity and greed of local government in the UK.
Government failure. The people who are attracted into politics tend to be the type of people that are least suited to trustworthy positions where there are big budgets to spend.
This is happening in every council up and down the country. My town, St Austell in Cornwall, used to be busy and was thriving. We now have phone shops, coffee shops and barbers. So many stores have closed, first one to go was Woolworths, I think that was in 2009. Since then independents have come and gone, we are losing Wilkos, Shoezone gone, Burtons and Dorothy Perkins gone, Clintons gone, independent card shops gone, a big toy shop that had been in St Austell for ever went not long after Woolies, We had little shops selling gifts, proper shoe shops, hardware shops gone, We had a cooked meats shop, a tesco in the town, a M&Co ladies clothing closed, Edinburgh Woolen Mill, Closed, Poundstretcher is closing permanently, and I believe New Look might be going, haven't heard about TK Max. Our town council got a local artist to build a huge totem pole structure just outside Argos, think it cost £80,000 to bring in shoppers!!! the shops are shutting. I'm so annoyed that our high streets are dying like this. How do we hold our corrupt councils to account?
Stop voting for the Uniparty.
Nigel is right. Next year will be the general election. Let's see how suicidal Britain is if they vote for LibLabCon and Greens.
You can burn the totem pole to keep warm when things get desperate.
its great watching all the town eat itself. the councils, the grabbing silent boomers.... oh yeah - get popcorn 😂
I happened to see Wendall YT assessing St Austell and what has happened to it yesterday. Sad to see what it has become. Good people let down.
Rochdale is a mini microcosm of the whole UK
The death of all Countries are big government and benefits. I worked in the Cotton mills around Rochdale in the 70s, when Labour were mainly in charge. The biggest mill owner was given government grants to modernise its cotton mills. We would complete the modernisation and 3 months later they would shut the mill down, dismantle it and ship it to India. My foreman electrician actually went to India as part of the installation teams. Rochdale is now just a run down town in Pakistan.
A fair summary of how Rochdale is.
so they used taxpayer money to refit the factory before exporting the machines ? i would say that was a scam.
cant compare to Pakistan town, the buildings are planned and fairly modern and bustling with shops and people.
Blame rothschild of city london banker usury.
@@nigelwatson2750so you got done over by the mill owner, not the politicians, in other words.
@@jimjones-bk2isNo, the mill owner was a major donor to the political parties.
Corruption starts from the top! Enough said’ 🙏.
I went to Rochdale a few months ago to get a diversity dash camera installed in the car. I was shocked when I went into the town centre. One street was absolutely like going to a foreign country. The nicest area was where the new M&S was. The whole place feels like it has been colonised and gutted. It’s very sad.
Wow that hole in the middle of the town. They paid to actually create it!! It’s costing the taxpayers £200,000 for the next 40 years! So that’s £8,000,000!!! Seriously this reeks of some form of corruption.
Qpn
Pick a town, any town in the North, and its pretty much the same story.
Industry gone, crap councillors, indigenous population declines, and the towns turn into a s#!t hole.
The only exception and only just are farm towns.
You should go to Croydon!
I always questioned the logic of pumping up the housing bubble for exactly the same reason. The Ponzi scheme destroys the discretionary spending of those joining the scam at the bottom.
Correct
pump up the cost of housing get a nice lump of stamp duty , create epc ratings have a whole load of people paying tax at home owners expense , bigger slice for estate agents more tax live less than150m from a river, flooding survey etc etc
like our man says though, they are putting the cart before the horse. ready to take the taxes, before anything productive is even created. -0 laughable@@snakeplissken5480
That is what high intrest rates are designed to do crush small business and consumers not to beat inflation
People will always love a “get rich quick” scheme….
I think its over for us. This world is pure evil.
And many people are under an evil spell.
People are neither good, nor evil, but are capable of either depending on what the motivators are, clearly “money” is one of the main ones……
Great work Nigel. Well done.
Many thanks - ple@s€ sh@r€
Shopping centres...where body, mind and soul crawl off to die.
We must remember that this is the aim ultimately to close small businesses and many shops etc in general. The problems with parking and even being allowed to park anywhere near the shops is also a factor which has all been carefully thought out and planned against us the ppl for many years
Agreed.
How do you know this?
Yeah, but the majority of those shops are not owned by white British anyway, there are no traditional high street shops left.
Rochdale has good parking though.
I would encourage anyone to attend at least one 'council meeting' and see dull mediocrity in its rawness...highly paid mediocrity...naturally.
A number of councils in.the UK have declared themselves bankrupt. Wonder what's going to happen next. It's sad seeing so many empty shops but it's happening all over the UK. I enjoyed the tour round Rochdale. I remember meeting some lovely Christians there back in the day. Good tiimes. They should have someone like you in charge of Rochdale Council. Thanks for another great post.
I made the video on Saturday 2nd September - so before the announcement about Birmingham's 'bankruptcy'. I can easily see Rochdale Council also declaring itself insolvent.
Kkkerrrchhhiiinggg@@Tom_Hadler
Bet them councillors are thinking crap so you know you promised me it wouldn't effect my family.
My local council Northamptonshire went bust a few years ago. Was the first one in ages to actually go bankrupt. They got a couple of Government advisors in at great expense. They then merged some of the borough and county councils into two unitary authority councils. But then set up town councils we didn't get a vote or say on this obviously. It's the same shit, corrupt chiefs in charge all that happened was a rebrand and logo change and we only get statutory services. So some libraries were closed. Many street lights turned off and so on. They invented new charges to add onto our council tax ontop of the main council tax. 🤦🏻♀️
And what is the security to the creditors? The towns assets?
Since as far back as the 1970's conventional town planning has been anti car. IMO this is the single most destructive policy leading to the downfall of town and city centres. Rochdale looks like many other towns with aces of empty concrete (or fancy tiles which invariably become loose and broken due to lack of maintenance) with nothing happening on it. I believe if much of this was turned back into parking (with at least the first couple of hours free) business would begin to pick up. It certainly works for supermarkets.
One thing you said which I completely agree with and doesn't get said nearly enough, "Rochdale tries to do too much" Yes! Everywhere seems to have a constant scheme of grand "Regeneration" projects which do little other than cause months of disruption, driving even more shoppers out, who don't all return. These then have to be repaid with rents and rates which only national and multinational chains can afford. Eventually even they can't afford them.
They get kickbacks from the big schemes. That's why they want to do these big schemes
@@nigelwatson2750 I expect there are times when they get grants from the Westminster government (or the EU), especially if they're in a "Deprived" area. Big schemes make good photo ops for politicians too when they're completed.
Anti-car? They've done a shit job then. We build far more road infrastructure in this country than anything else. We need fewer cars on the road and more pedestrianised places in towns and cities. People walking around increases footfall. What's missing is investment in good public transport. We need London like transport everywhere in the UK. Manchester needs an underground system. We need a Crossrail from Liverpool to Leeds.
Rochdale failed largely because of its reliance on cars to get to it compared to places like say Bury, which is far easier to get to on public transport. They missed the boat with the tram when it was first being built out and suffered heavily for it. Bury and Manchester had massive booms in their local economies when they built it, then with the extra investment in Manchester after the IRA bomb Bury benefitted by being so easy to get to. Bolton has suffered the same kind of downfall due to less than ideal public transport links.
The problem this country has is that the people holding the purse strings all live and work within the M25 where this kind of depravation and under investment doesn't exist, so they don't see it as being needed. It's not a problem to them. Nowhere outside of London has the power to raise capital either for large projects like infrastructure. It's taken years to even just get the busses back under local control, but Greater Manchester still lacks the legal power to generate capital to do what the region really needs. This is why London gets things like the Elizabeth Line and we get fuck all. They can fund it themselves because they don't have to rely on the central government and the treasury to agree to it. Just look how they fucked the whole country north of Brum over with the cancellation of HS2 beyond phase 1. We needed them to build that entire thing so we could have built the trans Pennine high speed line from Liverpool to Leeds. It was supposed to use some of the infrastructure that would have been built as HS2 like the expansion of Liverpool Lime Street, Manchester Piccadilly and Leeds Central. But nope, we can't even do that now we don't have those vital parts of the plan. That line would have also released capacity on the existing network by taking the fast trains off it, so far more commuter and regional trains. It would double or even quadruple capacity over night if they actually built the damn thing. Which they will, at some point, they'll come to the same realisation that it's actually desperately needed as the population grows and we need to make a modal shift away from cars due to all the traffic already clogging up the roads.
Thanks for showing us round present day Rochdale, Nigel. It was interesting comparing the place with Birmingham whose council has just declared itself bankrupt. They are criminal in the way they are destroying livelihoods and causing massive social misery.
I remember Rochdale open air market as I visited it in the 1950s with my grandmother. I also remember visiting a still working mill - very noisy machinery. I can still remember the distinctive lanolin smell from the fabric they were making. My mother (from Rochdale) who is in her 90s can remember from her childhood in the 1930s seeing a very old lady dressed all in black and wearing a shawl and clogs. That's how the working women would have dressed in the 19th century when the town was prosperous.
I have no doubt that Rochdale Council will declare itself bankrupt.
@@nigelwatson2750 in morality and legitimacy that's already happening to all councils. 'Council'...how quaint and pre 2020.
Rochdale wasn't killed by politicians. Don't you ever wonder why towns in the UK now feel like one another and why they all made the same terrible mistakes all at the same time regardless of which party won the election? Local Councillors and MP's are the human shield that Local Government Chief Executives (the real council bosses) and national Civil Servants hide behind. These policies have been introduced nationally across Britain by members of organisations such as the Association of County Chief Executives (ACCE) and the Executive leadership of the Civil Service. It's no coincidence that multistory public housing sprouted across Britain at the same time, roads networks and housing clearances, shopping malls, then a variety of cycle paths and pedestrian precincts followed by out-of-town shopping centers. It's all organised at the center by non-elected government officials and presented to politicians as a good idea. The next idea coming your way is the compulsory installation of air sourced heat pumps (which don't keep you warm) and a cashless society. No-one voted for any of this. The politicians are on the whole a certain "type" and they approve anything that will get their pictures on the news. It's all a sham. These decisions are made by a cabal of overpaid, career, government officers and passed by Councillors and MP's who have been put in place by obscure political party managers. We have more in common with the USSR than we realize but don't expect the BBC to make documentaries about it. They rely on the system to keep their funding.
Okay, at the very least, local councilors should be blowing the whistle
it’s like the government has been sold an idea of what towns should be and councils are having to all fall in line.. what don’t get is why are we all putting up with it???? I can only assume because everything is so inflated and expensive we are all to busy to learn and listen and look into what is going on this is a reason they are closing so many pubs so people can’t get together and come up with a solution
Good morning from the UK. Bath/Bristol area to be exact. Fantastic video!
This is the same up and down the country in every town and city.
The tax payer foots the bill for everything.
The country has lived above and beyond its means Economically and militarily for decades! You are living in a third world country ladies and gentlemen. It’s going to get worse believe me - I have worked in many countries from 18 to now 38. (Oil/gas) and military. and I can honestly say driving through the towns and cities of this country the last 5-10. It is the same as driving through some of these countries. I.e - Iraq/Afghanistan/ Libya/ Somalia. I’m not talking about the people: I’m talking about the sheer decay and appearance of the places.
Wake up people!
Ple@s€ sh@r€
The potholes would be a start lol... people just buy a 50k 4x4 till they tell them they can't use it so they buy a 60k electric 4x4 and everything's good again 😅
@@DUB-sential They are in the process of weaning people off cars and getting them to give up the dream of owning one.
I lived in Bolton for 15 years and they used to call Rochdale the assole of the world by the time I left Bolton had turned onto the assole of the world I now live 3 miles from reading and quess what this place has turned into?.
The moral of this story is don't follow me around 😅.
Aww mate it must be your a**hole
Same here in USA! Crooked Politics!
What is the purpose of a business tax if it results in businesses leaving the area 🤔
Will Rochdale council be the next council to go bankrupt, you pay for services you won’t receive, time to stop paying council tax.
Looting.
Perhaps going bankrupt will be the only way these profligate councillors will be brought to heel. If they can't manage their budget they should be sacked wholesale.
I worked in town centre's all over the UK in the 70s, 80 and 90s and they were VIBRANT.
Almost every town in the north of England is just like the ghost town of Rochdale now, with just glimpses of the grandeur of yesteryear remaining in small pockets, and hidden amongst the concrete monstrosities that became popular with councils from the sixties onwards.
Shops that traditionally sold good quality British products by knowledgeable loyal staff were pushed aside by stack-em-high-sell-em-fast cheap import stores and then quickly followed by the big box stores and all pride in both products and services was lost.
It will take a huge effort for it to be challenged and changed but I have faith that there are good people in every town who, when pushed hard enough, will find the strength to stand up and regain what they have collectively lost and clear away the freeloaders of society.
Great video, thanks.
When pushed hard enough, citizens might stop spending time on the myriad of distractions on offer (sports tournaments, television shows etc), and focus on standing together and organizing themselves to get rid of the looters who are trying to weaken and enslave them.
There are so many ordinary people that the overlords will probably try to bring down their numbers first, though. As they have already started doing.
it's not just the North...it IS the whole of the UK. I travel around, down south and every town is run down now!!
Blair’s government did the damage.
I commented on your last video that I recently visited Rochdale for the first time in 14 years, water street hasn't changed apart from the new bus terminal. Manchester city council also built new buildings and an entire street complete with useless modern art statues, they didn't want to use the old town hall....that was left to the lowly council workers such as civil enforcement officers, street cleaners, maintenance workers, we had to use the old dungeon as a break room, along with the mice and rats. Andy Burnham has nice plush modern facilities though, they only serve themselves.
They spend our money on luxuries and money laundering schemes
Great video. It's clear that our country is in terminal decline. Only a blind person couldn't see it. The same is happening all over. I was in Skegness over.the weekend and it was in a bad state tbh. In stark contrast to holiday destinations in Spain that I visited last month, which were booming. Loads of little unique shops selling all sorts. In Skegnees everything was shut by 6pm on a Sunday. The food was mostly fish and chips. It looked run down
i don't think it's just the UK. i live in the NE of the US and it's the same pattern here. There are GulagTube channels walking through "dead malls", some built not too long ago. A company i used to work at, which had $250B in real estate assets, "went bankrupt" in 2020 and is now owned by the mall owners!
the tails are wagging the dog.
Very interesting Nigel. It is becoming more obvious each day how this degradation of towns and cities has been planned but this connected a few more dots for me. The extent of corruption more obvious.
Anyone else remember this lost world where food shopping was different in the late fifties and early 60's?...
My parents were not well off, my Dad was a mechanic and my mother was a housewife, they had recently bought their first house, we didn't yet have our own car, I can remember being a pre schooler/infant and walking next to the pram to a local shopping street in Bristol to queue at the 'Home and Colonial 'for butter, cheese, cut with a cheese wire to order, Tate and Lyle sugar in blue bags, and other basics, then a visit to buy fresh veg- potatoes and carrots in sacks still with the dirt on them, (natural not sprayed with chemicals), followed by a visit to the fishmonger, and then the butcher where we bought a beef joint that provided rich juices and proper dripping to spread on bread, as well as two main meals for the family. All of whom served the customers individually and knew them. Meat and fish and veg wrapped in paper or in paper bags. Then Sainsbury's moved in to Bristol and things changed by '64 when we moved away. When my children were that age and we lived in a Surrey town. We still had a good butcher on the High street, a knowledgable fishmonger and a fruit and veg shop where we got served, then gradually a big supermarket moved in and the high street was dominated by Estate Agents. Food comes from supermarkets or is delivered in a box to my grandchildren. Unsprayed food now up market!.
Up until recently, even places like Croydon had a fruit and veg market. There were also independent butchers, bakers and fishmongers. It's a case of use them, or lose them. Processed industrial food is poison, and only fools rely on it.
@@nigelwatson2750 Absolutely Nigel. Research into cancer prevention and nutrition was my way into learning truths right back in the early nineties. Learning that there were few minerals and vitamins in the soil anymore. That our body can heal itself by improving proper nutrition and cutting out toxins. That cancer treatments were cancer causing etc and the rabbit hole got wider and deeper from there! I learned a lot from Phillip Day of Credence (still do) and Dr Samuel Epstein. Dr Mathias Rath, etc. Phillip's book 'Why we are dying to know the truth' was a great start. Another of his books revealed the AIDS scandal and Fauci, years ago.
wow i thought bury was bad, i never thought rochdale was as bad as it is!
Is there a " crappiest council" leader board that we don't know about?
Difficult to answer. It’s easy to count all the Labour run councils but difficult to decide which is the worst run council as they are all crap.
@@DaveBeaven-tx2tp that's true enough. My home town which has been destroyed and has only Turkish barbers in the once vibrant town centre is to have it's library demolished. It's ok because on the site they are going to build housing, industrial units and another library. Im not sure how they are going to squeeze this lot in as the library only has a foot print of 1500ft2 🤔.
Nigel there is a channel called turdtowns. Covers a lot of towns across the UK
Brilliant video Nigel, thank you, I am so sorry your home city has become this, it is a warning to every other town and city.
Thanks, Marty. It's a crying shame.
Each time I'm in the UK I notice how there is constant interest on spending but with cash financed through debt.
It's a lazy action to think that commerce and shopping is going to lead to prosperity.
They are puddled.
Indeed, they employ far too many lackies in local government too.
It's not a surprise that economics is not part of the national curriculum. I think that this was quite deliberate.
I'm a Brit who lives in Romania, here it is rare to see a shop boarded up.
There are many more small independent businesses, not just huge retail chains.
What you have to remember is Romania is a low wage, low tax economy.
The average working Romanians disposable income is far lower than their British counterpart, but taxes are far lower.
For example property tax is just 5% of that in the UK and personal income tax is 10%.
To me, Romania feels like the UK of the early 80's
This happy situation will.change..housing is becoming a lot more expensive..the multiple are eyeing it up Romanian WEF political shills are pushing to get into the EEC..when they get their way Romania will be stuffed..Look at how the culture of France has changed..huge supermarkets, mc Donald's change sandwich outlets.
My council tax in Finland is €200 a year. In the UK I was paying £300 every MONTH!
@nigelwatson2750 I bet you get better services too.
The services and leisure facilities in Pori are out of this world @@scottyc7220
Sounds like pre-Thatcher "privatise all the things and suck the value out of every public asset for our rich mates".
Poor Rochdale, it's not somewhere I've ever visited , once the textile industry went , that was it . Liverpool was lucky, when the shipping went , they reinvented themselves as a tourist hub .
Just had a quick Look at Finland house prices look good nice houses nigel and not far away 😁
Outside of Helsinki, all is good.
Think of their contractor mates 😱 it's Kier where I am. They keep building new industrial estates even though the old ones are over half empty. And they moved the University across to another part of town. 🤷🏻♀️ Our town centre is a grimey foreign shanty area now.
Not just the North chaps. My town, Gosport, on the south coast was completely obliterated by communist councillors in the 60's. What was once a pretty Georgian seaside town was turned into a soviet style s. hole. Historically important buildings which had miraculously survived ww2 ( being within a mile of Portsmouth dockyard) we're replaced by tower blocks. One of the worst things is the town hall which previously had been a friendly looking red brick building was replaced with what resembles the arse end of a star destroyer. Funnily enough all the buildings you can see from inside are existing old architecture, including the con club, what a shock! There should be accountability for these acts of architectural vandalism, but thats wishful thinking.
Very interesting Video this one. 😉
The only thing missing is who are the people running the council?
Labour politicians.
'running' is probably too positive a word
Same in oldham and tameside (hyde,ashton, stalybridge etc) shops all empty now.
People used debt to spend tomorrow's income today. The problem is that tomorrow has now arrived.
Very sad and very familiar, Rochdale story is a mirror image of many towns and cities across the country, the two biggest near me Hull and Doncaster it’s exactly the same story. Deliberately brought down over the last 40 / 50 years, they start with taking away the local industries and everything else just falls into place for them 🥲
Id say the real collapse began In 2000 which coincides with banking deregulation, the introduction of buy to let mortgages and the export of jobs to China. Fast forward to 2008 and that was the final nail in the coffin of town centers.
They set out to make people dependent on the council.
@@nigelwatson2750absolutely. This teat comes with conditions...pure marxism. They create a symbiotic relationship but the host could be killed off...if we detach from it.
This is not capitalism...it's communism with shiny goods. It is NOT what we are here for.
Life in a Northern Town
/
Lyrics
A Salvation Army band played
And the children drank lemonade
And the morning lasted all day
All day
And through an open window came
Like Sinatra in a younger day
Pushing the town away
Ah
Ah-hey-ma-ma-ma
Dee-doo-din-nie-ya-ya
Ah-hey-ma-ma-ma
Hey-y-yah
Life in a northern town
Ah-hey-ma-ma-ma-ma
They sat on the stoney ground
And he took a cigarette out
And everyone else came down
To listen
He said, "In winter 1963
It felt like the world would freeze
With John F. Kennedy
And The Beatles"
Yeah, yeah, yeah
Ah-hey-ma-ma-ma
Dee-doo-din-nie-ya-ya
Ah-hey-ma-ma-ma
Hey-y-yah
Life in a northern town
Hey-ma-ma-ma-ma
Ah-hey-ma-ma-ma
Dee-doo-din-nie-ya-ya
Ah-hey-ma-ma-ma
Hey-y-yah
All the work shut down
The evening turned to rain (The evening turned to rain)
Watched the water roll down the drain
As we followed him down
To the station
And though he never would wave goodbye
You could see it written in his eyes
As the train rolled out of sight
Bye-bye
Ah-hey-ma-ma-ma
Dee-doo-din-nie-ya-ya
Ah-hey-ma-ma-ma
Hey-y-yah
Life in a northern town
Ah-hey-ma-ma-ma (Life in a northern town)
Ah-hey-ma-ma-ma
Dee-doo-din-nie-ya-ya
Ah-hey-ma-ma-ma (All the work shut down)
Hey-y-yah
Life in a northern town
There's usually some ugly "art" in these towns. Some hideous sculpture straight out of a bad dream plonked in the centre of town or on a prominent roundabout.
This crap-art costs a fortune too
Crap art - another example of fraud. The artists will have family connections to the councilors, 100% guaranteed.
Crap art not decided by the people but dictated by corrupt Labour councils.
It IS art!
you just don't appreciate it.
You need to go to art college to get re-educated.
People like Turner & Constable aren't needed, we get our inspiration from 3 year olds now!
Great video 🎯
Thanks 💯
Everything your saying Nigel mirrors The City of Leicester, Leicester too was once a thriving City in textiles. It will come of no surprise to me if Leicester soon joins Birmingham to declare it's self bankrupt! I can't help thinking it's all by design to bring in what's coming!
I think Rochdale will declare itself bankrupt too - fortunately, all the building projects have been done, and the funds have been transferred into the right bank accounts.
Absolutely -- "Novus ordo seclorum" -- a "brave new world", a "new golden age" (which will -- and is intended to be -- the opposite of all that is righteous and good).
We're in the time of the feet and toes of iron mixed with clay.
@@alrinaleroux9229 Correct.
I think less is down to some kind of all mighty plan and more incompetence and lack of thinking beyond the next election cycle. So the exact opposite really. I find it hilarious that people think governments, ours especially are somehow capable of some kind of big long term masterplan. This lot we have now couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery or run a bath without massively cocking it up.
It was not just the increase in biz rates that killed business, it was the inequality in competition where everyone switched to online shopping. This was by design - Bez’hos has twice now suggested he can see the day Amazon collapses. shoppers choice in one basket then the plug will be pulled.
Sad to watch , my home town of Ipswich is a.shadow.of its former self,.God bless
Your analysis of the local economy is spot on.
Substitute Rochdale for another Town or City and you could be describing 99% of any of our Town and City Centres. Yes , its quite clear that our Prosperity was finally ruined when we got involved with 20th Century Wars. In 1945 we were skint and became Vassal State to the USA Corporations and their crooked puppets in Washington. We actually closed a complete Mainline Railway in the 1950s !!! We then joined the Common Market in 1972. All the Major Industry , Steel , Aluminium , Mining , Shipyards , Trains , Car Manufacture, Motor Bikes , Machine Tools , Heavy Engineering , Hand Tools , Foundries etc finished in 10 years..
Correct, and we tried to substitute debt for wages to paper over the cracks.
The major problem we have today Nigel , is that we are not in control of our destiny. The Wealthy Individuals who run the globe are in charge. For example , there has been a Coup. They put Johnson in for Vidco 19 and then moved him sideways away from the damage , party gate ( which was all rigged ) same as Han-cock. Got rid of Truss to show us who's the real boss and put Sunak in without a second thought..@@nigelwatson2750
The only place you don't really see this kind of depravation and downward spiral is London. The people in power with all the money live and work there so they don't really see the rest of the country and how much investment is actually needs. The stupid thing is that if they invested more around the country, the WHOLE country would become richer, and so would they. But that involves spending money now to benefit later rather than just taking it all now and hoarding it in some off shore bank account where it's not going back into the economy. And thus we have high inflation. And not because of wages like they always love to tell us.
My hometown. As a kid in the 1960s and 1970s Drake Street (3:28 to 4:45) was packed with shops and shoppers. The shopping centre (5:53) was built in middle to late 1970s. For traditional market shopping, most people head over to Bury, 6 miles to to the west. My mother goes there once/week - Rochdale loses her cash, and that of many other Rochdalians.
True.
So upsetting but oh so true. I find shopping in Bury a necessity these days. I used to love doing a little shopping in Rochdale,keep it local and all that. But the loyalties have had to go and the practicality is now Bury.
Thanks Nigel, great summary.
Pl€@s€ sh@r€
An old mate of mine went to school with Lisa Stansfield in Rochdale.
She was in the year below me at Oulder Hill
@@nigelwatson2750 That’s wonderful what a small world at times! 😄👍 heart warming stuff. He was a year or two below her I think.
Yep apparently she’s been shot over more times than Sarajevo…
My God, this is happening all over the world!!
Britain has no primary or secondary industries, and is dominated by tertiary and quarternary sectors. That's what globalism is all about. Offshore everything of real value and have these fake "knowledge" economies taking their place.
All by design it is, but too many Brits buy into this nonsense and that's why we find ourselves in this situation. All I hear is people whining about the symptoms, but they never want to address the causes.
We're screwed actually - and the reality and scale of what's to come is only just beginning in earnest.
Agreed, Paul.
The entire British economy is located in two, tiny parts of the country. The City of London (as in the square mile) and the Docklands. We have no other industries. It's entirely the finance sector, everything else is a rounding error. This happened because they decided to regulate the banks and turned London into the worlds laundromat and one of the real reasons we left the EU. They were bringing in finance transparency laws and closing a number of tax loopholes with regard to offshore banking etc, which this country does on an industrial scale. There's a reason we're so flush with Russian and Middle Eastern oil money. It's all sent here to be cleaned.
Successive governments (Tories far more so) have put all of our economic eggs into a single basket. If they invested into the rest of the country we could diversify the economy so it's far more robust against collapsing if the single thing that props it up has a bit of a wobble as almost happened in 2008 (and more recently, for different reasons with the lettuces mini budget).
I live in Grimsby we had the largest fishing port in the world we had the same thing happen, they sold us out
The things you discussed here in your video are some of the same things happening here in my American town . Our downtown area was a bustling center of business in the 40's and 50's. After many years of decline, there is little production of goods as they once were. In three of the towns in a two county area, there was ship building before and after World War 2.
Fortunately, there is still chemical production and oil refineries in most of the old plants. However, these places require highly trained, skilled , experienced and well paid personnel. The vast majority of the population are older pensioners and those in entry level jobs.
It is difficult to sustain such an economy unique to our local population.
The education system has been trashed in places like Britain, so it would be very hard for the UK to reindustrialise: the rights skills and personal attributes are not widely found amongst the young anymore - the school system has made that possible.
@@nigelwatson2750 We'd have to bring in capital controls and be super protectionist at the start to grow what industry we have left whilst spending a lot on re education (for actual real skills instead of the fakery you get at school) and would also probably need a recession so there's unemployed people with an incentive to get into industry (why would you when unemployment is 3.5% and you're working a bullshit job doing next to nothing every day as current for so many?)
Great video mate and absolutely spot on ,,corruption greed and ignorance has been the downfall of Rochdale and thousands of towns like it throughout the UK,,it’s a great shame,,if I do venture into the town , which isn’t very often , I come away with mixed feelings of sadness and anger about the way this has been allowed to happen ..Still, Up The Dale
Up the Dale !
Rochdale lost its magic for me when Guitar Player music shop closed. That was on Drake St, I used to love going there.
I remember it well. Nothing like it since,sadly missed
Tractor music
Nigel, I lived in Rochdale from 2015-2016, and it was already decimated then. It was a showpiece for every single problem that plagues the Western World: malevolent politicians and their weaponised immigration, offshoring and outsourcing, an apathetic population with a high alcohol and drug consumption. I remember visiting the local council swimming pool and being told by an arrogant council employee that it was extra money to use the sauna. To me,that encounter pretty much summed up the town's demise
Sounds that way, doesn't it?
I see George Soros recently retired to the shadows to watch his handy work come to fruition!
Great video, looks like Rochdale got “reset” but not in a “great” way!!
Would be interesting to compare Finnish town’s business policies/ council projects…
Was a Rochdale resident gor many years wouldn't dreambof living there now, such good 😢memories ,sad yo see the mess they have made of it
Sad really. I remember this place was buzzing every weekend all day and night
Great, we’ll balanced expose, Nigel.
How very sad though to see a once-great town in such decline.
Hi Nigel, what is happening in Rochdale is beginning to happen everywhere. Many American & possibly British companies are going on line, & emptying the high street. They are being taken over by restaurants & Uber-eats. (They are so many, it becomes unsustainable & what happens when the price of energy goes up? ) The pubs are closing, & it appears that any new antrapreneure has to be pretty special before it takes off, some just don't open. Any local retailers or good old fashioned trustworthy shops, gone. It's like that here in London as well. The sad thing is British was a trusted brand once, now everything has been marketed out to China & Asia. It must be a good 20 years since I visited a great shoe-maker cobbler, who could turn an old shoe into something good. There are repair shops around, but not quite the same. Finland looks a cool place to live, envy the clean air & surroundings, Scandinavia takes great pride in the environment. Thank you for your talk about Rochdale, Britain is in decline by appearances, maybe intentional by the powers that should not be, sad really, so much History that was. 🥴God bless you 🙏🌹😅
If you think it's bad now with China and India receiving the industries and work, wait until these morons in the west push further on with this "net zero" lunacy. China and India aren't interested and will happily absorb more and more from companies and industries exiting the west. That c o mmie policy for you. Redistributing the world's wealth (but not ever from their own pockets, of course).
Fair comments Nigel, a few points I’d like to make , 1- we are cursed by geography being only 10 miles from a city that sucks in all investment while dishing out scraps to outlying towns & 2- I completely agree about successive corrupt councils, there was no need to build their current £30 million monstrosity , the council could have moved their back office staff into Newgate House which had been closed for several years & put customer facing services in one of any number of derelict large stores but they preferred to spend a fortune while neglecting social housing & job creation!
From a once proud Rochdalian.
Well done for being willing to accept what happened - much love from a fellow Rochdalian. Sadly nothing will change because far too may are still in (angry) denial.
At least is Rochdale you have managed to hold on to many grand buildings. My home town of Bradford, and it's brave of me to admit to this, has changed beyond all recognition. I haven't lived there for 30 years and I won't be revisiting anytime soon.
Is it still part of England? In what way is Bradford still English???
@@nigelwatson2750 I don't know. I've lived in Wales for 30 years.
There's no money being brought into Rochdale though to support and maintain the buildings anymore.
went back to Harrow where i grew up and literally couldn’t recognize one building got lost did a U turn got a £60 ticket…
Smoking ban killed all the pubs Nationwide.
All part of the reset.
Changing demographics.
@@nigelwatson2750 Even in almost entirely white places pubs are still closing at a rate of knots. Costs are too high for starters thanks to no caps on energy bills for commercial properties and younger people just don't drink as much. People also have far less disposable income these days due to wage stagnation, yet everything keeps going up in price. The average house was 2-3 times the average salary 30-40 years ago, now it's 8-12 times.
It must be heartbreaking to see your hometown gone the way it has.
This. Exactly!
It's the same all over the UK every industry was given, not sold, to Asia, not only that, but they were trained and instructed on how to use that technology. Every town or county was noted for their excellence in some field of industry, and now it's all gone, together with the prosperity and employment that went with it. The saying that we are a nation of shopkeepers has never been more accurate, except for the fact that those high street shops have been replaced by online sales, and even those are now as flat as a pancake because of the dreadful state of the economy. The point is that a service economy can never provide a good standard of living for its people, and that has become painfully evident.
This may sound very cynical, but I make no apologies for it. The best industry to get into in the UK must be the manufacture of mobility scooters.
It's almost as if there was a plan to destroy Europe and North America.
@@nigelwatson2750 Yeah, they are well underway with it, and my reference to mobility scooters is that in the UK especially, the system can be turned into a social credit scenario at the flick of a switch. Such is the dependency culture that now exists, even families that have two parents working are so dependent on various benefits that they can barely function without them, and so you have the perfect mechanism for state control.
However, the number of people receiving some sort of sickness benefit is colossal. I have never seen so many young people running around on mobility scooters, they even take their dogs for walks on them, It represents a very lame society, the state will step in, at some point, and make some very hefty demands on people in order to keep those benefits, it's inevitable.
Other towns covered by Rochdale MB, Middleton and Heywood have not been developed in the same way as Rochdale, we can expect our Council Tax to increase again in the new year. A good explanation of the current situation.
Thanks, I'm unmonetised, and doing this purely to spread information. Feel free to reuse this video so more people start to think about what has been done with their money.
Because the contractors for the buildings paid off the councillors!?
I'm sure that the contractors were very grateful - wink, wink.
Excellent diagnosis of Council mismanagement. Same happening in lots of Southern Towns. Question is.. how long before the pack of cards does collapse financially, or if ever with money printing. UBI anyone?
There are limits that's why they want cbdc more control but of course it fixes the inflation problem for them which ultimately collapses their usury eventually..
Thing is people can't fathom brics is just them starting up again they like to dangle the golden carrot it makes sheople excited
I am lucky enough to live in Dawlish in Devon. It is lovely living here (3 years) after spending 23 years in commuterland in Hampshire. Fleet was our nearest shopping centre and it too has a very empty shopping mall and Basingstoke is going that way too. Dawlish is no doubt supported by the touist trade and still has independent retailers, bakers, grocer, butcher, teashops and pubs. But those staying in the holiday camps in Dawlish Warren are being squeezed financially and do not have the holiday spending power that they used to. It is all very sad. So glad I am 69 and not 29.
This is how I feel, and I'm ten years younger than you!
I'm from and still live in Rochdale, found you channel via AA's twitter a couple of weeks ago and been binging your content since and it's tragic what's happened to the town just in the years I've been alive. Drake Street used to have lots of good shops on it but now it's all takeaways (and worse). The last hold out of the good shops was Dennis Hope which moved into Norden a few years ago and now there's literally nothing left in the town and no point going.
The most tragic part of it is that Rochdale could legitimately be a great town again if it was being run well (and the countries demographics weren't fucked) it's at the intersection of a lot of the surrounding towns, Bury, Manchester, Burnley, Oldham, Halifax and Huddersfield. Sadly the council is completely gone now no saving it the people in it are moronic or ethnics play ethnic favourability to their own.
The McDonalds had to close iirc because of problems with the kitchen but that could have just been rumours spread due to cope at how things were degenerating.
The 3rd shopping centre was inspired by what Bury did with The Rock Shopping centre which was a success (at least at the time when planning for the Rochdale one started) but why they had to build it with such awful architecture is beyond me. If they did actually get the economy running well again I'd say the 3rd shopping bit would be a good thing as the area it is in was really ghastly after the council redid the bus station and council building and pulled down the black box but there was no need to do this in the first place.
The weed problem has gotten a thousand times worse since the lockdowns, I don't recall smelling weed at all beforehand but now I smell it all over the place even in my village which is a nice part of town. Lockdowns were really tragic for the country the whole place, no matter where I go in the country, seems to have aged 10-15 years in the 4 years since the start of of lockdown.
The lockdowns were a criminal abuse of state power
you have this spot on
such a shame that Rochdale is being killed off
jail the councillors
I paid £1,200 per month C.tax for a pub to Bury, between 1996 & 2006
Excellent video, Nigel! Very interesting. All city and town centres, continue to be - or have been - ruined. There is increasingly, little incentive to go into town, when so many of the shops (including those that sell high quality consumer goods and cater to specialist interests or needs) and entertainment venues have gone. This effects tourism too.
Oh and another thing that really pisses me off is they ripped down our old lovely Victorian swimming baths that we had for a modern soulless monstrosity instead of refurbing the old baths, that was something that stung a lot considering I learned how to swim in there, had our school swimming competitions there and loved the architecture of the place.
Me too, fond memories of the old baths.
left Rochdale in 1970 to emigrate to Australia,. at 1,03 on your Video, the brick paving was not there in 1970 and it was a huge car park. we stayed at the hotel near to the steps to the church.
the world has changed and not for the better.
My thoughts
Marty.
I have stayed at the same hotel.
Hugely interesting take on a local area. This town is no different to so many other overspent towns with white elephant projects throughout the UK. Such a shame. No common sense steering based upon the reality of life & proper private enterprize. Maidenhead town Berkshire is a classic example of so called regeneration that has wiped away its history in the 60's so even the 1990 regeneration attempts are being knocked down & replaced.
Let's speak about it. Pl€@s€ sh@r€
My father in law was an engineer at RW Riley’s. He went all over the world setting up the cotton spinning and weaving machines in China, India, South Africa etc. this was as late as the sixties and seventies. We used to be taken round the mills from area Brook School. There were and are old mills on Bridgefold Road. Not one to harp on but the town was never the same after they closed the old market.
Agreed on the old market
Same here in Croydon. The council built themselves a lovely glass building whilst promising scheme after scheme that failed. Corruption everywhere we look i believe.
And Whitgift Foundation closing Old Palace School for property development when they are supposed to be an educational charity
Oldham is worse......far worse
Correct - we took the tram and went through it. It didn't look like England in the slightest.
I remember MC garbage leaving Rochdale. I left here 12yrs ago. I cannot believe they've built another shopping center!!!!! PS is the bus station still there? I see another Birmingham here?
They built a new bus station - kerrcchhiinngg!
Very good video Nigel
Thanks, pl€@s€ sh@r€
Liverpool did the same. Destroyed the independent outdoor markets to create st johns shopping centre. They then decided to build another one in the 90s which is now mostly closed just like at johns. They have since then build the Liverpool 1 shopping centre which has all the same shops as the 3rd one in this video. This is not an accident.
Nigel. It's the same all over the country so never go back, it's too depressing!!
It boils my piss ! My first day at work was on the black box, we had a new shopping center, bus station, indoor market, people wanted to visit, the only thing i think about now is dodging fake beggars ,
Rochdale, destroyed by bent local politicians
I have lived in Rochdale since 1998. It's so depressing to see this town crumbling. The wheatsheaf could have been used as a food court, with loads of different foods from all over the world. But as the council are, very greedy. I miss the market, it was huge indoors. Now there's bailey ten stalls.
The council's greed has killed the town.
@@nigelwatson2750 The council's vanity projects have killed it.
It's money laundering@@mytwopennorth7216
What would be interesting. The goods imported from abroad say India and Pakistan, Are they imported from families of councillors working in Rochdale selling their family goods made in India and Pakistan in which they have an undeclared financial interest.
Don't know.
Most towns/cities are struggling with extortionate business rates resulting in closed and boarded up businesses.
In terms of manufacturing & Rochdale, Rochdale does actually have a fair few globally known manufacturers and facilities in and around the town but you are correct the council keeps raising the business rates so they have to move elsewhere and this is happening every year with less businesses choosing to stay in Rochdale because the council are out of touch with the real world
It will be the 'Stakeholders' that make the money at either end - they get taxpayer cash at every decision and failure - then they move on to the next thing -
I thought Wakefield, Barnsley and Huddersfield were bad but not that bad or did you just show us the high spots Nige? 😃Thanks for a break down of what "they" have been doing to us worldwide for decades. I'd guess considerably more than 33 years!!! God bless you.
This is happening to most Towns & Cities all over the UK. There are very little Job / Career prospects
and for those in work, the threat of getting axed is always looming over you.
There is a way to resolve part of this “Trend” and that is, Proportional Representation. Running down
my Country to this sickening level is criminal just so that an already privileged group of people
become even more wealthy at the expense of the vast majority.
Politicians that have been in Parliament for decades and have been a part of this running down
process are just as guilty as if they themselves, had been Prime Minister. People like Harriet Harman,
Margaret Beckett, David Lammy, to mention a few.
The Conservatives should be thrown out and membership of the Conservative Party should be
Criminalised, because None of them act for the benefit of the UK as a whole. They act for
themselves, lining their own pockets.
The UK is better than this Group of thieves we have in 10 Downing Street.
Post industrial blues,after the gold rush,the fate of northern towns..! Good video lad.!
Thanks
You will see this everywhere in the country this is part of the build back better we will own nothing and be happy
Good video and you are spot on, Nigel. How can the senior people at the Council (a bunch of overpaid public sector lifers) be made to understand simple economics?
I also think that while Councils have allowed many retail parks with free parking to be developed, then all town centres remain disadvantaged. To rectify, they should either a) make town centre car parking free, just the same as at the retail parks, or b) introduce car parking charges that are the same as in the town centres at the retail parks.
Why do people become councilors? There must be something in it for them? I think that the answer is obvious.
Yes, research for example the recent Leader of Liverpool Council (aka 'Chippy Tits'), its Head of Regeneration, and the police investigation into corruption there.
But for most part, I think its the generous councillor allowances for just attending meetings, and the ability to waste taxpayers money without consequence that attracts them@@nigelwatson2750
It's not insanity. It's corruption.
What motivates people to become councilors? They have big budgets to spend, and I'm sure that the councilors are very well treated by the companies that they award contracts to.
Sadly Nigel, this is an accurate picture of most towns in the UKplc.
Everything is born, lives, and dies, time for the country to get a decent burial….
Rochdale desperately need a new council if things are going to improve. The new council offices look awful. The black box building looked better and should been refurbished. I don’t know why it’s cost a lot of money to open the river up. Rochdale just went through a PFI scheme to renew all street lighting 10 years ago but will now be wasting money converting to LED. PFIs were one of Blair’s projects. The person is right about manufacturing which desperately needed not just in Rochdale but all over the country. Why are we buying from China? He’s also right about business rates as well. I always thought business rates was a Labour invention as a way to punish business owners who Labour see as the enemy.
I remember the McDonalds in the comer building in the town centre. It had a basement that smelt damp. The new shopping centre looks abit like Liverpool One with a life expectancy of 15 years due to the shoddy construction. The problem with all these towns in Greater Manchester is they see one town doing something so they have to copy it as well.
Wigan looks dreadful at the moment as the council have handed a large site over to a Chinese developer with links to CCP. The rents were deliberately put up so business’s move out. Blackburn, another Labour run council ( and is under investigation) ran the old market down so they could argue for its closer and demolition and then replaced it with a smaller market with sky high rents. The region had the corrupt Northwest Development Agency which was another one of Blair’s public tax funded projects that only looked after Chester, Manchester, Liverpool and Preston. The remaining towns like Bolton, Burnley, Blackburn and Rochdale missed out on the equal share. Blackpool another Labour run town probably has the worst town centre in the whole of the uk. Somebody has come up with a solution to sort out the high unemployment problems Blackpool faces as they can’t just rely on tourism as a sole income. Morecambe suffered as an independent seaside town when it came under the durysdiction of the newly formed Lancaster council in 1974 that only look after students in the city of Lancaster.
A long term solution for Rochdale is to create manufacturing in the town and build a new college that specialises in engineering apprenticeships for school leavers.
The sequence of shopping centres can be explained via corruption. The councilors get kick-backs from the developers.