Some people do really well out of recessions.
My Dad always seemed busy at such times since he was an accountant who specialised in insolvency. But journalists do okay too. As one Sunday newspaper hack said to me last weekend: “Times like this are like manna from heaven”. There’s just no end of new stories to dream up from bin diving to how to save petrol driving. My favourite, to continue the theme of the last couple of posts, is what a boon the credit crunch is for the British seaside. Apparently, the British have belatedly realised that the UK is surrounded by hundreds of miles of coastline – complete with sand, water, deckchairs and piers (no, not in Weston-super-Mare).
Unreference statistics are called into action to press home the point:
Almost six in 10 holidaymakers (57 per cent) are shunning foreign
resorts and planning an old-fashioned break on the UK coastline – with
almost all of them (51 per cent) blaming rising living costs.
As a result
They will be swapping the glamorous
Seychelles and the Costa Del Sol for the Victorian piers and sandy
beaches of more down to earth places such as Skegness and Eastbourne.
Because
“One good thing to come out of the credit crunch is people are remembering the great British seaside.”
Indeed…Lazy and easy journalism though this may be it but it doesn’t let the fact get in the way. For example, the local shops and traders, and the local press, where I just went on holiday in the UK (lo, the spectre of the credit crunch) are all reporting trade is down significantly.
Elsewhere, the new trend, yet to spotted to my knowledge by mainstream journalism is that of Lidl and Aldi adoration. My favourite instantiation of this is Lidltreats.com – a website devoted to the cheap treats of these budget supermarkets who are having a good time in these bad times.
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