Economy
Birkenhead Market was first established on what is now the site of Birkenhead Town Hall, between Chester Street and Hamilton Street, on 10 July 1835. An increase in the town's population by 1841 led to the opening on 11 July 1845 of a much expanded market on a larger site nearby. Michael Marks, of Marks & Spencer, opened one of his first seven 'Penny Bazaar' stalls here during the 1880s.
During the 1970s, the commercial centre of the town was redeveloped around the principal shopping area of Grange Road. Following two fires at the expanded Birkenhead Market in 1969 and 1974, it was later moved to new premises adjoining the Grange Shopping Precinct development. Commercial expansion continued in the early 1990s when the Pyramids Shopping Centre was opened.
Shipbuilding and ship repair still features prominently in the local economy. Cammell Laird entered receivership in 2001. The shipyard was sold and became 'Northwestern Ship repair & Shipbuilders', which grew into a successful business specialising in ship repair and conversion, including maintenance contracts for the Royal Fleet Auxiliary. In September 2007 NS&S acquired the rights to use the Cammell Laird name. The company was renamed 'Cammell Laird Ship repair & Shipbuilders' on 17 November 2008, seeing the famous name return to Birkenhead after a seven-year hiatus.
As of February 2010, the town had an overall unemployment rate of 8.2% (males 12.4%, female 4.1%) as against a national average of 4.4%.
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Famous quotes containing the word economy:
“I favor the policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people. The men and women of this country who toil are the ones who bear the cost of the Government. Every dollar that we carelessly waste means that their life will be so much the more meager. Every dollar that we prudently save means that their life will be so much the more abundant. Economy is idealism in its most practical terms.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“Even the poor student studies and is taught only political economy, while that economy of living which is synonymous with philosophy is not even sincerely professed in our colleges. The consequence is, that while he is reading Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Say, he runs his father in debt irretrievably.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The counting-room maxims liberally expounded are laws of the Universe. The merchant’s economy is a coarse symbol of the soul’s economy. It is, to spend for power, and not for pleasure.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)