Joyce, with the best of intentions, these people aren't going to just disappear y'know. You're gonna have to deal with it instead of just wringing your hands and hoping they'll go somewhere scruffy like halifax instead.
I know the history of Hebden Bridge very well, and I know a lot of people who grew up there in the 70's and 80's and got forced out by the wealthy incomers buying up all the houses and turning it into an incestuous gentrified little bubble. I remember when they chopped down a valley of pristine woodland, that had been used for centuries by people in the village, to build a load of "eco-homes" for wealthy people from the south-east. If I had a pound for every time I saw some millionaire stockbroker, who's burnt out at 35 and decided to get a big house in the country, swanning about Hebden like they own the place, I'd be rich enough to live there myself. Frankly, the vast bulk of the people I know from Hebden are wealthy and couldn't care less what happens outside their little valley.
I also resent this notion that Hebden was some culturally bereft backwater that was colonised by those kind helpful middle-class people, because even though it was a grim place to live (still is imo) they had a very strong culture, except it was a working class culture, not a middle-class art galleries and new ages shops.
It's an awful place to live anyway. You're trapped in a valley in the pennines, it rains 300 days of the year at least, you never see the bloody sun, you can't go to the shop or to the pub without having to walk up some everest-like ridiculous hill. Frankly if you've not got a car, you're totally trapped, if you're not fit enough to walk hills or mountain bike you're trapped, in general it's like being in the most pristine and beautiful prison in the world.
will never catch on thankfully.
