It's one of my life's strange ironies that the town I've repeatedly bashed the most for allowing itself to fall into a terminal phase of degeneration, dilapidation and ruin (aside from Wigan) - Blackpool - is now where I work.
For my sins I'm now responsible for a great deal of the design and advertising which stretches the length of the promenade.
I equate the task to painting the Golden Gate Bridge. Years after starting the task you finally finish and it's time to do it all over.
I strongly objected to Blackpool winning the right to build the UK's first "Super Casino" (a plan which eventually collapsed due to political in-fighting and bureaucratic resistance from senior civil servants). I figured it had seen more than enough money over the last few decades and had it invested just a mere fraction in developing the promenade it wouldn't have needed government spending.
Sadly, like almost all of the traditional seaside resorts, Blackpool frittered away its money leaving a town centre which is little more than a dried-up husk and a promenade that is nothing short of a decaying embarrassment.
What little investment there's been has come in ever-decreasing quantities. The end-result is a commercial region which is perhaps less than 30% occupied with the only real money provided by the big department stores, supermarkets etc. Whilst the seafront has recently had a bit of a face-lift it is largely superficial and doesn't alter the fact that the horse-manure infused promenade requires many millions of pounds just to arrest the decay.
But it's not just money. Like most northern towns Blackpool desperately needs leadership. A galvanizing, media-savvy figure who can unite the economic and political power blocs into codifying some kind of framework for minimum standards as well as cutting through the suffocating bureaucracy and endemic corruption.
With the costs of holidaying abroad rising it's likely we'll see an increase in the number of visitors to Britain's traditional seaside resorts. But unless Blackpool changes its course I think future investment will be increasingly piecemeal and in ever-diminishing quantities.
I mean, it's not quite reached the point at which that other famous resort town, Great Yarmouth, now sits (
Abandon All Hope Yea Who Enter Here!). But the writing is certainly on the wall.