Towns & Cities that are F----d.

[Bill Walker]

My experience of living in the UK over the last 66 years is we are just as polite, friendly and courteous as ever.

I pass strangers on walks, they smile and say 'hello', and that's the way it is.

I'm not going to be stabbed or shot walking around on my daily activities. It just isn't going to happen.

I'm not saying crime in the UK doesn't happen, but trying to imply society in the UK is on the verge of breakdown is, frankly, ridiculous.

Yes, we have our problems just like every other country, but suggesting the UK is going to descend into a dystopian future is beyond reality.

Politics apart, the UK is just as nice a place to live as it was when I was a kid in the 60's,

Don't believe what you read in the papers or see on TV about the UK. We are still polite and respectful people that say please and thank you when it matters,

I wasn't specifically talking about the UK. More generally the western world.
I'm sure people in the UK are polite and respectful but you can't deny that knife crime, gangs and drugs crime is massive issue in the UK ? Will the police send a car out if you're mugged in Piccadilly gardens or Misery Square in Stockport or your house is robbed ?

Knife crime rises to new record of 44,000 offences in England and Wales

Calls for urgent action to stop ‘spiral of violence’ as increase continues despite new government strategy

www.independent.co.uk

Police recorded more than 44,000 offences involving a knife or sharp instrument in the 12 months to June, up 7 per cent on the previous year.

Every country has these same growing issues. Cities throughout the west imo are becoming more dangerous after dark than they ever were and police have less and less resources. Look at what's just gone on in Paris, complete lawlessness.

 

[Lovebitesandeveryfing]

This place is the perfect example of dogshit rolled in glitter.

It's minging, was great in the 80s but it's gone to the dogs now. Or maybe I've been that many times it just hasn't got that pull anymore.

Proper rough.

I was once staying with someone in Lytham St Annes — someone I didn’t know very well, a friend of my mother’s — and I casually said “Well, you’re more or less Blackpool here, aren’t you?”.
Outrage! I was quite lucky I didn’t get invited to leave on the spot…

:-)

 

[Lovebitesandeveryfing]

I'm not going to be stabbed or shot walking around on my daily activities. It just isn't going to happen.

That won’t happen to you in the States, either, frankly, if you avoid the roughest areas.
As for people who are completely out of their mind on drugs, that is completely random, and can happen almost anywhere.
Only place I’ve ever been (sort of) attacked was near Maine Road, walking down Yew Tree Rd, minding my own sweet business. It was rags of course. Wasn’t even a derby day. Even then, it was handbags at five paces, really.
Fuckers…

My judgement on Luton (re. an earlier post) has nothing to do with the class demographic of it. I have no idea whether it’s working class, middle class or what. It’s just a mess of a town. Singularly lacking in charm. But there must be nice people in Luton, and some nice areas. There are everywhere.

But districts can go up or down surprisingly quickly. Thirty years back, King’s Cross in London was a pit of a place. A distinctly edgy feel to it. It’s been radically renovated, and to my mind there’s no sense of that whatsoever now.

 

[ChicagoBlue]

I like watching this guys videos.
This one he visits Gary, Indiana. Where the Jacksons grew up (he visits their house)
Gary really is fucked, wouldn't fancy living there but houses are dirt cheap (free even) if you fancy it.

Notoriously bad. And the winters are even more absolutely fucking horrible there!

 

[Bill Walker]

Notoriously bad. And the winters are even more absolutely fucking horrible there!

Not far from you mate, you could buy a very cheap house in Gary !

 

[Deleted member 77198]

It's OK if you just want some sea air and a walk along the prom, prom, prom, or are thinking about the surrounding areas. However the grim underbelly of the town centre is mega-grim.

Blackpool is the same.

 

[Bill Walker]

Just watched another one.. East St Louis... they can't even afford to demolish the Spivey building. It's intriguing that the US is by far the most powerful superpower on Earth, it has the mega expensive NASA, it has given over 80 billion in aid to Ukraine and yet this town can't afford to demolish a 12 storey building. So there it stands !!

The Spivey Building

 

[BrianW]

Radcliffe. (Needs the Luftwaffe back and a restart from scratch.)

Bacup. (Ideal location for Internal Exile for all Tories after the Revolution. Makes Siberia look like Las Vegas.)

Holyhead. (Welsh Bacup with a harbour.)

Rhyl. (Where the Liverpool magistrates send the Scousers that not even Scousers can tolerate.)

Merthyr Tydfil. Defies my power of description. You have to see it for yourself, and having seen it you will never want to return.

 

[mexico1970]

Rochdale town centre is appalling isn't it?

 

[Lovebitesandeveryfing]

Notoriously bad. And the winters are even more absolutely fucking horrible there!

Not far from you mate, you could buy a very cheap house in Gary !

When I looked at the estate agent sites (or realtors), and thought, for a nanosecond, now could I live in the U.S.?, there were photos where you could see the towers of downtown Chicago clearly from Gary. It didn't seem that far away, although I'm sure it's like living on another continent.
There is a classy area of Gary, forget the name, that's leafy, clean and relatively crime free, apparently. It looks over the lake, from the south. Obviously, property prices go up accordingly.

America's a very odd place, in that there were towns that simply sprang up like mushrooms, almost overnight, and depended entirely on one industry, sometimes one company. Obviously, I'm aware that there are mining towns like that in England and Wales that have been left high and dry. Buffalo's house prices have fallen through the floor. Somebody from there explained it to me. Buffalo was the railhead for traffic coming off the huge barges crossing the Great Lakes. That was its purpose, pretty much. The goods would then be taken down to New York and the great seaports of the eastern seaboard, for export to the world. When the Saint Lawrence Seaway was created — a gigantic and hugely impressive engineering job which is a story in itself — the ground was simply cut from Buffalo's feet. People carried on living there, but which not much reason other than the fact that, well, they'd always been there.