h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I LOVE it! Perhaps we will adopt Euro-English here in Texas. T'would be a vast improvement over what I have to listen to everyday. Yes, I am from Brooklyn (in NYC) and I am complaining about accents!

The accents between Southern England and places like London, only 40 miles away, are quite pronounced, and as for the Yorkshire accent, hardly anyone can understand that! But I don't think that this will quite be the solution used...
Good thought, though.

Oi! I 'eard that lad. If it weren't for Yorkshire, Scotland would fall off.

(goes to feed his ferrets)

Sorry, BB

Oh, nothing wrong with that.
Just the Isle of Wight and Yorkshire are completely opposite in many ways, and a little gentle teasing never hurt anyone

Would be interesting to be a bit older - it'd have been interesting to see if the Island's changed as much as Yorkshire. I doubt it has.

It depends where you are. In Sandown the place has changed tremendously in my lifetime. In the early 1980s, Sandown was a busy Tourist Attraction, everyone from the mainland came to the Island and South Coast for bucket-and-spade holidays. Now, they all jet off to Spain and Ibiza to get drunk. So much has shut down.

The changes in Sheffield happened a little before my time. My Great Grandfather worked by himself - I think the name they had was Little Mesters, one of the earliest forms of the steel industry. He made medical implements, amongst other things, with quite beautiful precision. Most of my Grandad's (his son in law) dentistry implements were made by him. Obviously, the big factories were around before him, but he was a craftsman rather than a heavy steel worker, which is why he didn't work in one. Sheffield has changed enormously since my Grandma was my age (I mention her as she's still around to say how much it's changed) - in the 1930's, the steel industry was still thriving, and a huge swathe of the Don Valley was given over to the factories that needed the water for cooling and transport. Even in the 60's, when my mum was a teenager, the industry was still fairly complete, albeit in decline. I can't remember it being anything but almost completely dead, though. There is still a surprising amount of steel produced in the city, though now there's a tiny fraction of the people employed as it's a far more efficient process (and far cleaner - the clean air act in the 60's transformed Sheffield from one of the dirtiest cities in the country into practically the cleanest. It's still good today, despite the number of cars). And people's perception of the quality has changed - Viners (a Sheffield cutlery manufacturer) was considered to manufacture quite cheap stuff early last century. Now it's regarded as classy and upmarket (which it is against contemporary competition, it's just that the now long gone Sheffield competition it was up against early last century was far better).

I do remember the factories, albeit derelict. Many have been sweapt aside, though, particularly since the early 90's and the softening of the Tory opposition to the (very, very Labour) city council that caused the city to end up in such a mess during the 80's. Mind you, even now we face problems. We've tried to replace industry with sport, but we've been blocked in our bid to be a Centre of Sport for the country (despite the fact that we have better facilities than the opposing bids) and our one big success, the World Student Games, was undermined by a London orientated BBC who refused to broadcast it at sensible times. I'll agree it isn't something that's broadcast every year, but then it isn't in the UK every year either, and it's the closest we've ever got to staging the Olympics, so there really should have been more coverage. It's sickening when you think how much time is wasted on football (especially TV's recent classic the other week of broadcasting the same football match on two channels. How many people do you know are going to watch two channels at once? Their arguments that 'we both had the rights and as we think half of the population will be watching' don't answer that.)

I know the feeling of industrys collapsing. Cowes and East Cowes on the North of the Island had a very healthy ship-building industry. It was there that the Hovercraft was invented, as well as the Hydrofoil. Bluebird (the first Bluebird record-breaking boat) was built there, as well as rockets, a large percentage of the flying boats in the world, and warships. Now all that is left is part of GKN Westlands. The last warship was finished in the 1960s, ending over 450 years of continuous warship building on the Island. All that Cowes is now is the home of international yachting for two weeks a year, and for the rest of the time, it's nothing.

There's been quite a bit in the Hampshire news recently about a company moving out of your area. You're right - it is a bugger when that happens. Bean counters with too much power.

I know - and it's hit us hard. My Dad worked for Westlands until they decided to make everyone redundant in the 1980s - when it changed from being British Hovercraft to Westlands. And now Plessies has gone, and Britten-Norman looks dodgy - very worrying times.