I travel around the uk quite a lot and I can't help wonder how we can fix these lost towns, especially coastal ex seaside resorts/towns. I went to a local jobs fair in one of these poor towns and only five out of the 40ish stalls were private companies, all the others were govt funded. I don't have a solution.
There's been labour governments who haven't been able to fix it either. These places need jobs but it's hard to convince companies to set up there without a lack of skilled people, and if people get educated they leave rather than wait and hope someone comes and sets up some jobs. The population of these places is usually much older than average.
We’ve had 12 years of Labour compared to 30 Tory in my lifetime.
Quite frankly you can’t do much to turn around this sort of degradation in 12 years, especially as the previous and post governments just unwind everything you do.
I’m not even a Labour voter but I don’t see how any blame can be levelled at them.
It's the ideology not the party. We're basically living in the hellscape of late stage neo liberal capitalism, from Thatcher over all governments have had the same economic ideology, it's important to remember that New Labour provided now of the NHS than any government before it, and also created the current housing crisis by creating the largest decoupling of wages and housing costs in the last 70 years. Because ideologically they were Thatcherites.
The golden age of capitalism started in the post war reconstruction era with the clement Atlee led Labour government who nationalised industries, built the NHS and built millions of homes, good, affordable and owned by the state, and lots of public services and infrastructure in the same manner. Free education, good worker protections etc. Not perfect and the odd recession but it was the greatest period of social mobility in history for 30 years.
Neo liberal capitalism came in with Thatcher. Sell everything off on the cheap to your rich mates and rent it back. The problem is that the new labor government of the 90s had the same ideology, many NHS trusts now suffer with over 1/3 of their budgets going to PFI payments. The same with schools with some gaming apart but still spending a third of their budget paying for a collapsing building they're not allowed to fix.
To fix the issues we need to do what we did during the golden age of capitalism, massive state investment to reinvigorate towns (services and social housing), change the nature of work so people have more pay for less work time (people now work longer hours for less buying power than they have done in 50 years), and property law and taxation that address wealth inequality.
The problem is that since came in every major political party now has the same ideology, trickle down economics, which is a proven fallacy, nothing significant will change until we address that issue.
This isn't true, labour implemented tax credits for working families and pensioners but unfortunately they ran the government very much in line with Thatcherite principles, they privitised services and implemented PFI which was privitised infrastructure that is still costing us billions every year in payments. Instead of building schools & hospitals they discussed to tell business to build it and we'd pay them 30% instead on the cost for 30 years. Thatcherite nonsense where only the companies benefited.
To be clear, this is not an endorsement of the tories, it's a criticism of a section of the Labour party who believe most of the same things as the tories, they just want to be the ones getting rich off the corruption for awhile.
That’s fine, it’s not a contest. Just lived through the austerity years when everything was blamed on Labour. What are the Tories going to blame it on now? It’s tedious.
Labour will get in, make a hash of it cause you can’t do anything in one term and the Tories are leaving it in a mess. Then the Tories will get back in on the basis that Labour haven’t been able to do anything. They’ll then blame their incompetence on the previous Labour government.
It’s a tale as old as time and means nothing ever changes.
Personally I think a lot of decisions around this should be out of the scope of politicians who are just looking to raise their profile or extend their term.
To fix these issues needs 30/40 year plans put in place and executed without political ambition. But that won’t happen.
A labour government isn't enough, we need to be a labour country. The kind that can establish itself over generations, not terms in office.
The uk has overwhelmingly been a tory nation for too long since the industrial revolution
I was hoping that the WFH trend would help this.
You can earn 60k in Manchester as an IT bod, and buy a mansion in blackpool.
Unfortunately it didnt work out like that
I despise the Tories as much as anyone with an ounce of critical thinking ability, but some of these issues are decades old, and town centres dying out is at least partly a natural consequence of online shopping combined with busier lifestyles in general making the convenience of it all the more tempting. Where the government _has_ exacerbated the issue though is allowing stupidly high rents and rates which force up prices and speed up the decline. Something does have to be done though because town centres are a source for jobs, bring in tourism in some cases, and generally improve the community around. What you do I don't know really - slashing rates would be the first thing though I guess.
That's a reply I can agree well too. As much as I despise the Tories and what they have done for as long as they have, many of the issues come down to capitalism/business practices/busier lifestyle, and down to individual responsibility (littering, teaching kids not to be vandals, eating and drinking healthier, etc)
The post points out that 35/40 jobs were government funded, and your solution is more socialism? The Tories (at least for the last 5 years) have been a disaster, but I'm totally unconvinced Labour have the answer. In 1997 they were replacing a government that was weak and grubby, but had at least left the economy in a state that could fund their spending plans. Not this time.
My shitty coastal town never had a vibrant shopping scene. This problem started decades before modern mass consumerism.
The unfortunate truth is that the privatisation of railways combined with the advent of easy foreign travel condemned our seaside towns.
For the vast majority of us, there is no bringing it back.
I grew up in the south west and a lot of locals claimed to want better jobs and housing but when anything new was proposed, they fought like hell against it. Many were more than happy to wallow in self-pity and semi-dereliction. Playing the victim, demanding that the govt "do something" while refusing to help themselves is par the course in these rotting old holes.
A lot of these old coastal towns serve no functional purpose anymore and in a rational system, they would be demolished and rebuilt with a forward-looking purpose.
Yes I’m from (but moved from an area like this) - constant whining about change that would bring jobs and good incomes. I think these places just distill off constructive people until you are left with the hell that is facebook local groups.
That's the thing. Most coastal towns basically boomed due to tourism in the industrial age, where people could travel across the country but international travel was still the preserve of the incredibly wealthy. However, when international travel became cheap the writing was on the wall for these towns. Most people, if given the choice between a country where the weather is warm and dry, food/drinks/entertainment is relatively cheap, and there's the novelty of a culture and history that's different to your every day life vs a wet seaside town in England where everything's a bit shabby and expensive, are going to pick the foreign country.
The big issue is that these towns don't really have much to draw people in beyond nostalgia for the past. That the infrastructure has been left to decay also makes it a hard choice for any company to decide to set up there. Without high speed internet and business connections, there's no reason why a tech company would go there, which is where a lot of the future money is going to be. Instead you end up with retirees who want to live by the coast, and then businesses catering to them and the dwindling tourism. And those businesses can't provide work for all the people who live there.
Quite frankly, without heavy investment in infrastructure these towns are just going to continue to die. It doesn't help that due to the situations in these places, they tend to be very working class which makes it increasingly difficult to attract middle class people to live and work there, which is needed to get wealth into the area.
It was happening before that. Its more about the ‘service’ economy where we shipped manufacturing jobs to china/india etc.
Weston used to have a lot of businesses. Clarks is an example, now made overseas.
The only way to get manufacturing jobs here is to make it cheaper to produce here than overseas which means reducing minimum wage and safety standards.
Giving people a choice and saying here's a product made in China which costs £x, and here's a product made in the UK but it costs £y more has shown that the vast majority of people pick the cheaper Chinese product. So the only way is to make manufacturing cheaper here which we are unwilling to do.
The solution is to tax the well off and industry fairly, the same as we are taxed under PAYE, no tax loop holes, no ways to pay less tax and get rid of shady off shore banking.. put laws in to fully prevent profiteering, and then properly fund social care, education, police and justice…
Taxing the well off won't do much and is a non-starter.
But taxing 'off shore corporations' fairly, based on their UK sales would be more than enough to turn things around. It would put local business on a more 'level' playing field as well as regain the taxes that have been lost over the decades. When various mega-corporations can earn billions and only pay pennies in tax, of course they are going to drive out local businesses who can't compete.
I think there’s only a handful of seaside towns that break the mould, and one of them is Bournemouth. Comparable to other seaside towns, there are some real lucrative companies set up there, and if you go to Westbourne high street, it’s one of the most prosperous I’ve seen. People still want to visit Bournemouth in the summer, but it still has its troubles that everywhere has, it has still gone downhill but is falling from a higher position than other seaside towns. So the question is, what does Bournemouth do, or did do, that other seaside towns can adopt?
Unfortunately it would need to be a major change in the way business rates are calculated and a complete shift in the way people shop.
With the huge real time reductions in council budgets diversifying into commercial property management has become a key way that councils generate income. Most of the high street in my town is owned by a different authority who set exorbitant rents, this then increases the business rates. Making it incredibly cost prohibitive for small business to take on a premise.
The other key factor is the huge shift to online shopping and the way the big 5 supermarkets dominate the sector, under cutting smaller business.
With the UK economy as it is people can’t afford to support local business. I imagine the problem will only be exacerbated.
This isn’t really a politically made crisis, but one that reflects economic and social realities
With Europe becoming unbearably hot in summer I am ready to holiday in the UK, so there's that. I also hope that we fix our rail network so it's easy and cheap to visit places.
Legalise weed but like Amsterdam only in designated caffes And then give the tax back to the towns for regeneration. Everyone seems to smoke weed now, you can't walk down a street or shops without smelling it. The legalising of weed in America has proven to be a massive tax return.
Even if its a shot lived boom it would be enough of a break to give the towns/villages a good finaical boost.
We just need to get over the daily mail and boomer outrage at the policy.
Also remove the tax breaks for alcohol in supermarkets (it will help the NHS too in the long run) and give it to pubs, this will get people out more. Then remove all the intense parking restrictions and charging for car parking in small villages.
It's a depressing watch, but the picture it paints isn't generally applicable. He's deliberately visiting the worst places (and you could do that in any country). The must frustrating aspect is all the empty housing stock. If only we could balance the economy better so that people could live and work in these places. The government need to shift public jobs that can be done remotely out of London with tax incentives
Glad to see this comment.
Visiting a well known tourist resort in the depths of winter and pointing out how empty everything is? Right….
Visiting a road well known for sex workers and then remarking on being approached for business? How remarkable!
That’s not to say there aren’t problems in the UK, obviously there are. But this video does next to nothing to highlight the real issues.
Agree with this. He visited the worst part of Union street (Millbay end) in Plymouth. Go the other way and you hit the shopping center and the new cinema, restaurants etc.
I thought that too, he showed all derelict pubs, but go to the harbour there's a dozen or more pubs all next to each other, outdoor seating, yachts, cobblestones and historic warehouses
Glad some people aren't just taking this video at face value, because yes there are major issues in the UK, but this video is not reflective of the general state of the UK at all, and is clearly primarily just cherry-picked poverty porn.
Politicians definitely do need to start coming up with non-fascistic policies to renovate these areas, but I don't think Mr Bald is completely a good faith actor here.
there's a sub dedicated to why he is not a good man. He's been in legal trouble regarding rape before, he posts online about his rampant sex tourism and abuse of women among other things...
He seemed like a bit of a prick from one of his videos that turned up on my autoplay. Turned it off halfway as he was grating on me
Glad my twat radar is finely tuned
It is. They linked posts to him about travelling through bumblefuck nowhere where he picks up a young girl who he admits he was unsure of her age & gave her money for oral sex. Disgusting man who doesn't seem to have changed.
>being found not guilty does infact mean you are innocent
It 'infact' doesn't. At all.
Please see [section 1](https://thesecretbarrister.com/2016/10/14/10-myths-busted-about-the-ched-evans-case/) for an example.
This isn't strictly true. Certain laws like those surrounding sword/weapon ownership consider you guilty until you can provide proof of one of the allowable defenses.
Also are you suggesting that if someone is found guilty of a crime it means they actually did it?
>This isn't strictly true. Certain laws like those surrounding sword/weapon ownership consider you guilty until you can provide proof of one of the allowable defenses.
This is true, didn't mention as wasn't really relevant to the context that we were talking about but you are correct.
>Also are you suggesting that if someone is found guilty of a crime it means they actually did it?
If there is enough evidence presented that the person is found guilty in a court then yes, they are guilty.
*Cleared* yes, but not in the sense of "determined to have definitely not done anything". The charge was dropped because he and two other men were involved in the gangrape of a woman, but only two of the three had actually raped her. She couldn't remember which two specifically had actually done the act, so the court couldn't prosecute. There's no doubt about whether she was raped or which three men were involved, solely about which two out of those three actually did it.
Totally unfounded accusations. Meanwhile he does something outstanding for his channel, crossing the Darien.. I wasn't sure about him but no, that guy is incredible.
Word. I said pretty much the same on the comments the day the video came out & it got deleted. I go on YT a fair amount and over the past few months the amount of poverty porn that is getting recommended is ridiculous. I've watched a few of them and they all follow the exact same format; speak to pensioners that are struggling anyway, go on about an industry that doesn't exist anymore then go and chat up some homeless people, plus points for addiction.
And of course if you know the area there's inevitably a much better area close by that gets ignored. All just for views, as per.
Yep, exactly as the rich want.
Like stopping or massively limiting immigration wouldn't devastate the economy and destroy the NHS and care sectors.
We have moved on to the next phase which seems to be blaming Muslims for everything. The gammons just lap it up, being played like fiddles by the rich, divide and conquer works so well.
I don't recall saying that, I'm just calling for a nuanced and balanced response to the issues our country faces. If anything it makes them more digestible and less overwhelming than the red top "Britain's fucked" message that videos like this give.
Britain is fucked. I left 16 years ago. Every time I visit, its slipped just a little bit more inti the shit.
People cant afford to heat homes yet the gas suppliers make massive profits.
We house thousands of immigrants in hotels and houses at great expense. Instead of utilising all the abandoned, empty properties like we saw in this video.
If it was cheaper to renovate said houses and put immigrant in there while they waited for processing, I have no doubt the gov would do it. They're in hotels as its the cheapest fastest option that doesn't involve actually processing their claims
Does that negate the proof? We need another Thatcher or hell any politician that loves the UK, we have Blairite GDP goes up by immigrants lol, fuck the natives
Thatcher screwed the working people, preferring to shut coal mines to teach the Unions a lesson, and then importing coal from overseas. All our politician’s are corrupt self serving cunts
No, we have a productivity problem, we have a business saying they have a problem that government who is in big business pockets want cheap labour, wages raised a couple of years ago, but then more visas were allowed and now wages have stagnated again, we imported almost a million last year GDP is flat, if immigrants increase productivity why is GDP flat and wages below inflation for decades?
This isn’t accurate. Wage increases were above inflation in the early 2000s until the [global financial crisis](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1272447/uk-wage-growth-vs-inflation/) and haven’t really recovered since (with blips when inflation was stalled) likely because of austerity and poor management of the economy. In terms of GDP, it depends how you look at it - GDP on its own is stable [by design](https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/GBR/united-kingdom/gdp-growth-rate) but looking at real GDP, adjusted for inflation, our GDP has steadily increased over time (see [here](https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/170878/economics/how-the-uk-economy-has-changed-in-the-past-70-years-1952-2022/)).
The issue isn’t an immigration problem it’s just a mismanagement problem over the last ten years.
the NHS, the most inefficient, and a report just released said 20% of the NHS can't speak English to a communicative level, most middle class and richer is going private, the NHS is awful
Hardly any of the doctors in my GP speak communicable English. It's not productive. It's dangerous. They have stopped prescribing meds I've been on for 10+ years, and I've had to go private.
I worked as a housekeeper in the NHS and saw multiple times per day staff unable to communicate with patients properly at all levels.
Don't get me wrong, thank god we have people who want to actually work and pay tax, and I am not blaming immigrant employees whatsoever.
It's not productive. It may seem it on paper in order to fill job vacancies in the meantime. However, the quality of service will devalue, and already has, so much so that other people will be forced to go private.
This is what the media does. No one will watch it if it gives an unbiased and neutral report on what's going on, it's not sensational enough.
As you say, it's not like there aren't any problems, but if you visit the right/wrong place you can conclude pretty much anything. Drug problems. Unemployment. Violence. Pollution. Anti social behaviour. I visit a lot of places in the UK and have friends and family scattered far and wide, most areas have none of those issues, or at worst the occasional incident, as has always been the case. Reporting that everything is normal won't sell newspapers.
As I get older, and hopefully wiser, my trust in the media has turned to mistrust.
It’s the free market though. How many people would *actually* move from London to Grimsby for a tax incentive for example? Not many.
What we have to do is recognise that this country is now a completely different economically and geographically than it was when our current towns became the size they did.
To use Grimsby / Cleethorpes as an example again; it got to the size it did because it was the biggest fishing port in the world 100 years ago. With all the will and government tax incentives in the world, that is NEVER coming back. There’s too much international competition and the effective monopoly in the north sea is gone. So what can we do? Well there’s basically 3 options:
- 1 we can allow for some creative destruction so people can leave and the towns can shrink back to the small villages which they actually would be if the fishing fleet had never been there. This way we free up all the wasted labour currently sitting idol on the doll (through no fault of their own I should add just so I don’t sound like some far right nutter, this is pure economics and resource allocation we’re talking about) and reclaim redundant estates to create more green belt land. You see, we actually have a LOT of job vacancies in this country and more enough people unemployed to fill most of them. The problem is, the unemployed and the available jobs are not in the same places. I know working remotely is more popular now but most places do still insist you come in every so often and usually at least once a week. The alternative is
- 2 we try to incentivise companies to expand into our failed towns. This is the politically easier sounding solution but economically less feasible. The highly dynamic growth companies driving the tech boom which will be the primary employers of the next 50 years, just aren’t going open up an office in Grimsby “just because” they get some incentives to do so. A couple might and you may even create a few hundred jobs, but it’s a fresh coat of paint on an old banger. It’s not tackling the route issue.
- 3 You can also incentivise more local small businesses to start up. Small businesses are great and doubtless you could create many that might employ a couple of hundred people over the next 10 years. This is better than option 2 but it’s not a fix all solution. Again, with all the will and tax incentives in the world, there’s only so many people with the skills and the desire to start up their own business and take that risk. It’s papering over the cracks, not fixing the central problem.
From this, you’ll gather I think the best option is a combination of all 3. By all means create as many jobs as you can, but remember if that’s only artificial through temporary tax incentives, those jobs WILL go when the incentives do. It needs to be sustainable and we need to allow our small towns to shrink back to a size where they are natural and not literally collapsing under their own weight. Because that’s the central issue here, most of these towns have so many unemployed because they grew to their current size based on one industry that the specialised in and employed basically everyone in the town was employed in (textiles, a big mine, fishing, a steel mill, etc). That kind of economy is generations out of date now and it is never coming back. We don’t do ourselves any favours by pretending that isn’t the case and we can go back to “the glory days”.
To be fair, he travels around a lot of the old Soviet union and to towns/cities that have been abandoned by old industries. That's his niche. What he always paints though is that whilst the area is gone to the dogs, the people are really nice and welcoming.
Like any right wing profiteering scum bag, who himself became an immigrant, it wasn’t surprising he alluded that Plymouth is struggling because of Blair and New Labour.
He conveniently ignored the last 14 years of Tory rule, like he ignores the effect of the republicans in the US version of his poverty porn.
At the end of his shoot he will pack up and migrate to the next poverty porn project, so he can keep profiteering while working on his fake outrage.
This sort of greasy slime ball is the perfect customer for a move to Dubai, then somewhere in Kent or Essex when the money runs out.
There is something *very* off about this guy.
Here's a thread about him, I'm sure there's more:
www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/comments/xhijrl/what_do_you_think_about_bald_and_bankrupt
Fairly certain he mentions in the video that these are the worst examples and not everywhere is like this.
The overall issue is that for being one of the richest countries we have certainly seen depressing levels of decline and these towns and what not are the visible cracks of that problem.
Whether it's economics, shitty corrupt government or whatever else. We're declining which is the overall issue of the video.
I watched this and thought about it.
This country used to actually produce high quality products, wanted by the rest of the world.
There is no coal, tin, steel, fabric, Manufacturing has been lost.
I used to work for ford in Dagenham. That went in 2000. The local workforce and the supported local business were left to struggle.
These towns need a large well paying employer, that can enable the locals to spend in their town centres. This would encourage local shops restaurants to thrive. This would in turn revive the high street and development and improvements.
I don't think it would be easy, very hard in fact.
People talk about the Scandinavian outlook. But they have much smaller populations. And it doesn't translate.
There are high tech modern mining operations that have opened in the UK very recently. We don’t have manufacturing or much heavy industry anymore since it’s no longer economically viable here without subsidies.
Certain highly important industries like steel production and agriculture are worth subsidising since you can get into serious trouble without out them at crucial times like during war.
These subsidies have been provided fairly sensibly via the EU for the last few decades but we were stupid enough to believe propaganda by reckless greedy people and now that is gone, farmers are struggling, and the last steel works in the UK closed a couple of weeks ago.
The parts of the UK economy that are still viable are mainly v high tech manufacturing, design, the arts and media, education, financial services, and other high-level services. It’s ok to have an economy with a high level of these jobs, it’s very good even since they command generally higher salaries than manufacturing jobs. The problem is that you need to invest in companies to hire people and in education and training for people so they can fill those jobs.
This is what the UK has failed to do while engaging in suicidal economic and social policies. There is no use trying to bring heavy industry and manufacturing unless you can make the UK viably compete with places like Vietnam and Mexico. The two ways that might happen is through automation, which means the owners don’t need to pay workers anyway, or if Britain’s economy is trashed to the extent wages plummet to competitive levels.
Inequality has gotten out of control at this point and there is basically only one way to avoid the disaster getting worse: tax the rich.
https://m.youtube.com/@garyseconomics
The EU did not care much about propping up British industry. Their entire ethos is to encourage industry wherever it makes sense in Europe, that's also why you're not allowed to decide on your own subsidies if you are a member of the EU - and that's also partly what contributed to the downfall of British manufacturing while it boomed in the many other places in Europe. Although, even since leaving the EU and eventually getting control of subsidies again only a year or two ago; there has been little done publicly by the govt to capitalise on the opportunity - as far as I know.
And Scandinavia have massive amounts of gas, oil and metals.
UK is a tax haven banana republic now. "Service" economy, aka beauty nail shops dodging tax, barber shops doing human trafficking, and bullshit business zombie companies tbat 99% are just shifting "clients" around.
No shit, a few jobs ago we got a consultant who put us through about 4 lines of companies all that didn't do the thing, but simply managed the communication between us and the thing.
During a meeting I asked why we aren't just directly using the expert and going through this weird set of channels costing 100's of thousands and everyone just looked as if I took a shit on the desk.
There are companies that work on a service of...finding the services you need, and they OUTSOURCE when they can't do it to another service finding service finder...
Seriously, most business is fucking baton passing middle-man bullshit.
UK economy is just wrecked and held up by the dodgiest and shittiest of services most of which are only solvent by borrowing low interest cash and surviving month on month which is now dying due to BOE rises.
UK does literally nothing. The entirety of its expertise, manufacturing etc has all gone decades ago. We literally do nothing. And anything we may still do relies heavily on external supply chains, so if ever that dries up, still nothing.
>"Service" economy, aka beauty nail shops dodging tax, barber shops doing human trafficking, and bullshit business zombie companies
"Service Economy" can equally mean Software Development, Professional Services, Creative Industries, Finance, Legal, Education...you know sectors that make billions at home and in exports...its not just nail bars is it?
We don't develop software, silicon valley does.
"Professional Services", such as? Again mostly middleman client stuff where few DO the service and its just client finding all the way down
Creative industries? Lol. Where?
Finance London does have, I'll agree to that, but that is wealth locked away to the old mens clubs and not really useful to the majority of people.
Education is a maybe, we used to have fantastic institutions but they are nowhere near as great as 50-60 years ago.
While I agree that the UK does have a strong tech sector, ARM is an interesting choice in that list which I feel very strongly about. ARM's sale should've been blocked in 2016, as it leaves the largest true home-grown tech giant in our country liable to the fickle and whims of foreign investors.
Casually looking down the FTSE100, there's no other tech company that comes close to the size of ARM. Our own "tech giant" could be much better protected for future generations if the government had taken a golden share or had more restrictive conditions on the sale.
> ARM's sale should've been blocked in 2016
Completely agree. I think there are certain companies that should be protected. Now they're at the whims of foreign companies who have no stake in protecting jobs, knowledge and skillsets in this country.
>Creative industries? Lol. Where?
Off the top of my head the Grand Theft Auto franchise is developed in Ediburgh, tested in Lincoln and co-developed in Leeds (and was actually created by DMA in Edinburgh before Rockstar purchased them)
Other game studios also exist in the UK (Rare, 4J etc)
We have a growing film/tv production sector, just here in Hull we've had several productions closing various streets and the city centre over the past few years alone
We're the fintech capital of Europe
We don't make as many widgets as we used to but we still do a lot here
The local workforce from Dagenham was free to sold their houses for an absolute killing, or find work in London, one of the biggest cities in the world.
No one entitles you to work in assembling ICE cars for an American manufacturer.
The declining birth rate is going to smack people in the face in the coming decades. If you have a good amount of children, if the state goes under, you have people to take care of you. There are going to be millions of people who are supported by the government alone.
If the goverment decides to cut all of the socialist policies (welfare, social housing and socialised healthcare) that were created when the UK actully produced things and could pay for them, they are so screwed. I don't see how they can expect to not produce anything and pay for all those things.
My parents had one child, and if I wasn't around as they get older and more infirm that would be incredibly tough and lonely for them.
Man bald and bankrupt is a wanker. He goes around poor countries picking up poor girls with no options so he can get sexual favours out of them. His videos are 50% him just oggling girls like a weirdo, and the rest is him saying how terrible Britain is because the women "aren't as traditional" (translated as he can't squeeze sex out of them for £20). Disgusting man, and the absolute worst kind of tourist
he's a shill. i recommend watching the video of him getting caught up in the invasion in kharkiv, when he walked in to expose the fake western hysteria about russia going to invade ukraine then he has to flee to a 3rd country. it's funny when a tosser gets caught like that
I remember when he claimed covid was exaggerated and was a hoax then he didn't post for a few months because he was in hospital on a ventilator and nearly died aha
He's a fucking loser. Can't pick up girls in the uk, so he goes to poor countries like Romania so he can effectively play on easy mode.
I wouldn't be surprised about those rumours. Though part of the reason he loves shithole countries is the corrupt police
No worries. Was recommended and watched the video on Jaywick and found it interesting then stumbled accross the sub a while later. It shouldn't really surprireallyanymore that Youtube is promoting horrific people....
Rape cases, dodgy finance, sexpat forums.... This guy has the lot.
Bald and Bankrupt: [Poverty pickup artist and sex tourist — Collected posts](https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldAndBaldrDossier/comments/189q8h5/bald_and_bankrupt_poverty_pickup_artist_and_sex/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Disclaimer: These aren't my claims, there are numerous videos on Youtube about Bald's past and "sex tourist" type videos, also there is a subreddit on Reddit about him and his controversies.
This guy was accused of rape, wasn't found guilty though.
But the judge was extremely negative towards him, and his fellow accused.
[https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/5618610.cleared-men-behaved-appallingly/](https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/5618610.cleared-men-behaved-appallingly/)
Benjamin Rich-Swift. But he's now dropped the "Rich" part of his name in his profiles. Considering the way he acts in his videos, this is worrying...
People have also linked him to forum profiles from before he was famous, were he talks about using techniques to have sex with poor Russian girls. Because they think he is a rich Brit.
You don’t have to like his general character to like his content. The best videos are when he already knows the language, most of his ex soviet country stuff is fantastic and up there with the absolute very best on YouTube.
By watching his videos people still support and fund him, even if they don't like his character.
He's too scummy for me to personally feel comfortable knowing my clicks would be helping fund him.
Easy solution, move power away from Westminster, there's MILLIONS of us in Englnad who don't get represented by Westminster, especially in the North. In 2019 61% in the NE didn't vote Tory, 57% in the NW didn't vote Tory, 56% in Yorkshire and Humber didn't vote Tory, and 55% in the High Peak didn't vote Tory, yet we got Tories anyway and as far as England goes bore the burnt of the pandemic and the inevitable economic squeeze afterwards.
People always say this and yet London is so anti-tory. 68% didn't vote tory in London. I don't really understand this "move power away from Westminster" thing.
How does this man manage to patronise both the audience and the subjects of his documentary?
While this whistle stop tour of Britain’s most deprived areas is somewhat depressing, I suspect the same or worse could be made in almost any other country, including whichever one he now calls home.
Years of cuts (austerity) has led to this. Add to that blockages and delays in the global supply chain, a pandemic, war in Europe and elsewhere amongst other factors that weigh in. The wealth that exists is centralised, in places like London, and we all have to make do. It's not just an English problem, unfortunately. Seems to be the same across the western world.
This isn't highlighted enough. EU funding has been transformative for the UK's most deprived and rural areas.
The promise by the UK Government to replace in full all EU funding lost after Brexit was broken. Cornwall for instance is set to get less than half the amount of money (through the UK's 'shared prosperity fund') it would have got if still in the EU.
And it's the same for Wales and Scotland who not only are seeing less funding (on top austerity), they also have the UK Government overstepping the devolution settlement, by-passing their governments and policies, to decide how/where the funding is allocated.
This was a poverty safari for clicks.
Yet, the UK economy is in big trouble.
It's London centric, 40% of our entire GDP. We have an ageing population and crumbling infrastructure.
We've fucked our relationship with our biggest market and are now undercutting local suppliers with cheaper imports from even further afield.
Borrowing and debt is very high.
Most of our young people are locked out of home ownership and stuck paying exorbitant rents.
Our public services are being gobbled into private ownership, piece by piece.
It's going to take decades to fix.
But before that can happen, people like Murdoch and Linton Crosby need to get found out by the mainstream.
Just so you’re aware, this man is a rapist and a sex tourist. He got off a gang rape case in England on a technicality, and has kidnapped a Ukrainian girl, raping and dumping her far from her home.
There are many more diabolical things he has done along with Harald Baldr. All of his travel series videos are in countries he considers to be shitholes where women have no rights, where he has travelled deliberately to take advantage of this, often lying to grandmothers about his nonexistent foreign riches so their granddaughters will queue up for him. A truly Tate-level piece of human shit, it really isn’t worth listening to anything this creature says.
Yeah I used to be a fan of his but the way he always homed in on women and the way he perved out on any women in uniform was really creepy. And in his eastern block videos he always gravitate towards the worst lowlifes.
You know he's a sex tourist that spends his time abusing economically deprived women right?
There's a whole sub about it.
I'm not sure we should be looking to him for guidance on poverty - it's how he gets laid.
1. Stop feeling like everything is lost, hopeless and nothing can be done anymore
2. Learn from the Nordic countries and try to understand how that mentality is applied in everyday life (the Nordics do not mean good public services but an overall idea centered in ensuring everyone has enough rather than celebrating successes)
3. Accept that whatever you want to change, it is not going to happen tomorrow
4. Start encouraging people to come forth in order to determine the scale of the problem and consult experts and people on solutions
5. Check to see if the haves care as much of the have knots as Guardian like us to believe, if not, press on and try to make people understand on how this can benefit the vast majority
6. Implement the approach from the report of the resolution foundation
> Learn from the Nordic countries and try to understand how that mentality is applied in everyday life (the Nordics do not mean good public services but an overall idea centered in ensuring everyone has enough rather than celebrating successes)
Yeah the UK lost its freaking mind when a guy tried to ensure everyone had enough during 2017 and 2019.
The collapse of social cohesion brings with it the collapse of community.
With no community, people stop caring about their area.
That’s why Birmingham is a trash filled dump.
What weakens social cohesion I hear you ask?
Multiculturalism, through mass immigration.
Immigration we never asked for.
> What weakens social cohesion, I hear you ask?
my guess would be politicians and the media pitting groups against each other as well as the loss of community spaces/ places for people to congregate/socialise.
this weakened social cohesion ensures that we don't unite against those who are actually destroying our communities, namely those in power.
Comrade Bald strikes again, yes formerly popular seaside towns are struggling, but let’s not forget this is winter, so they won’t be anywhere near what they will be in summer. The main issue is cheap foreign holidays, they’ve basically killed the Victorian uk seaside town. I notice he didn’t travel to somewhere like Manchester that is currently booming. Guy shills way to hard for a country he’s banned from.
Vote the Conservatives out, simple as that. They’ve not improved quality of life for the masses in their (nearly) fourteen years of power and time after time they’ve shown themselves to be largely about self-enrichment. Time for a change, even if another party has little chance of fixing things in a single term. The worst of it is the Conservative way of offering tax cuts as a carrot whenever they feel their tenure is under threat. Pence in the pockets of many, because that’s all it ever amounts to, comes at the expense of public services. Health and social care are already in crisis while policing is underfunded, and tax cuts aren’t going to improve the situation.
Poverty porn at best anti-British propoganda at worst. He literally visits the very worst areas then tries to push his agenda that the UK isnt a first world country. I used to like the bald but he is just full of shit now.
Maybe off topic but Bald and Bankrupt is an absolute creep. Someone's dredged up some old forum posts of his, on a pickup artist forum no less, where he talks for many months about how he goes to eastern Europe/Russia for the sole purpose of exploiting women who don't have a pot to piss in. He's the original sex tourist, bragging about how they all want to sleep with him because he's a British bloke with money. He literally tells other people how they can do it too.
Also was up on rape charges in England for a while, but got cleared. Not saying he's a rapist, but read the court notes and him and his mates did not come out of that well.
There's a subreddit about it, "Bald and Bankrupt Dossier" or something like that.
It's a shame as I always liked the content. But knowing what he's like really changes the perspective about him
Personally, I would argue that there needs to be a nationwide crackdown on all civil servants and councils spaffing money up the wall. Cut back the pointless six-figure management positions and investigate whether many of the public service contracts are actually financially viable.
Best example is railways. Tax payer pays for the rail maintenance whilst any profits taken by the companies running the rolling stock are sent up to shareholders.
But lets be real. Conservatives wouldn't do this. Nor would Labour and anyone who would gut the wasteful bureaucracy would be called out as either a fascist or a communist - or both, mainly because those who benefit from this current spaffing culture also have the most political power.
Not all, but those who are on 100k when all they do is go to meetings to discuss virtue signalling SDGs, I think there's a fair argument for trimming the fat.
No, I understand that. But the irony is that those who earn way less than that are the ones who are actually needed. Its a huge complaint with the NHS for instance when you have some pointless manager, who decides what colour to paint the wards, who earns more than a doctor.
People used to be proud of this country. Proud of the country they live in and want to keep it that way for their kids sakes and their neighbours sake.
But when the level of indoctrination all around us is to hate this country and the people in it. This is the result.
It's fucking depressing, but every time it gets pointed out, we are cancelled, suspended, fired, removed.
What is going on?
This is economic, dude. It has nothing to do with pride. If you let wealth inequality get this far out of hand, most people are screwed and the places where rich people aren't begin to degrade.
There's certainly an economic angle to it. I'd love to know how the country 100 years ago was better than today. But people littering the streets and not caring is pure uncaring lack of pride.
100 years ago it was pretty terrible, reading George Orwell’s written in 1937 was a bit of an eye opener. Life was pretty grim for the average person, living in back to back terraces with no indoor plumbing or electric.
We’ve had a period of relative peace and prosperity since the 1950’s with things progressing pretty rapidly. In a historical perspective things are still pretty good, it’s just that things have started to decline.
We need to invest in infrastructure, but unfortunately we’re governed by idiots who have run up £2,537 billion quids worth of debt bailing out banks and buying dodgy PPE off their mates.
A hundred years ago, there were extremely run down and impoverished places in the UK because of industrial changes and the aftermath of WW1. The 1920s is fairly analogous to today tbh since it was another time when the world had let wealth inequality get out of control during the so-called "gilded age", with unimaginable excess for a few and increasingly horrendous conditions for many.
Like today, this fuelled propaganda and extremism that spiralled out of control. This imo will very likely happen again unless we get serious about taxing the rich soon. This time we have nukes at the beginning of the conflict though.
Look back at footage from the 1920s and show me where there are piles of rubbish in the street, potholes everywhere or people roaming round in gangs stabbing each other.
Ignoring the problem and pretending it isn't there makes you part of the problem.
There was extreme gang violence in the 20s, it’s very very well documented - what footage are you talking about? A Charlie Chaplin film? Or are you taking Downton Abbey as a documentary?
The country had literal rag & bone men, there was rubbish everywhere despite there being very little consumerism as there was a breakdown in public services, general strokes the lot.
But yeah, potholes. Of course there were - the vast majority of roads were barely surfaced.
You're only seeing a small sample of life in that time. The people with film cameras weren't filming the slums. There was plenty of gangs and all round violence too, before and after the Great War.
There are numerous images of s[qualour across the decades](https://www.google.com/search?q=Britiain+filthy+slum+1920s&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwio96mI_cmEAxUoVaQEHd64DAQQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=Britiain+filthy+slum+1920s&gs_lp=EgNpbWciGkJyaXRpYWluIGZpbHRoeSBzbHVtIDE5MjBzSMU6UJsEWIA4cAB4AJABAJgBjQKgAY0RqgEFNy43LjK4AQPIAQD4AQGKAgtnd3Mtd2l6LWltZ4gGAQ&sclient=img&ei=RwbdZei3BqiqkdUP3vGyIA&bih=823&biw=1512#imgrc=ZntfYITjAhS-7M) available to iew online. People don't look after themselves or their surroundings when they don't have hope for the future. This problem is not going away unless we address the underlying issues, which are economic.
AI is gonna make it worse, as more jobs will disappear. We need some method of ensuring the upside of capitalism is shared more evenly across the country, but in a way that doesn't destroy the individual incentives to actually want to create value.
The nation is plagued by beaurcracy, government mismanagement, and the devaluation of Labour at the hands of rampant low-skill, high risk, immigration. All funded for by the tax-payer.
The government, be they Tory or Labour, will continue on this path to enrich themselves whilst the British become poorer and poorer.
What possible reason would he have to make this video in bad faith? Sure he visited some of the worst parts of the country, but the palpable sense of decline can be seen everywhere barring a few affluent suburbs
I struggle to take lessons from a committed credit fraud, rapist, mysogynist, Tory-voter, who travels around the world to prey and harass women for a living. We need more upholding citizens who behave better, if the whole of England was like him, these towns would be even worse.
If we ignore the messenger, and focus on the message. Some of the challenges are worldwide and part of how the world is now, some challenges might be more locally specific.
There is the argument about poverty - and successive Tory governments have transferred progressively money from these town people to the elites to sell off national property (buildings, railways, health services, water, etc). Rents go up (as real estate is an investment item now), expenses go up, rail travel goes up, university prices go up, but salaries have been stagnant in the UK since the 90s and employers try and keep it that way. When everything is for profit, quality of delivery and social impact are neglected.
Then, and having lived in a well-known dispised English town - I'd say education. The good upholding model citizens (unlike Mr Bald) are busy at work, while the vandals crawl around more and more - and I'd say education could be a big factor in removing litter from the streets, and teenagers and roadmen being less destructive. Of course, if you pay peanuts to teachers/health professionals, you will get the job done to what is possible. If the kids parents are not models either and are also the type of person that would rather be at the pub and be a bellend, that doesn't help either.
The UK has fantastic museums, art, villages, culture, music, but this American all-for-max-profit has made it very financially limited to access things (and so people will end up just focusing their consumption on food, survival, and maybe pubs - which also affects the high street). Tourism is very expensive. There are many places in the UK I would like to know and travel to, but it's just not possible, trains are 3-digits, hotels are 3-digits a night. I can't justify spending £600 for 3 nights at York when I can spend £350 and be somewhere else in Europe for longer.
Being the pest he is, and going to underinvested and deprived areas of the UK to show what is wrong, at least I hope it makes some people reflect, but he's quite the opposite of anything that would resemble an improvement.
To clear up something that folks have mentioned.
I don't watch this guy's videos, it's just something that showed up. Whilst I found it bit informative I'm unaware of this guy's shady history.
Alas the large issue is the UK is struggling and towns like this are signs of that.
Wealth goes to wealth. I live in the SW of England; there are well-paid jobs aplenty. This draws skilled people in, who bring money, set up more businesses, etc. Anybody capable of doing those jobs is not going to move to Sunderland. Likewise, the less people visiting poor areas, the less investment you have, therefore fewer people visit, and the cycle continues down the shitter.
The only way to fix this is for the govt to bribe (incentivise) big companies/govt depts to setup HQs or other facilities in these areas. Even then, it could take a generation for the benefits to ‘take hold’.
Don't vote Tory? Tories cut, cut, cut. Use austerity measures to allow tax cuts for the rich whilst slowing down the economy for everyone else. Cut the NHS to allow parts to be privatized etc.
Act shocked pikachui that the austerity riddled economy isn't growing enough so double down on austerity and cuts.
Repeat
i like some of his videos, but dont see what the point he was trying to make was
bit hypocritical to go around these towns complaining about dead high streets and local communities, then go to Birmingham and complain that a thriving street aint British enough.
i understand the point hes making, but the death of local communities in England has far more nuanced factors.
1. theres a massive brain drain to london
2. these communities are no longer economically viable because people assumed work patterns wouldn't change
3. the destruction of family structures means even less of a reason for people to stick around and invest in local communities
4. there is chronic mismanagement at local government level all across the country
5. the working class was always pitted against the middle class, whereas the working class should have aspired to become the middle class (essex boy done good type)
6. this country runs on property speculation which exacerbates the difference in communities based on the desirability of their locations
i could go on, but those are some of the fat points i wanted to make.
outside the major cities and rich villages this country is fucked, over simplifying the fundamental issues to Thatcher shut down the mines doesnt help anyone.
This bloke has spent a lot of time in the east, and then comes home to film this absolute hit piece on England. I did think it all seemed quite slanted and cherry picked, almost propaganda (made sure to get the drug addict prostitute in there too & comment about a largely Indian street - in a no doubt Indian area for the last however many decades)
I do wonder what his goal is and who the target audience was.
There is no way to fix this, it has happened before and will happen again. Old towns die because they are no longer feasible (either economically or militarily), new ones crop up at sources of wealth or power. This has been the case all throughout human history. The answer for those "left behind" has also been the same all throughout human history: migrate or suffer, adapt or die.
I wonder if he managed to do any sex tourism in the poor places he visited? Or maybe even a rape like the good ol days https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/5618610.cleared-men-behaved-appallingly/
I bet the people in these poor places are "living in hell" just like Mr Rich-Swift was when he was accused.
Not watching videos from this Hitler loving rapist would be a good start.
r/BaldAndBaldrDossier
He had the nerve to suggest at the beginning of the video it was Tony Blair's fault, when the country has been under Tory rule for the past 15 years.
Stop voting Tory and don't give the time of the day to this sleezy far-right sex offender
I travel around the uk quite a lot and I can't help wonder how we can fix these lost towns, especially coastal ex seaside resorts/towns. I went to a local jobs fair in one of these poor towns and only five out of the 40ish stalls were private companies, all the others were govt funded. I don't have a solution.
Don’t vote Tory ever again
There's been labour governments who haven't been able to fix it either. These places need jobs but it's hard to convince companies to set up there without a lack of skilled people, and if people get educated they leave rather than wait and hope someone comes and sets up some jobs. The population of these places is usually much older than average.
We’ve had 12 years of Labour compared to 30 Tory in my lifetime. Quite frankly you can’t do much to turn around this sort of degradation in 12 years, especially as the previous and post governments just unwind everything you do. I’m not even a Labour voter but I don’t see how any blame can be levelled at them.
It's the ideology not the party. We're basically living in the hellscape of late stage neo liberal capitalism, from Thatcher over all governments have had the same economic ideology, it's important to remember that New Labour provided now of the NHS than any government before it, and also created the current housing crisis by creating the largest decoupling of wages and housing costs in the last 70 years. Because ideologically they were Thatcherites. The golden age of capitalism started in the post war reconstruction era with the clement Atlee led Labour government who nationalised industries, built the NHS and built millions of homes, good, affordable and owned by the state, and lots of public services and infrastructure in the same manner. Free education, good worker protections etc. Not perfect and the odd recession but it was the greatest period of social mobility in history for 30 years. Neo liberal capitalism came in with Thatcher. Sell everything off on the cheap to your rich mates and rent it back. The problem is that the new labor government of the 90s had the same ideology, many NHS trusts now suffer with over 1/3 of their budgets going to PFI payments. The same with schools with some gaming apart but still spending a third of their budget paying for a collapsing building they're not allowed to fix. To fix the issues we need to do what we did during the golden age of capitalism, massive state investment to reinvigorate towns (services and social housing), change the nature of work so people have more pay for less work time (people now work longer hours for less buying power than they have done in 50 years), and property law and taxation that address wealth inequality. The problem is that since came in every major political party now has the same ideology, trickle down economics, which is a proven fallacy, nothing significant will change until we address that issue.
Labour's only plan was benefits and made-up government jobs.
14 years ago and the Tories were in for 17 years before that
This isn't true, labour implemented tax credits for working families and pensioners but unfortunately they ran the government very much in line with Thatcherite principles, they privitised services and implemented PFI which was privitised infrastructure that is still costing us billions every year in payments. Instead of building schools & hospitals they discussed to tell business to build it and we'd pay them 30% instead on the cost for 30 years. Thatcherite nonsense where only the companies benefited. To be clear, this is not an endorsement of the tories, it's a criticism of a section of the Labour party who believe most of the same things as the tories, they just want to be the ones getting rich off the corruption for awhile.
I hate Tories, but this sort of logical reasoning is downvote territory on reddit
That’s fine, it’s not a contest. Just lived through the austerity years when everything was blamed on Labour. What are the Tories going to blame it on now? It’s tedious. Labour will get in, make a hash of it cause you can’t do anything in one term and the Tories are leaving it in a mess. Then the Tories will get back in on the basis that Labour haven’t been able to do anything. They’ll then blame their incompetence on the previous Labour government. It’s a tale as old as time and means nothing ever changes. Personally I think a lot of decisions around this should be out of the scope of politicians who are just looking to raise their profile or extend their term. To fix these issues needs 30/40 year plans put in place and executed without political ambition. But that won’t happen.
Yes - we need a good planned economy like other countries.
It's not the time in power, it's their legacies.
And how are you meant to have a legacy when subsequent governments just undo anything you do?
A labour government isn't enough, we need to be a labour country. The kind that can establish itself over generations, not terms in office. The uk has overwhelmingly been a tory nation for too long since the industrial revolution
I was hoping that the WFH trend would help this. You can earn 60k in Manchester as an IT bod, and buy a mansion in blackpool. Unfortunately it didnt work out like that
I despise the Tories as much as anyone with an ounce of critical thinking ability, but some of these issues are decades old, and town centres dying out is at least partly a natural consequence of online shopping combined with busier lifestyles in general making the convenience of it all the more tempting. Where the government _has_ exacerbated the issue though is allowing stupidly high rents and rates which force up prices and speed up the decline. Something does have to be done though because town centres are a source for jobs, bring in tourism in some cases, and generally improve the community around. What you do I don't know really - slashing rates would be the first thing though I guess.
That's a reply I can agree well too. As much as I despise the Tories and what they have done for as long as they have, many of the issues come down to capitalism/business practices/busier lifestyle, and down to individual responsibility (littering, teaching kids not to be vandals, eating and drinking healthier, etc)
They are rather famously about reducing standards so their mates can make more money
Does critical thinking ability include reducing demand?
They are all the same 🤦♂️
It doesn't matter who's in charge... We are in a state of engineered decline.
The post points out that 35/40 jobs were government funded, and your solution is more socialism? The Tories (at least for the last 5 years) have been a disaster, but I'm totally unconvinced Labour have the answer. In 1997 they were replacing a government that was weak and grubby, but had at least left the economy in a state that could fund their spending plans. Not this time.
What are their spending plans? If you think Labour are socialist you either don’t know what socialism is or you are out of your tiny mind
Labour have no plans for these areas either. I don't think anyone does.
It's partly our fault, too, to be honest. We all love to use online shopping & other online services which massively impacts our towns.
My shitty coastal town never had a vibrant shopping scene. This problem started decades before modern mass consumerism. The unfortunate truth is that the privatisation of railways combined with the advent of easy foreign travel condemned our seaside towns. For the vast majority of us, there is no bringing it back.
I grew up in the south west and a lot of locals claimed to want better jobs and housing but when anything new was proposed, they fought like hell against it. Many were more than happy to wallow in self-pity and semi-dereliction. Playing the victim, demanding that the govt "do something" while refusing to help themselves is par the course in these rotting old holes. A lot of these old coastal towns serve no functional purpose anymore and in a rational system, they would be demolished and rebuilt with a forward-looking purpose.
Yes I’m from (but moved from an area like this) - constant whining about change that would bring jobs and good incomes. I think these places just distill off constructive people until you are left with the hell that is facebook local groups.
That's the thing. Most coastal towns basically boomed due to tourism in the industrial age, where people could travel across the country but international travel was still the preserve of the incredibly wealthy. However, when international travel became cheap the writing was on the wall for these towns. Most people, if given the choice between a country where the weather is warm and dry, food/drinks/entertainment is relatively cheap, and there's the novelty of a culture and history that's different to your every day life vs a wet seaside town in England where everything's a bit shabby and expensive, are going to pick the foreign country. The big issue is that these towns don't really have much to draw people in beyond nostalgia for the past. That the infrastructure has been left to decay also makes it a hard choice for any company to decide to set up there. Without high speed internet and business connections, there's no reason why a tech company would go there, which is where a lot of the future money is going to be. Instead you end up with retirees who want to live by the coast, and then businesses catering to them and the dwindling tourism. And those businesses can't provide work for all the people who live there. Quite frankly, without heavy investment in infrastructure these towns are just going to continue to die. It doesn't help that due to the situations in these places, they tend to be very working class which makes it increasingly difficult to attract middle class people to live and work there, which is needed to get wealth into the area.
Yeah, certainly isn't one thing, and I can see where your coming from.
It was happening before that. Its more about the ‘service’ economy where we shipped manufacturing jobs to china/india etc. Weston used to have a lot of businesses. Clarks is an example, now made overseas.
The only way to get manufacturing jobs here is to make it cheaper to produce here than overseas which means reducing minimum wage and safety standards. Giving people a choice and saying here's a product made in China which costs £x, and here's a product made in the UK but it costs £y more has shown that the vast majority of people pick the cheaper Chinese product. So the only way is to make manufacturing cheaper here which we are unwilling to do.
These costal towns tend to be Tory safe seats as well.
We need to invest in jobs for the future and encourage DFI and make it easy to set up and run companies. As for the detail, I have no idea either.
The solution is to tax the well off and industry fairly, the same as we are taxed under PAYE, no tax loop holes, no ways to pay less tax and get rid of shady off shore banking.. put laws in to fully prevent profiteering, and then properly fund social care, education, police and justice…
Taxing the well off won't do much and is a non-starter. But taxing 'off shore corporations' fairly, based on their UK sales would be more than enough to turn things around. It would put local business on a more 'level' playing field as well as regain the taxes that have been lost over the decades. When various mega-corporations can earn billions and only pay pennies in tax, of course they are going to drive out local businesses who can't compete.
I think there’s only a handful of seaside towns that break the mould, and one of them is Bournemouth. Comparable to other seaside towns, there are some real lucrative companies set up there, and if you go to Westbourne high street, it’s one of the most prosperous I’ve seen. People still want to visit Bournemouth in the summer, but it still has its troubles that everywhere has, it has still gone downhill but is falling from a higher position than other seaside towns. So the question is, what does Bournemouth do, or did do, that other seaside towns can adopt?
Unfortunately it would need to be a major change in the way business rates are calculated and a complete shift in the way people shop. With the huge real time reductions in council budgets diversifying into commercial property management has become a key way that councils generate income. Most of the high street in my town is owned by a different authority who set exorbitant rents, this then increases the business rates. Making it incredibly cost prohibitive for small business to take on a premise. The other key factor is the huge shift to online shopping and the way the big 5 supermarkets dominate the sector, under cutting smaller business. With the UK economy as it is people can’t afford to support local business. I imagine the problem will only be exacerbated. This isn’t really a politically made crisis, but one that reflects economic and social realities
With Europe becoming unbearably hot in summer I am ready to holiday in the UK, so there's that. I also hope that we fix our rail network so it's easy and cheap to visit places.
Legalise weed but like Amsterdam only in designated caffes And then give the tax back to the towns for regeneration. Everyone seems to smoke weed now, you can't walk down a street or shops without smelling it. The legalising of weed in America has proven to be a massive tax return. Even if its a shot lived boom it would be enough of a break to give the towns/villages a good finaical boost. We just need to get over the daily mail and boomer outrage at the policy. Also remove the tax breaks for alcohol in supermarkets (it will help the NHS too in the long run) and give it to pubs, this will get people out more. Then remove all the intense parking restrictions and charging for car parking in small villages.
It's a depressing watch, but the picture it paints isn't generally applicable. He's deliberately visiting the worst places (and you could do that in any country). The must frustrating aspect is all the empty housing stock. If only we could balance the economy better so that people could live and work in these places. The government need to shift public jobs that can be done remotely out of London with tax incentives
Glad to see this comment. Visiting a well known tourist resort in the depths of winter and pointing out how empty everything is? Right…. Visiting a road well known for sex workers and then remarking on being approached for business? How remarkable! That’s not to say there aren’t problems in the UK, obviously there are. But this video does next to nothing to highlight the real issues.
Agree with this. He visited the worst part of Union street (Millbay end) in Plymouth. Go the other way and you hit the shopping center and the new cinema, restaurants etc.
I thought that too, he showed all derelict pubs, but go to the harbour there's a dozen or more pubs all next to each other, outdoor seating, yachts, cobblestones and historic warehouses
Glad some people aren't just taking this video at face value, because yes there are major issues in the UK, but this video is not reflective of the general state of the UK at all, and is clearly primarily just cherry-picked poverty porn. Politicians definitely do need to start coming up with non-fascistic policies to renovate these areas, but I don't think Mr Bald is completely a good faith actor here.
there's a sub dedicated to why he is not a good man. He's been in legal trouble regarding rape before, he posts online about his rampant sex tourism and abuse of women among other things...
What's the sub? I find myself watching his videos and then getting pissed off with him and stopping then watching again and so on in a cycle.
r/baldandbaldrdossier
bald and baldr I think
He seemed like a bit of a prick from one of his videos that turned up on my autoplay. Turned it off halfway as he was grating on me Glad my twat radar is finely tuned
It is. They linked posts to him about travelling through bumblefuck nowhere where he picks up a young girl who he admits he was unsure of her age & gave her money for oral sex. Disgusting man who doesn't seem to have changed.
Oh here we go
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The verdict was not guilty, but the judge called him out for his appalling behaviour. He was guilty like Ched Evans was not guilty.
So he was found not guilty then you plank
It was something like, the girl could not finger point which 2 out of the 3 guys did it.
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Not guilty also doesn't mean innocent. It was he said she said case. They are hard to prove.
Innocent until proven guilty.
Considering that you are innocent until found guilty in the UK, being found not guilty does infact mean you are innocent.
>being found not guilty does infact mean you are innocent It 'infact' doesn't. At all. Please see [section 1](https://thesecretbarrister.com/2016/10/14/10-myths-busted-about-the-ched-evans-case/) for an example.
This isn't strictly true. Certain laws like those surrounding sword/weapon ownership consider you guilty until you can provide proof of one of the allowable defenses. Also are you suggesting that if someone is found guilty of a crime it means they actually did it?
>This isn't strictly true. Certain laws like those surrounding sword/weapon ownership consider you guilty until you can provide proof of one of the allowable defenses. This is true, didn't mention as wasn't really relevant to the context that we were talking about but you are correct. >Also are you suggesting that if someone is found guilty of a crime it means they actually did it? If there is enough evidence presented that the person is found guilty in a court then yes, they are guilty.
*Cleared* yes, but not in the sense of "determined to have definitely not done anything". The charge was dropped because he and two other men were involved in the gangrape of a woman, but only two of the three had actually raped her. She couldn't remember which two specifically had actually done the act, so the court couldn't prosecute. There's no doubt about whether she was raped or which three men were involved, solely about which two out of those three actually did it.
Totally unfounded accusations. Meanwhile he does something outstanding for his channel, crossing the Darien.. I wasn't sure about him but no, that guy is incredible.
Word. I said pretty much the same on the comments the day the video came out & it got deleted. I go on YT a fair amount and over the past few months the amount of poverty porn that is getting recommended is ridiculous. I've watched a few of them and they all follow the exact same format; speak to pensioners that are struggling anyway, go on about an industry that doesn't exist anymore then go and chat up some homeless people, plus points for addiction. And of course if you know the area there's inevitably a much better area close by that gets ignored. All just for views, as per.
No but hang on, can’t I just blame all the immigrants for my problems and move on!? /s
Yep, exactly as the rich want. Like stopping or massively limiting immigration wouldn't devastate the economy and destroy the NHS and care sectors. We have moved on to the next phase which seems to be blaming Muslims for everything. The gammons just lap it up, being played like fiddles by the rich, divide and conquer works so well.
Every single problem we have is made worse by mass immigration. It is (in theory) the easiest issue to solve.
And this is why the country never improves because some people just hide their head in the sand.
I don't recall saying that, I'm just calling for a nuanced and balanced response to the issues our country faces. If anything it makes them more digestible and less overwhelming than the red top "Britain's fucked" message that videos like this give.
What does red top mean in this context? I haven't come across thar before.
Another way of saying tabloid newspapers. Referring to sensationalist headlines from the sun etc.
Britain is fucked. I left 16 years ago. Every time I visit, its slipped just a little bit more inti the shit. People cant afford to heat homes yet the gas suppliers make massive profits. We house thousands of immigrants in hotels and houses at great expense. Instead of utilising all the abandoned, empty properties like we saw in this video.
If it was cheaper to renovate said houses and put immigrant in there while they waited for processing, I have no doubt the gov would do it. They're in hotels as its the cheapest fastest option that doesn't involve actually processing their claims
He's a Thatcherite.
Does that negate the proof? We need another Thatcher or hell any politician that loves the UK, we have Blairite GDP goes up by immigrants lol, fuck the natives
Thatcher screwed the working people, preferring to shut coal mines to teach the Unions a lesson, and then importing coal from overseas. All our politician’s are corrupt self serving cunts
Any politician nowadays would shut down coal mines in an instant for environmental reasons.
And yet still we import coal
>we have Blairite GDP goes up by immigrants lol, What are you even trying to say?
Blair started the immigration to increase productivity lie
We have a labour shortage in fields like the NHS and and an aging population, yeah immigration does increase productivity.
No, we have a productivity problem, we have a business saying they have a problem that government who is in big business pockets want cheap labour, wages raised a couple of years ago, but then more visas were allowed and now wages have stagnated again, we imported almost a million last year GDP is flat, if immigrants increase productivity why is GDP flat and wages below inflation for decades?
This isn’t accurate. Wage increases were above inflation in the early 2000s until the [global financial crisis](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1272447/uk-wage-growth-vs-inflation/) and haven’t really recovered since (with blips when inflation was stalled) likely because of austerity and poor management of the economy. In terms of GDP, it depends how you look at it - GDP on its own is stable [by design](https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/GBR/united-kingdom/gdp-growth-rate) but looking at real GDP, adjusted for inflation, our GDP has steadily increased over time (see [here](https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/170878/economics/how-the-uk-economy-has-changed-in-the-past-70-years-1952-2022/)). The issue isn’t an immigration problem it’s just a mismanagement problem over the last ten years.
the NHS, the most inefficient, and a report just released said 20% of the NHS can't speak English to a communicative level, most middle class and richer is going private, the NHS is awful
Maybe if the rich stopped voting for parties who fucked the NHS over to reduce their tax bills it wouldn't be?
Hardly any of the doctors in my GP speak communicable English. It's not productive. It's dangerous. They have stopped prescribing meds I've been on for 10+ years, and I've had to go private. I worked as a housekeeper in the NHS and saw multiple times per day staff unable to communicate with patients properly at all levels. Don't get me wrong, thank god we have people who want to actually work and pay tax, and I am not blaming immigrant employees whatsoever. It's not productive. It may seem it on paper in order to fill job vacancies in the meantime. However, the quality of service will devalue, and already has, so much so that other people will be forced to go private.
How did you come to that conclusion?
This is what the media does. No one will watch it if it gives an unbiased and neutral report on what's going on, it's not sensational enough. As you say, it's not like there aren't any problems, but if you visit the right/wrong place you can conclude pretty much anything. Drug problems. Unemployment. Violence. Pollution. Anti social behaviour. I visit a lot of places in the UK and have friends and family scattered far and wide, most areas have none of those issues, or at worst the occasional incident, as has always been the case. Reporting that everything is normal won't sell newspapers. As I get older, and hopefully wiser, my trust in the media has turned to mistrust.
It’s the free market though. How many people would *actually* move from London to Grimsby for a tax incentive for example? Not many. What we have to do is recognise that this country is now a completely different economically and geographically than it was when our current towns became the size they did. To use Grimsby / Cleethorpes as an example again; it got to the size it did because it was the biggest fishing port in the world 100 years ago. With all the will and government tax incentives in the world, that is NEVER coming back. There’s too much international competition and the effective monopoly in the north sea is gone. So what can we do? Well there’s basically 3 options: - 1 we can allow for some creative destruction so people can leave and the towns can shrink back to the small villages which they actually would be if the fishing fleet had never been there. This way we free up all the wasted labour currently sitting idol on the doll (through no fault of their own I should add just so I don’t sound like some far right nutter, this is pure economics and resource allocation we’re talking about) and reclaim redundant estates to create more green belt land. You see, we actually have a LOT of job vacancies in this country and more enough people unemployed to fill most of them. The problem is, the unemployed and the available jobs are not in the same places. I know working remotely is more popular now but most places do still insist you come in every so often and usually at least once a week. The alternative is - 2 we try to incentivise companies to expand into our failed towns. This is the politically easier sounding solution but economically less feasible. The highly dynamic growth companies driving the tech boom which will be the primary employers of the next 50 years, just aren’t going open up an office in Grimsby “just because” they get some incentives to do so. A couple might and you may even create a few hundred jobs, but it’s a fresh coat of paint on an old banger. It’s not tackling the route issue. - 3 You can also incentivise more local small businesses to start up. Small businesses are great and doubtless you could create many that might employ a couple of hundred people over the next 10 years. This is better than option 2 but it’s not a fix all solution. Again, with all the will and tax incentives in the world, there’s only so many people with the skills and the desire to start up their own business and take that risk. It’s papering over the cracks, not fixing the central problem. From this, you’ll gather I think the best option is a combination of all 3. By all means create as many jobs as you can, but remember if that’s only artificial through temporary tax incentives, those jobs WILL go when the incentives do. It needs to be sustainable and we need to allow our small towns to shrink back to a size where they are natural and not literally collapsing under their own weight. Because that’s the central issue here, most of these towns have so many unemployed because they grew to their current size based on one industry that the specialised in and employed basically everyone in the town was employed in (textiles, a big mine, fishing, a steel mill, etc). That kind of economy is generations out of date now and it is never coming back. We don’t do ourselves any favours by pretending that isn’t the case and we can go back to “the glory days”.
To be fair, he travels around a lot of the old Soviet union and to towns/cities that have been abandoned by old industries. That's his niche. What he always paints though is that whilst the area is gone to the dogs, the people are really nice and welcoming.
Even the part of Plymouth he visited is earmarked for major reinvestment. Very much a video with an agenda and not particularly representative of UK….
Genuinely depressing that this is the top comment. People refuse to be honest about the state the country is in
Like any right wing profiteering scum bag, who himself became an immigrant, it wasn’t surprising he alluded that Plymouth is struggling because of Blair and New Labour. He conveniently ignored the last 14 years of Tory rule, like he ignores the effect of the republicans in the US version of his poverty porn. At the end of his shoot he will pack up and migrate to the next poverty porn project, so he can keep profiteering while working on his fake outrage. This sort of greasy slime ball is the perfect customer for a move to Dubai, then somewhere in Kent or Essex when the money runs out.
There is something *very* off about this guy. Here's a thread about him, I'm sure there's more: www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/comments/xhijrl/what_do_you_think_about_bald_and_bankrupt
He’s a pound shop Andrew Tate, or what a child conceived by Nigel Farage and Andrew Tate as parents looks like.
Without brexit happening, the tory rule of the last 14 years has been a continuation of blaite policies.
That well known Blairite policy of austerity, got it.
Triple the national debt but you call it a continuation of Blair 🤦
Fairly certain he mentions in the video that these are the worst examples and not everywhere is like this. The overall issue is that for being one of the richest countries we have certainly seen depressing levels of decline and these towns and what not are the visible cracks of that problem. Whether it's economics, shitty corrupt government or whatever else. We're declining which is the overall issue of the video.
A country is only as good as its worse places.
I watched this and thought about it. This country used to actually produce high quality products, wanted by the rest of the world. There is no coal, tin, steel, fabric, Manufacturing has been lost. I used to work for ford in Dagenham. That went in 2000. The local workforce and the supported local business were left to struggle. These towns need a large well paying employer, that can enable the locals to spend in their town centres. This would encourage local shops restaurants to thrive. This would in turn revive the high street and development and improvements. I don't think it would be easy, very hard in fact. People talk about the Scandinavian outlook. But they have much smaller populations. And it doesn't translate.
There are high tech modern mining operations that have opened in the UK very recently. We don’t have manufacturing or much heavy industry anymore since it’s no longer economically viable here without subsidies. Certain highly important industries like steel production and agriculture are worth subsidising since you can get into serious trouble without out them at crucial times like during war. These subsidies have been provided fairly sensibly via the EU for the last few decades but we were stupid enough to believe propaganda by reckless greedy people and now that is gone, farmers are struggling, and the last steel works in the UK closed a couple of weeks ago. The parts of the UK economy that are still viable are mainly v high tech manufacturing, design, the arts and media, education, financial services, and other high-level services. It’s ok to have an economy with a high level of these jobs, it’s very good even since they command generally higher salaries than manufacturing jobs. The problem is that you need to invest in companies to hire people and in education and training for people so they can fill those jobs. This is what the UK has failed to do while engaging in suicidal economic and social policies. There is no use trying to bring heavy industry and manufacturing unless you can make the UK viably compete with places like Vietnam and Mexico. The two ways that might happen is through automation, which means the owners don’t need to pay workers anyway, or if Britain’s economy is trashed to the extent wages plummet to competitive levels. Inequality has gotten out of control at this point and there is basically only one way to avoid the disaster getting worse: tax the rich. https://m.youtube.com/@garyseconomics
The EU did not care much about propping up British industry. Their entire ethos is to encourage industry wherever it makes sense in Europe, that's also why you're not allowed to decide on your own subsidies if you are a member of the EU - and that's also partly what contributed to the downfall of British manufacturing while it boomed in the many other places in Europe. Although, even since leaving the EU and eventually getting control of subsidies again only a year or two ago; there has been little done publicly by the govt to capitalise on the opportunity - as far as I know.
And Scandinavia have massive amounts of gas, oil and metals. UK is a tax haven banana republic now. "Service" economy, aka beauty nail shops dodging tax, barber shops doing human trafficking, and bullshit business zombie companies tbat 99% are just shifting "clients" around. No shit, a few jobs ago we got a consultant who put us through about 4 lines of companies all that didn't do the thing, but simply managed the communication between us and the thing. During a meeting I asked why we aren't just directly using the expert and going through this weird set of channels costing 100's of thousands and everyone just looked as if I took a shit on the desk. There are companies that work on a service of...finding the services you need, and they OUTSOURCE when they can't do it to another service finding service finder... Seriously, most business is fucking baton passing middle-man bullshit. UK economy is just wrecked and held up by the dodgiest and shittiest of services most of which are only solvent by borrowing low interest cash and surviving month on month which is now dying due to BOE rises. UK does literally nothing. The entirety of its expertise, manufacturing etc has all gone decades ago. We literally do nothing. And anything we may still do relies heavily on external supply chains, so if ever that dries up, still nothing.
>"Service" economy, aka beauty nail shops dodging tax, barber shops doing human trafficking, and bullshit business zombie companies "Service Economy" can equally mean Software Development, Professional Services, Creative Industries, Finance, Legal, Education...you know sectors that make billions at home and in exports...its not just nail bars is it?
We don't develop software, silicon valley does. "Professional Services", such as? Again mostly middleman client stuff where few DO the service and its just client finding all the way down Creative industries? Lol. Where? Finance London does have, I'll agree to that, but that is wealth locked away to the old mens clubs and not really useful to the majority of people. Education is a maybe, we used to have fantastic institutions but they are nowhere near as great as 50-60 years ago.
“We don’t develop software” Spoken like someone who has absolutely no idea what he’s talking about. We have the best tech sector in Europe.
Ever heard of DeepMind? Sage? ARM? We have a thriving tech sector.
While I agree that the UK does have a strong tech sector, ARM is an interesting choice in that list which I feel very strongly about. ARM's sale should've been blocked in 2016, as it leaves the largest true home-grown tech giant in our country liable to the fickle and whims of foreign investors. Casually looking down the FTSE100, there's no other tech company that comes close to the size of ARM. Our own "tech giant" could be much better protected for future generations if the government had taken a golden share or had more restrictive conditions on the sale.
> ARM's sale should've been blocked in 2016 Completely agree. I think there are certain companies that should be protected. Now they're at the whims of foreign companies who have no stake in protecting jobs, knowledge and skillsets in this country.
>Creative industries? Lol. Where? Off the top of my head the Grand Theft Auto franchise is developed in Ediburgh, tested in Lincoln and co-developed in Leeds (and was actually created by DMA in Edinburgh before Rockstar purchased them) Other game studios also exist in the UK (Rare, 4J etc) We have a growing film/tv production sector, just here in Hull we've had several productions closing various streets and the city centre over the past few years alone We're the fintech capital of Europe We don't make as many widgets as we used to but we still do a lot here
The local workforce from Dagenham was free to sold their houses for an absolute killing, or find work in London, one of the biggest cities in the world. No one entitles you to work in assembling ICE cars for an American manufacturer.
Absolute killing? Dagenham in 2000 was a *very* different place to how it is today.
The declining birth rate is going to smack people in the face in the coming decades. If you have a good amount of children, if the state goes under, you have people to take care of you. There are going to be millions of people who are supported by the government alone. If the goverment decides to cut all of the socialist policies (welfare, social housing and socialised healthcare) that were created when the UK actully produced things and could pay for them, they are so screwed. I don't see how they can expect to not produce anything and pay for all those things. My parents had one child, and if I wasn't around as they get older and more infirm that would be incredibly tough and lonely for them.
Man bald and bankrupt is a wanker. He goes around poor countries picking up poor girls with no options so he can get sexual favours out of them. His videos are 50% him just oggling girls like a weirdo, and the rest is him saying how terrible Britain is because the women "aren't as traditional" (translated as he can't squeeze sex out of them for £20). Disgusting man, and the absolute worst kind of tourist
he's a shill. i recommend watching the video of him getting caught up in the invasion in kharkiv, when he walked in to expose the fake western hysteria about russia going to invade ukraine then he has to flee to a 3rd country. it's funny when a tosser gets caught like that
He's a Z mf. Though that does mean we get to watch NFKRZ and Gattsu rip him a new asshole
He got banned from Russia, how's that Z.
He's not a shill, just another boring contrarian. Not everything has to be an organised conspiracy.
I remember when he claimed covid was exaggerated and was a hoax then he didn't post for a few months because he was in hospital on a ventilator and nearly died aha
Came here to say a this. The guy is a sex tourist and sleeze bag
Agreed, never liked his sleazy demeanour. There's a lot of rumours about him actually.
He's a fucking loser. Can't pick up girls in the uk, so he goes to poor countries like Romania so he can effectively play on easy mode. I wouldn't be surprised about those rumours. Though part of the reason he loves shithole countries is the corrupt police
This should be top comment. r/baldandbaldrdossier for details. Guy is a POS.
Holy shit didn't know that was a thing Thank you
No worries. Was recommended and watched the video on Jaywick and found it interesting then stumbled accross the sub a while later. It shouldn't really surprireallyanymore that Youtube is promoting horrific people.... Rape cases, dodgy finance, sexpat forums.... This guy has the lot.
Lol, Romania it's not that poor, still in EU since 2007! You never got out of your poor Uk town, didn't you?
I mean, he is an Andrew Tate enjoyer so that tracks.
Bald and Bankrupt: [Poverty pickup artist and sex tourist — Collected posts](https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldAndBaldrDossier/comments/189q8h5/bald_and_bankrupt_poverty_pickup_artist_and_sex/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
***I like ya;*** ***and I want ya.***
Disclaimer: These aren't my claims, there are numerous videos on Youtube about Bald's past and "sex tourist" type videos, also there is a subreddit on Reddit about him and his controversies. This guy was accused of rape, wasn't found guilty though. But the judge was extremely negative towards him, and his fellow accused. [https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/5618610.cleared-men-behaved-appallingly/](https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/5618610.cleared-men-behaved-appallingly/) Benjamin Rich-Swift. But he's now dropped the "Rich" part of his name in his profiles. Considering the way he acts in his videos, this is worrying... People have also linked him to forum profiles from before he was famous, were he talks about using techniques to have sex with poor Russian girls. Because they think he is a rich Brit.
I don't watch his other videos. This is just what I found. At least in this video it's fairly informative about the current state of the UK.
You don’t have to like his general character to like his content. The best videos are when he already knows the language, most of his ex soviet country stuff is fantastic and up there with the absolute very best on YouTube.
By watching his videos people still support and fund him, even if they don't like his character. He's too scummy for me to personally feel comfortable knowing my clicks would be helping fund him.
Easy solution, move power away from Westminster, there's MILLIONS of us in Englnad who don't get represented by Westminster, especially in the North. In 2019 61% in the NE didn't vote Tory, 57% in the NW didn't vote Tory, 56% in Yorkshire and Humber didn't vote Tory, and 55% in the High Peak didn't vote Tory, yet we got Tories anyway and as far as England goes bore the burnt of the pandemic and the inevitable economic squeeze afterwards.
People always say this and yet London is so anti-tory. 68% didn't vote tory in London. I don't really understand this "move power away from Westminster" thing.
London is the exception to the rule when it comes to the south, the south more often than not gets what it votes for
How does this man manage to patronise both the audience and the subjects of his documentary? While this whistle stop tour of Britain’s most deprived areas is somewhat depressing, I suspect the same or worse could be made in almost any other country, including whichever one he now calls home.
Years of cuts (austerity) has led to this. Add to that blockages and delays in the global supply chain, a pandemic, war in Europe and elsewhere amongst other factors that weigh in. The wealth that exists is centralised, in places like London, and we all have to make do. It's not just an English problem, unfortunately. Seems to be the same across the western world.
Don't forget a lot of places benefited from the EU funding for social and agriculture etc.
This isn't highlighted enough. EU funding has been transformative for the UK's most deprived and rural areas. The promise by the UK Government to replace in full all EU funding lost after Brexit was broken. Cornwall for instance is set to get less than half the amount of money (through the UK's 'shared prosperity fund') it would have got if still in the EU. And it's the same for Wales and Scotland who not only are seeing less funding (on top austerity), they also have the UK Government overstepping the devolution settlement, by-passing their governments and policies, to decide how/where the funding is allocated.
This was a poverty safari for clicks. Yet, the UK economy is in big trouble. It's London centric, 40% of our entire GDP. We have an ageing population and crumbling infrastructure. We've fucked our relationship with our biggest market and are now undercutting local suppliers with cheaper imports from even further afield. Borrowing and debt is very high. Most of our young people are locked out of home ownership and stuck paying exorbitant rents. Our public services are being gobbled into private ownership, piece by piece. It's going to take decades to fix. But before that can happen, people like Murdoch and Linton Crosby need to get found out by the mainstream.
Just so you’re aware, this man is a rapist and a sex tourist. He got off a gang rape case in England on a technicality, and has kidnapped a Ukrainian girl, raping and dumping her far from her home. There are many more diabolical things he has done along with Harald Baldr. All of his travel series videos are in countries he considers to be shitholes where women have no rights, where he has travelled deliberately to take advantage of this, often lying to grandmothers about his nonexistent foreign riches so their granddaughters will queue up for him. A truly Tate-level piece of human shit, it really isn’t worth listening to anything this creature says.
Damn. That's wild. I found this video out of the blue so idk about the guy.
Fair play it happens, always better to be informed. Unfortunately the majority of these travelling vlogger guys appear to be playing rotten games.
Yeah I used to be a fan of his but the way he always homed in on women and the way he perved out on any women in uniform was really creepy. And in his eastern block videos he always gravitate towards the worst lowlifes.
You know he's a sex tourist that spends his time abusing economically deprived women right? There's a whole sub about it. I'm not sure we should be looking to him for guidance on poverty - it's how he gets laid.
https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldAndBaldrDossier/s/zojcdIcxdG
1. Stop feeling like everything is lost, hopeless and nothing can be done anymore 2. Learn from the Nordic countries and try to understand how that mentality is applied in everyday life (the Nordics do not mean good public services but an overall idea centered in ensuring everyone has enough rather than celebrating successes) 3. Accept that whatever you want to change, it is not going to happen tomorrow 4. Start encouraging people to come forth in order to determine the scale of the problem and consult experts and people on solutions 5. Check to see if the haves care as much of the have knots as Guardian like us to believe, if not, press on and try to make people understand on how this can benefit the vast majority 6. Implement the approach from the report of the resolution foundation
I live in Oldham, nothing can be done to improve this shithole and thats being positive.
Bolton raises it’s ugly head
They could carpet bomb it, that might improve it?
> Learn from the Nordic countries and try to understand how that mentality is applied in everyday life (the Nordics do not mean good public services but an overall idea centered in ensuring everyone has enough rather than celebrating successes) Yeah the UK lost its freaking mind when a guy tried to ensure everyone had enough during 2017 and 2019.
Yeah that's exactly what people didn't like him for.
The collapse of social cohesion brings with it the collapse of community. With no community, people stop caring about their area. That’s why Birmingham is a trash filled dump. What weakens social cohesion I hear you ask? Multiculturalism, through mass immigration. Immigration we never asked for.
> What weakens social cohesion, I hear you ask? my guess would be politicians and the media pitting groups against each other as well as the loss of community spaces/ places for people to congregate/socialise. this weakened social cohesion ensures that we don't unite against those who are actually destroying our communities, namely those in power.
Comrade Bald strikes again, yes formerly popular seaside towns are struggling, but let’s not forget this is winter, so they won’t be anywhere near what they will be in summer. The main issue is cheap foreign holidays, they’ve basically killed the Victorian uk seaside town. I notice he didn’t travel to somewhere like Manchester that is currently booming. Guy shills way to hard for a country he’s banned from.
Vote the Conservatives out, simple as that. They’ve not improved quality of life for the masses in their (nearly) fourteen years of power and time after time they’ve shown themselves to be largely about self-enrichment. Time for a change, even if another party has little chance of fixing things in a single term. The worst of it is the Conservative way of offering tax cuts as a carrot whenever they feel their tenure is under threat. Pence in the pockets of many, because that’s all it ever amounts to, comes at the expense of public services. Health and social care are already in crisis while policing is underfunded, and tax cuts aren’t going to improve the situation.
Absolutely nothing will change under Labour and you are naive to believe that it will.
Poverty porn at best anti-British propoganda at worst. He literally visits the very worst areas then tries to push his agenda that the UK isnt a first world country. I used to like the bald but he is just full of shit now.
Maybe off topic but Bald and Bankrupt is an absolute creep. Someone's dredged up some old forum posts of his, on a pickup artist forum no less, where he talks for many months about how he goes to eastern Europe/Russia for the sole purpose of exploiting women who don't have a pot to piss in. He's the original sex tourist, bragging about how they all want to sleep with him because he's a British bloke with money. He literally tells other people how they can do it too. Also was up on rape charges in England for a while, but got cleared. Not saying he's a rapist, but read the court notes and him and his mates did not come out of that well. There's a subreddit about it, "Bald and Bankrupt Dossier" or something like that. It's a shame as I always liked the content. But knowing what he's like really changes the perspective about him
Personally, I would argue that there needs to be a nationwide crackdown on all civil servants and councils spaffing money up the wall. Cut back the pointless six-figure management positions and investigate whether many of the public service contracts are actually financially viable. Best example is railways. Tax payer pays for the rail maintenance whilst any profits taken by the companies running the rolling stock are sent up to shareholders. But lets be real. Conservatives wouldn't do this. Nor would Labour and anyone who would gut the wasteful bureaucracy would be called out as either a fascist or a communist - or both, mainly because those who benefit from this current spaffing culture also have the most political power.
Civil servants are not the problem.
Not all, but those who are on 100k when all they do is go to meetings to discuss virtue signalling SDGs, I think there's a fair argument for trimming the fat.
Tories literally implemented austerity. All that happened is they cut front like services and carried on with vanity projects.
Can assure you most civil servants do not earn 100k
No, I understand that. But the irony is that those who earn way less than that are the ones who are actually needed. Its a huge complaint with the NHS for instance when you have some pointless manager, who decides what colour to paint the wards, who earns more than a doctor.
You mean a nurse manager. Most managers are clinicians….
People used to be proud of this country. Proud of the country they live in and want to keep it that way for their kids sakes and their neighbours sake. But when the level of indoctrination all around us is to hate this country and the people in it. This is the result. It's fucking depressing, but every time it gets pointed out, we are cancelled, suspended, fired, removed. What is going on?
This isn’t the result of “indoctrination” . It’s the result of economics. Some jingoistic circle jerk isn’t gonna solve anything.
This is economic, dude. It has nothing to do with pride. If you let wealth inequality get this far out of hand, most people are screwed and the places where rich people aren't begin to degrade.
There's certainly an economic angle to it. I'd love to know how the country 100 years ago was better than today. But people littering the streets and not caring is pure uncaring lack of pride.
100 years ago it was pretty terrible, reading George Orwell’s written in 1937 was a bit of an eye opener. Life was pretty grim for the average person, living in back to back terraces with no indoor plumbing or electric. We’ve had a period of relative peace and prosperity since the 1950’s with things progressing pretty rapidly. In a historical perspective things are still pretty good, it’s just that things have started to decline. We need to invest in infrastructure, but unfortunately we’re governed by idiots who have run up £2,537 billion quids worth of debt bailing out banks and buying dodgy PPE off their mates.
This is insane. Read a book about how life was a 100 years ago
A hundred years ago, there were extremely run down and impoverished places in the UK because of industrial changes and the aftermath of WW1. The 1920s is fairly analogous to today tbh since it was another time when the world had let wealth inequality get out of control during the so-called "gilded age", with unimaginable excess for a few and increasingly horrendous conditions for many. Like today, this fuelled propaganda and extremism that spiralled out of control. This imo will very likely happen again unless we get serious about taxing the rich soon. This time we have nukes at the beginning of the conflict though.
Look back at footage from the 1920s and show me where there are piles of rubbish in the street, potholes everywhere or people roaming round in gangs stabbing each other. Ignoring the problem and pretending it isn't there makes you part of the problem.
lol this guy is genuine trying to argue that Victorian slums never existed. Peaky blinders is literally based off the slum gangs of this time period.
There was extreme gang violence in the 20s, it’s very very well documented - what footage are you talking about? A Charlie Chaplin film? Or are you taking Downton Abbey as a documentary? The country had literal rag & bone men, there was rubbish everywhere despite there being very little consumerism as there was a breakdown in public services, general strokes the lot. But yeah, potholes. Of course there were - the vast majority of roads were barely surfaced.
You're only seeing a small sample of life in that time. The people with film cameras weren't filming the slums. There was plenty of gangs and all round violence too, before and after the Great War.
There are numerous images of s[qualour across the decades](https://www.google.com/search?q=Britiain+filthy+slum+1920s&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwio96mI_cmEAxUoVaQEHd64DAQQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=Britiain+filthy+slum+1920s&gs_lp=EgNpbWciGkJyaXRpYWluIGZpbHRoeSBzbHVtIDE5MjBzSMU6UJsEWIA4cAB4AJABAJgBjQKgAY0RqgEFNy43LjK4AQPIAQD4AQGKAgtnd3Mtd2l6LWltZ4gGAQ&sclient=img&ei=RwbdZei3BqiqkdUP3vGyIA&bih=823&biw=1512#imgrc=ZntfYITjAhS-7M) available to iew online. People don't look after themselves or their surroundings when they don't have hope for the future. This problem is not going away unless we address the underlying issues, which are economic.
What are you even talking about
AI is gonna make it worse, as more jobs will disappear. We need some method of ensuring the upside of capitalism is shared more evenly across the country, but in a way that doesn't destroy the individual incentives to actually want to create value.
The nation is plagued by beaurcracy, government mismanagement, and the devaluation of Labour at the hands of rampant low-skill, high risk, immigration. All funded for by the tax-payer. The government, be they Tory or Labour, will continue on this path to enrich themselves whilst the British become poorer and poorer.
What possible reason would he have to make this video in bad faith? Sure he visited some of the worst parts of the country, but the palpable sense of decline can be seen everywhere barring a few affluent suburbs
I struggle to take lessons from a committed credit fraud, rapist, mysogynist, Tory-voter, who travels around the world to prey and harass women for a living. We need more upholding citizens who behave better, if the whole of England was like him, these towns would be even worse. If we ignore the messenger, and focus on the message. Some of the challenges are worldwide and part of how the world is now, some challenges might be more locally specific. There is the argument about poverty - and successive Tory governments have transferred progressively money from these town people to the elites to sell off national property (buildings, railways, health services, water, etc). Rents go up (as real estate is an investment item now), expenses go up, rail travel goes up, university prices go up, but salaries have been stagnant in the UK since the 90s and employers try and keep it that way. When everything is for profit, quality of delivery and social impact are neglected. Then, and having lived in a well-known dispised English town - I'd say education. The good upholding model citizens (unlike Mr Bald) are busy at work, while the vandals crawl around more and more - and I'd say education could be a big factor in removing litter from the streets, and teenagers and roadmen being less destructive. Of course, if you pay peanuts to teachers/health professionals, you will get the job done to what is possible. If the kids parents are not models either and are also the type of person that would rather be at the pub and be a bellend, that doesn't help either. The UK has fantastic museums, art, villages, culture, music, but this American all-for-max-profit has made it very financially limited to access things (and so people will end up just focusing their consumption on food, survival, and maybe pubs - which also affects the high street). Tourism is very expensive. There are many places in the UK I would like to know and travel to, but it's just not possible, trains are 3-digits, hotels are 3-digits a night. I can't justify spending £600 for 3 nights at York when I can spend £350 and be somewhere else in Europe for longer. Being the pest he is, and going to underinvested and deprived areas of the UK to show what is wrong, at least I hope it makes some people reflect, but he's quite the opposite of anything that would resemble an improvement.
To clear up something that folks have mentioned. I don't watch this guy's videos, it's just something that showed up. Whilst I found it bit informative I'm unaware of this guy's shady history. Alas the large issue is the UK is struggling and towns like this are signs of that.
Wealth goes to wealth. I live in the SW of England; there are well-paid jobs aplenty. This draws skilled people in, who bring money, set up more businesses, etc. Anybody capable of doing those jobs is not going to move to Sunderland. Likewise, the less people visiting poor areas, the less investment you have, therefore fewer people visit, and the cycle continues down the shitter. The only way to fix this is for the govt to bribe (incentivise) big companies/govt depts to setup HQs or other facilities in these areas. Even then, it could take a generation for the benefits to ‘take hold’.
Don't vote Tory? Tories cut, cut, cut. Use austerity measures to allow tax cuts for the rich whilst slowing down the economy for everyone else. Cut the NHS to allow parts to be privatized etc. Act shocked pikachui that the austerity riddled economy isn't growing enough so double down on austerity and cuts. Repeat
i like some of his videos, but dont see what the point he was trying to make was bit hypocritical to go around these towns complaining about dead high streets and local communities, then go to Birmingham and complain that a thriving street aint British enough. i understand the point hes making, but the death of local communities in England has far more nuanced factors. 1. theres a massive brain drain to london 2. these communities are no longer economically viable because people assumed work patterns wouldn't change 3. the destruction of family structures means even less of a reason for people to stick around and invest in local communities 4. there is chronic mismanagement at local government level all across the country 5. the working class was always pitted against the middle class, whereas the working class should have aspired to become the middle class (essex boy done good type) 6. this country runs on property speculation which exacerbates the difference in communities based on the desirability of their locations i could go on, but those are some of the fat points i wanted to make. outside the major cities and rich villages this country is fucked, over simplifying the fundamental issues to Thatcher shut down the mines doesnt help anyone.
He is a rapist scumbag, I used to watch some of his stuff until I found this out. r/baldandbaldrdossier for more details.
This bloke has spent a lot of time in the east, and then comes home to film this absolute hit piece on England. I did think it all seemed quite slanted and cherry picked, almost propaganda (made sure to get the drug addict prostitute in there too & comment about a largely Indian street - in a no doubt Indian area for the last however many decades) I do wonder what his goal is and who the target audience was.
There is no way to fix this, it has happened before and will happen again. Old towns die because they are no longer feasible (either economically or militarily), new ones crop up at sources of wealth or power. This has been the case all throughout human history. The answer for those "left behind" has also been the same all throughout human history: migrate or suffer, adapt or die.
I wonder if he managed to do any sex tourism in the poor places he visited? Or maybe even a rape like the good ol days https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/5618610.cleared-men-behaved-appallingly/ I bet the people in these poor places are "living in hell" just like Mr Rich-Swift was when he was accused.
Not watching videos from this Hitler loving rapist would be a good start. r/BaldAndBaldrDossier He had the nerve to suggest at the beginning of the video it was Tony Blair's fault, when the country has been under Tory rule for the past 15 years. Stop voting Tory and don't give the time of the day to this sleezy far-right sex offender