By: simon batterbury

simon batterbury — Sun, 27 Oct 2019 11:54:19 +0000

So David, when we worked at PMA in the mid to late 80s and I was also driving round the M25 looking at shopping centres and so-on, I had an awful feeling that the bubble was going to burst, and more specifically, that there were alternatives to the awful politics of the Thatcherite era that allowed our well-off credit worthy compatriots in the South East to thrive, fleetingly. I ended up in post-socialist Burkina Faso in the 1990s, where there was little sign of western economic trends having any discernible influence [other than the volume of aid flowing from France in particular]. And the US, leaving there before the GFC. I largely stayed away from the UK for 17 years. My return was in 2017, to a chair at Lancaster University. ‘Austerity Britain’ was in full swing up north, as well as the visceral Brexit debate. I realised then that childhood and early experiences in SE UK were exceptional – I think we should see the 80s in that way too. Even elsewhere in the UK, the story was very different, and it is to this day. My thoughts on that are on a blog linked from my site. As disasters unfold, yes, we should challenge economics, a discipline geographers have always been skeptical of.

Comments on: When the losers become the leaders

By: simon batterbury