Economic History
The coal and shipbuilding industry that once dominated the North East suffered a marked decline during the second half of the twentieth century. Tyneside is now re-inventing itself as an international centre of art, culture and, through The Centre For Life, scientific research, especially in stem cell technology. The Quayside and The Gate are popular areas for their nightlife. Sunderland suffered economic decline during the last century, but is now becoming an important area for quaternary industry, science and high technology. The economy of Teesside is largely based on the petrochemical and steel industries. Northumberland and County Durham are both largely rural, and base much of their economies on farming and tourism.
In May 2005, the "Passionate people. Passionate places." regional image campaign was launched to promote North East England as a great place in which to work, study, visit and invest.
The friction match was invented in Stockton-on-Tees in 1826 by John Walker.
Read more about this topic: Geordieland
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“What exacerbates the strain in the working class is the absence of money to pay for services they need, economic insecurity, poor daycare, and lack of dignity and boredom in each partner’s job. What exacerbates it in upper-middle class is the instability of paid help and the enormous demands of the career system in which both partners become willing believers. But the tug between traditional and egalitarian models of marriage runs from top to bottom of the class ladder.”
—Arlie Hochschild (20th century)
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)