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

tell us if it's still there

Will do.

Its still there!
Can't believe I'd never noticed it. I feel such a fool (not least bcoz all my friends seem to have been regulars there but not mentioned it in 3 years). Oh well

so now you know!

Yeah. It was like when you learn about a new historical figure or something and sudennly everyone seems to mention them or say something related to them and you realise you had been filtering something out without noticing.

gotcha. I was the same with the Ashton memorial ("the Structure") - I must have cycled past it loads of times without realising there was a bloody great tower of a building there - complete with butterfly house etc. etc...

Oh well I knew about that!
There is a lot of building work going on at the moment. JD Wetherspoons have recently bought and knocked down Springs in order to open (a very nice, surprisingly) new pub.

I went to Lancaster about a year ago, and found it really difficult to recognise the place . I think the "Wetherspoon" factor - new firms buying up existing places and making them look different - is probably why. It's good in a way, because you'll hopefully get to keep some of the rather nice old buildings (I'm not necessarily including Springs in this!) yet have a reasonable amount of investment blah blah i.e. the place isn't just about to die out like some towns. I also noticed it seemed a bit posher. Perhaps the relative success of the Uni and Smarties has something to do with this, your guess is as good as mine...

Well that is very true. I was talking to Robert Fisk of The Independent the other week, who attended the university in its first year.
Back then Morecambe was the place to be and Lancaster was nothing.
My guess is that the university was built to create a new underclass for the town. With the final collapse of industry in Lancaster after the war much of the working population left for Preston and other such towns. Students seem to have been brought in to replace them in the towns ecconomy, as without them it would have been too poor. However students have got richer and the uni has got bigger than its founders ever foresaw.
This has meant the pumping of large amounts of cash into what was a poor northern town playing second fiddle to a failing northern beach resort. It has also supplied a steady stream of lecturers and student hang around types who live in Lanc all year.
This seems to have fed the need for high quality resturants and arts facilities like the dukes.

I have no evidence for any of this but my conjecture is usually quite good.

They are also building yet another mall in town.

Oh and in recent years the local community has lost two important pieces of its history. Frontierland has been demolished (after Blobbygate) and Mitchells have stopped brewing beer and are now only a chain of pubs selling other ale. A real shame that.

not Frontierland!

Yes its true.
I blame Noel Edmonds.

always a reasonable bet whenever anything goes wrong!

Certainly true but in this instance Noel Edmonds was actually DIRECTLY responsible.

I didn't go down there when I was in Lancaster last year. So what happened? is there just a hole in the prom or has something actually been built to replace the famously rickety Frontierland facade? (one of few amusement parks with a "no hard hat, no safety boots, no entry" sign on the gate...)

Well a visit down there at present will see frontierland sans rollercoaster and (I think) the polo tower thing along with a few other tall and large buildings. Otherwise it is simply sitting there mouldering.
What happened was Blobbygate. The biggest Political Scandal to hit Lancaster in the whole of the last century.
Before I carry on I should state that this all hit the year before I arrived and so my knowledge is based on reading about the resultant chaos and the aftermath in The Citizen and Scan.
Back in the early 90s Noel Edmonds was 'popular'(<er&gt.
At this point he was looking around for crappy failing tourist attractions to turn into 'Blobbyland' resorts in the mistaken belief that both he and his creation, Mr Blobby, were so deeply engrained in the nation's psyche as figures of fun that generations would flock to the parks for years to come.
The first time I became aware of the loathsome phenomenom was when passing the Cricket St. Thomas wildlife park, on the way to the west country, I saw that its sign had changed. Where before there was a relatively simply sign at the gate now there was a huge pink billboard which read Blobbyland (in 10 foot high letters) at cricket St Thomas (in 1 foot high letters).
It wouldn't surprise me if Edmonds had had them paint the elephants pink and yellow.
Anyway when I got to Lancaster in 1998 the scandal over 'Blobbygate' (which is really how it is known locally) was in full swing.
It seems that soon after coming to power in the early 90s the Labour council in Lancaster had decided to try and find a way to revitalise Morecambe and return to the good old days (why they can't take the resort into the future instead of looking backward god only knows. You'd think they'd be able to attract people by calling it 'The Sandy Gateway to the lakes' or something and attracting the hiking crowd as a base for the south lakes) using someone elses money and make themselves local heroes.
Anyway these lunatics (and I speak here as someone left of centre of course. These were madmen whatever party you support) decided to ring up Edmonds and try and interest him in Frontierland. He thought it was a great idea but needed the council to pledge some money toward the scheme.
So the council members started being wining and dining and taking on expensive tax paid business trips their new partner. No expense was spared and so Labour members visited Cricket st Thomas and other parks worldwide. Also to prepare the ground for edmonds they bought frontierland off of its owner. By then the cat was out of the bag and he got a VERY resonable price for several acres of rotting wood.
So the council had spent a lot on securing Edmonds' attentions (he had been looking at several other sites) and finally he agreed to build at morecambe.
Nothing happened though.
Time passed and it became 1997 and suddenly Edmonds realised the whole world thought he was a complete c*nt and a theme parks about him and blobby were not the best business plan (Cricket st Thomas was failing). So he pulled out. However the contract was such that for some reason the council footed the whole bill for the debacle and were left in ownership of a large mouldering theme park and a big expense bill.
They were slaughtered in the streets and the greens took the council in 1997

Sorry I meant 1999 when the local elections were

That's almost worth an article in itself! I hadn't realised it was quite such a farce. I suppose this means that, although Edmonds is a tiresome c**t, at least he's not a completely daft one.

On the subject of gossip about spending: did the Ruskin Library books ever eventually balance?

What do you mean? Do you mean 'is it turning a profit?' or 'Is the uni out of the serious debt the project put it in?'
I think the answer to the second question is yes. Mainly due to the huge demand for places at Lancaster (the campus is in crisis this year because they double booked a hundred or so rooms and there are now homeless freshers)

That's quite a difference from when I was there; our course had just seven students for the whole year! I'm glad the place is doing well, but it may be that some of the quainter characteristics of the place will be lost - just the increased campus size has already had that effect. The Ecology BSc now has a very good reputation there. Are you reasonably impressed with the standard of the course that you're doing? or is Lancaster now popular enough to attract hype?