Ground Control

At the moment due to cirsumstances beyond our control we live in the South Yorkshire town of Rotherham, just outside of Sheffield and twinned with Bosnia. The town itself is incredibly run down and it has the highest percentage of empty shops anywhere in the UK.

The people around here seem to have given up on life and just live from day to day. I've seen this attitude in other parts of the UK, The Rhondda valleys for a start and anywhere where the lifeblood of industry has been sucked away from the people living there. In South Wales it was the coalmines and British Steel, here it is pretty much the same. There is some renovation going on but it's not enough to bring life back into the hear of the town.

And then there's the roads, I've been to Kenya and the roads there were of a better quality than we have in Rotherham. The road surface of one the main A roads into the town are worse than some unadopted roads in parts of the country. There are huge pithole where the surface has sunk and then you come to Parkgate, one of the busiest parts of the town. Some of the roundabouts here have such an undulating surface that you can start to feel seasick by the time you complete a circuit of them.

I feel sorry for the place, the people are generally quite nice and stratightforward but unless something is done to bring some pride back into the town int's just going to get worse.