General Chat

I went to Lidl in Bognor today and was thinking how Shripney Road has changed over the last thirty or so years and how much it reflects the way life has changed.

Thereused to be several verylarge places along this road where people worked and produced things. There was Hago that made wire products and Lec which made refrigerators and several other factories with some little shops at the end of the road where you could buy necessities and fish and chips.

Now there are a number of smaller businesses, mostly selling or distributing, not much manufacturing at all and none has a large wokforce.

Also along this stretch of road is a large number of places to spend money.As well as Lidl there is a huge Tesco,a large new Sainsbury,McDonalds.KFC and Burger King,Matalan,DIY chain.electrical store,Halfords, a gym.

So where does the money come from then?

I remember the name Hago. didn' they make household products, Sharron? I had a Lec fridge/freezer years ago.

We have a lovely street in Norwich from the Castle to the Railway Station, it used to be big stately sort of buildings which were offices and shops etc but now it's all nightclubs, restaurants and bars and rough as h*** on a weekend with fights and such and drunken idiots vomiting everywhere. It's not a safe place to walk along any more yet holiday makers if they had gone out to the Theatre or something and wanted to walk back to cabin cruisers at the marina would have to run the gauntlet.

Sad to see some of the changes in our cities and towns, it can't be called progress.

Lizx

It just occurred tome that there was everything along that road that you could spend money on a lot of things you probably didn't really need but nowhere to make any.

Possibly a lot of companies are manufacturing off shore.

Yeh, a long way off shore. China.

It kind of illustrates to me the way the economy is.

Yes...LEC, i worled there for 35 years. We were making over 2200 fridge,s ect per day 5 days aweek in the late 90's Then along came SIMBE-DARBY & Lec went down hill & closed. If you go to Facebook, put in ex LECites you will find a lot of photo,s of ex Lec workers ect.

I never worked there.

They had that excellent scandal didn't they?

There was a whole company set up, it even had it's own warehouse,selling knocked off fridges. Enterprising or what?

Can you remember when the water tower was knocked down?.I think it must have been in the early eighties. I just remember suddenly noticing it wasn't there when I was driving through Lagness one day.

There was a big fiddle going on sometime in the 80's & if i remember right a/some worker,s went to prison. The tower wasn't a water tower, it was a gas holder. Sorry, can't remember what year it was dismantled. One summer holiday i was camping in the south of France, walking along a country path, laying in a ditch was a Lec fridge with my name on the lable

Doesn't say much for your workmanship does it?

Lec kept Bognor in employment and they didn't have all the places to spend it.Where does Bognor go to earn the money to spend in all those retail outlets now?

DHSS !!!!!