A small video caught my eye this morning, it is a rather beautiful film of Whitby in 1975, and though it is little changed in the streets and houses. It is the people who tell the tale. For a start NO holiday cottages, the houses were lived in by locals, pottering round their yards, milkman knocking on the door, and best of all the famous smoked kipper place, (still the same today), the cliffs at the end of this side of Whitby are still intact, (they slipped a couple of years ago) with a little bridge joining them to the footpath.
http://www.yorkshirefilmarchive.com/film/whitby-8
Apart from the colour of the film dissolving, it made me realise how things change, especially the emergence of holiday cottages and the social change it has brought about. It was a brief mention on the radio this morning that it was the ten year anniversary when the economics went belly-up in 2008 and banks were forced to close, and we are still economically in a mess...
Perhaps the question is bringing these two things together, ecocomic doldrums and an economy that relies, quite heavily, on people selling houses at inflated prices and profiteering by buying second homes either to rent out on the market as holiday homes or 'to let' places. Those rather quaint flashbacks back to 1975 may have been the better way, though I can already feel the backlash as to how terrible it was in 1970s. But if young people can't get into the property market, and if they do as we all have done profiteering by the selling of our homes, where does it stop?
I agree Thelma, it is all pretty scary. I really wonder how they can ban second homes, and yet I always wanted one at the seaside and we could have afforded one but my first husband, very left wing, thought it was immoral and would never have one. In place of it we had wonderful holidays, mostly in left wing ountries - Trans-Siberian Railway, tours round Central Asia - now in a way I am pleased I haven't got one because they are a bit of a worry aren't they? Our village in the Dales has quite a lot of second homes, two or three of them near my house and that part of the village is quite dead in Winter.
ReplyDeleteWell I always felt guilty about my cottage, though in truth I considered it a home, and a place for the grandchildren to visit.I still miss it though but it has relieved me of problems that always popped up by getting rid of it.
DeleteNothing stays the same and the world has changed greatly since 1975. Greed became acceptable in the '80's and Is a sad part of culture today. However, families still love to take their families to seaside villages and enjoy the beauty and peace that such a place offers. The houses are larger and more but families still love making memories together.
ReplyDeleteThat is very true, times they are changing, always, and yet are people any happier with the world they have today?
DeleteI think people are beginning to question the whole idea of tourism in general and whether it is a "good thing"
ReplyDeleteThat is so true. I watched a programme on Orkney, which had this enormous 6 storey cruise ship in the harbour, and some of the Orkney people were not at all happy about all these tourists descending into the island.
ReplyDelete