Peoples Republic of South Devon

Green Goblins

June 7th, 2008

posted by Jess Sains

This week South West based airline Flybe announced that they would be promoting holidays in the region by placing ‘holiday planners’ in the in-flight seat pockets of all their Exeter flights. They hope this will encourage high earning families to holiday in Devon.

Today oil went up to a new high price. The whole country is gripped with petrol fears – even my tiny economical little car now takes almost £40 to fill its tank, when only a few months ago it was around £30 a fill… Businesses, industries - including two biggies down here in the coastal South West, farming and fishing – are protesting as they are going down the pan due to spiralling costs. Irony of ironies, the “failing” industries of Margaret Thatcher’s 1980’s, the coalmines, are re-opening (in some, rare cases). As someone who grew up in Nottinghamshire, the joke is a little lost on me, but it just goes to show what state this state is in.

So, what do we, in a part of the country that is, increasingly, reliant on tourism as its major breadwinner, do about ‘being green’? How do we square off the need for holidaymakers with the need to stop making fumes/gases/pollution?

We have to balance up the two sides, one saying that if Devon is no longer a green and pleasant land of blazing summers and clotted cream then we will no longer have tourists. We all probably thought twice about living in Devon last summer when it peed down all through the end of May, June, July and August, didn’t we? We can hardly expect Mr and Mrs Highearner and the two little Highearners to come rushing down here from Surrey when for the same price they could be sunning themselves in Tuscany or the South of France, can we?

Ah ha, the nail on the head: price. The cost of things is pervading everything in recent months. At first we all put on our Blair smiles and hoped things would muddle through. We were booming Britain after all! Now we are in the state of panic that precedes rock bottom. We’ve used up our credit and there are no more two-pence pieces to be given out to go in the slots down Westward Ho!

So now we are busily burying our heads in the sand and hoping our houses won’t be repossessed, pointing our fingers at Gordon. Waiting, with some trembling, for Cameron to come in to power. By which time the economy will really be in its death throws, no doubt. The old industries will die out, taking fresh fish and clotted cream with them. So will we still have a tourist industry?

The long and short of it is people see flying off to the sun, still, as being something wealthy people do. Hence, when the credit crunch really kicks in many, many families will be returning to the seaside holiday. They may even come on a plane, if flying continues to be as cheap as it is in comparison to driving or the train. All very good for Devon, lets just hope they cycle down, as well…

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