I live in Newcastle and found your article fascinating. I really related to it as someone living here and currently dealing with what has been happening here, and I hadn't considered the effects of the last three year's waterside development boom before, but you're quite right, the face of Newcastle that has changed what was once the working class areas that are now being turned into high-life living. I've lived here for all my life and one thing I don't quite understand is why the young rich have suddenly started throwing their money round in such a way. I never felt that before, but there's that real sense of young rich kids putting their money in our face. One of the things I think may go to the class issues that are now ripping the city apart is this new attitude of the upper class. There were always a wealthy people here, but the yachting and cocktail bars and fancy restaraunts  have never been such a visible part of the culture. Do you think this is just because there is more money coming into the town and more people can afford to act like this? Where does this new arrogance come from? It'll be a shame if this place loses you, it comforts me to think there are people like you who live here! But I definitely understand it.

 

Hi Alyssa,

 

Cheers! I think one of the other facets of the cultural changes in the city, in regards to class division and lifestyle, is that Newcastle was really a blue collar town, and many of the wealthy in the area came from nothing - particularly during the baby boomer era, which was extremely kind to Newcastle. So you had an (smaller than it is today) upper class, but one that were still essentially connected to working class origins. But what naturally evolves from this, over time, is the point we have now arrived at. This "young rich" set are that generation's children. They are born into wealth, and are disconnected from their parents' origins. So the "rich get richer" aspect is, on one level, a psychosocial phenomenon just as much as it is a technical description of economic statistics. Mentally, the rich are getting richer, if you know what I mean, because they are raised within an upper class environment, and enjoy their wealth with a sense of privellege their parents certainly didn't have. It actually creates problems within some of these families, because these people raise children who are essentially aliented from their own experiences of wealth and life (even though they are a logical product of it). The problem is that they are only a product of the bit where their parents struck gold! And the irony is that these kids are very much into that new Paris Hilton culture, being rich for the sake of being rich. Most of these kids did nothing to experience the fruits of wealth, nor are they doing anything. They live, quite consciously and with great conviction, off their family's money. One problem amongst children of wealthier families is that their children have a low work ethic, and can often be quite dysfunctional when it comes to their ideas of how to go about crafting a life for themselves. If you don't have to work hard and "be" something, why would they? That's often their rationale.

 

There is a natural arrogance to this, a self-indulgence, and we see it in full swing in Newcastle, in a manner that provides a horrible contradiction to a working class that have been slowly getting poorer in a town that has had a terrible recent history for them (the closure of BHP and a great deal of the industry, here). It's a kind of 80's flashback for me - that sense of excess and an incredibly superificial value system. If it was confined to a separate area, it wouldn't be such a problem (as was once the case in this town, with areas such as Merewhether, etc), but it's not. It has usurped rough, lower class areas. As you said, it's "in their face", and quite frankly, they love putting it in others' faces, that's part of the self-esteem mechanics for this young, rich crowd. And they have no respect for the working class, because they have no connection to it. Many of their parents earned their "good life". Their children, however, were simply born into it, there's no psychological sense that it is the logical result of anything - it just "is". They're rich. You're not. Good for them. While the lower classes battle Ice, they're off snorting Coke in designer clothing. It's the absolute antithesis, and it has come together in the one battleground. This town is in a lot of trouble, and it doesn't grasp what lies at the core of it. My partner's old boss who was mugged on his way home to his new Honeysuckle apartment is a nice enough guy - but I'm sure his mugger has no conscience pangs, because as far as he's concerned, he's just another rich fucker who flaunts his money as a value (which he does, admittedly).  They're going to have less qualms about robbing the rich here, because as far as they're concerned, they have been robbed, too. And they have, in all fairness. They feel the current young rich lifestyle thing here degrades them. And it does, in all fairness. There's two streams of culture here, now - one for the rich, and one for the poor. I've never seen it to this extent in this town, before - once, you would never have noticed it - but you do, now. And that is causing huge problems the people here just don't grasp, and are in no position to "fix". It's a bleak portrait I paint, I know, but it's the cold, hard fact of the matter. The cultural damage is done, and with the introduction of Ice, everything has been amplified and made ten times worse. I wish Newcastle all the best. But it faces a very difficult future.

 

Thanks,

Aaron