R2OK!

iwarburton · Joined: 08 Dec 2006 Posts: 2133 Location: Northumberland

Margaret Hodge, Minister of Culture, Media and Sport has publicly laid into the holiday business in the UK, with adverse remarks about London, Stonehenge and the state of our hotels.

But isn't it the Minister's job to promote these things rather than publicly rubbish them?

Also, we've just been on holiday around England and, whilst there were one or two small niggles, the general standard of the hotels and B and Bs that we used was excellent. The only disappointment was the weather and the trade is hardly to blame for that!

Does Mrs Hodge ever take holidays in the UK?

Ian.

mark occomore · Joined: 07 Dec 2006 Posts: 9955 Location: UK

God they should be interested about sorting out poverty Britain first before they get people going on Holidays.

John W · Joined: 07 Dec 2006 Posts: 3367 Location: Warwickshire, UK

My wife and I occasionally have weekends away, usually randomly choosing a district and finding a B&B farmhouse or a B&B pub on the internet.

Rarely disappointed. We've recently had cosy well-fed weekends in Cumbria, Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Cotswolds, Shropshire

Mark Mayhew · Joined: 11 Dec 2006 Posts: 2897

Go further south sir.

RockitRon · Joined: 07 Dec 2006 Posts: 7646

We always pick three or four diamond (ETB rating, or equivalent) B&Bs or guest houses, and have found them so much nicer than the equivalent-starred hotels.

We also avoid city centres and tourist hot-spots like the plague, and it is these which Ms Hodge has in her sights, although it's the same in any country. However, what she bases her opinion on is a mystery - she admits to holidaying in Italy, and sensibly avoids London in the rush hour (so that's any time between 4.00am and 3.59am).

She has something of a chequered history and obviously thought that she should put her head above the parapet for a couple of minutes to draw the flak from her boss.

I'd have put up a link to the story in the Telegraph but, although they've given the paper a good makeover this week, the website is pretty awful and I can't find it.
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Ron

SantaFefan · Posted: Fri Sep 05, 2008 1:35 pm Post subject:

RockitRon · Joined: 07 Dec 2006 Posts: 7646

Great Yarmouth - Ah, memories...

(I'm not sure whether I should admit this)

...of Easter weekends up the road at Ladbroke's Caister Holiday Camp - the annual National 18 Plus Weekend - drinking, bands like Mud, Sad Cafe, Gary Glitter Razz

, Heatwave and the embryonic Bootleg Beatles, more drinking, DLT with the Radio 1 Roadshow, trips to local breweries that ended in a bunfight, everyone reversing the electric meter in the chalets (Not me, m'lud), more drinking...

...and the obligatory shuttle coach ride into Yarmouth to freeze our whotsits off** walking along the seafront with our girlfriends. And you're right, it was dross. (** Pre-gobal warming era!)

More recently we did spend a week at Aberystwyth and stayed at the premier and highest-starred hotel on the seafront (it was a short-notice thing and we couldn't get anywhere else). It was sumptuously carpeted and furnished throughout, or at least it had been 15 years previously; they couldn't serve an evening or bar meal Friday to Sunday; most of the staff could speak neither English nor Welsh and there was a hilarious moment one morning when someone asked for bread instead of toast and was told they didn't have any; and the nearest place to park was a quarter of a mile away unless you got there about four in the morning.

I think that might be something akin to what she referred.
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Ron