Right, so we need a grand vision that will gain the best long term advantage for us recognising and utilising all our assets and finding the optimum advantage in the current economic, environmental and political situation.

So the council will be nurturing the small one shop businesses that provide variety and individual service that makes our coastal towns unique instead of the bland tediousness of high street names.

The council will be making sure there are good quality music and dance venues for our many local entertainers to draw in those weekend tourists and surfers of an evening so people have something to do other than drink and said performers generate wealth for the local area.

The council will find ways to get the railway line from the ferry and cruise ship quay opened to bring in the tourists who land there and link the steam trains from the museum up on Middle Engine Lane and the
Silverlink to the quay and their rightful setting of Tynemouth station
to give them an historic experience as well as a ride to the coast.

The council will be supporting local food outlets and especially the fishing industry, not just because it is a source of sought after local food and thus an opportunity to utilise the growing interest in local sourced food in restaurants and shops, but also, in these days of worldwide concern over fuel shortages and food miles, we need to keep any source of local food production going for all our sakes.

The fishing industry could be encouraged to provide the skills and amenities necessary for the development of safe leisure sea fishing and even marine animal watching which will add to the area as a destination for discerning tourists.

The council will make sure that other water leisure pursuits and water sports such as surfing, diving, and boating are nurtured including facilities for boat building and repair, which will utilise the skills of local people.

The council will support the building of cinemas on the coast so that tourists have somewhere to go of a wet afternoon or cold winter nights other just eating or drinking and also to take advantage of the interest in the growing Northern film industry (there are studios being built in Durham) which will encourage various skills and thus employment.

We haven't seen any signs yet though and it is alarming watching our small characterful useful shops pushed out in favour of kiosk sized high street chain stores, all our music and dance venues closed down and money spent on consultations that came up with the idea of a scrabble venue for the one place (the Dome) that we were promised would have music and dancing.

The ferry and cruise ship visitors constantly ask where the shops are and the nightlife is before disappearing off up to Newcastle to spend money that could boost our economy.

Good money was spent heaving boulders onto once rather nice well planted traffic roundabouts.

The council want to spend more money helping the decline of the fishing industry by replacing it with a museum and an open top bus experience (with our weather?) and once the character and thus the inspiration has gone, a few artists studios.

And there's no sign at all of a cinema anywhere along the whole coastline.

Oh, and if in doubt, it seems all stripes of local councils are in favour of selling off bits of land for the building of "luxury flats" on important local amenity sites then they try to persuade us this regenerates the area and boosts the local economy.

Maybe this is why South Shields gets all our business these days.

R RENWICK
North Shields.

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