A Race Apart

A race apart

Having blogged on this before, it still blows my mind. The disconnection betwixt the demonstrable affects of the continuing UK recession and the activities of the unaffected.

We have just returned from a celebratory two days and one night at the Belfry, the HQ of UK golf. The car park is huge with only the Ferrari Dino and The Bentley Mulsanne managing to stand out from the everyday Mercs and Beamers. The vast main restaurant (£25 per head for the buffet) was packed from 7 pm onwards as was the golf bar from 3 pm. To leave means a good five minutes wait before a gap opens up on the passing A446. All this on the manufacturing-depleted outskirts of Birmingham.

We stop off en-route back for a spot of Christmas shopping (with 13% of the year yet to go before the commercial feast day) to find central Nottingham heaving and specifically the erstwhile MP’s listed store John Lewis packed to the gunwales with free-spending cosmopolitans and where ipods at £115 were flying off the shelf.

Still trying to comprehend, I telephone the Manchester Crowne Plaza for a room on Saturday 28th November to find they are full, “Manchester City are playing that day and the Classical Spectacular is on at the MEN Arena.”

In my little book “Derbyshire born …” I refer to the haves and the have nots of the early 1950’s in rural Derbyshire. The disparity is wider now and those that worry about it, are hiding under the bed.