My town has really changed

Alot of the problem is the inability to do anything about other people. In the 60s the police could take the loca thug to the station and give him a thumping. I could grab a troublemaking child and give them a severe talking to. Now do anything to anyone and you will be arrested for threatening behaviour or seen on cctv being aggressive ( in response to lout peeing in the street or whatever) and be reported to the police.
I think human rights laws have backfired.

It’s not about individual towns though - it’s about the narrative..that white working class men are seen as the bottom of the pile. It’s about the multicultural narrative and the whole British history is evil.

tradition is what is important especially in many working class areas, where often generations of a family have lived. It’s no coincidence that these areas see a massive rise in Patriotism- it’s strongly identifying with their stability, which is their heritage and their sense of belonging. Taking this away leaves people adrift.

If politicians want to stop the rot they need to understand what people want, they want a country to be proud of. To do that it that country needs an identity, a sense of what is right and wrong people sharing the same basic view on life, understanding the same reference points. Politicians need to accept multiculturalism doesn’t work but everyone can integrate into a single culture. We need to move away from this narrative of celebrating differences and instead seek out and celebrate our commonalities.

Yes but no one earns 130k in a vacuum. There will be a whole host of low paid workers supporting their job, as well as the infrastructure and services such as roads, policing, refuse collection, telecommunications etc that most jobs rely on in some capacity, again provided by low paid workers.

Yes - Liverpool is probably still poorer and more deprived than most other places but that depressing sense of decline isn't there - it feels more like somewhere that's on the up. The capital of culture whenever that was did a lot of good and then things like Eurovision last year.

It’s not much better here in the midlands. I used to go clubbing in Leeds, Manchester, London etc. I don’t think I would dare go now and I’m certainly not a shy wall flower. Walking through my small town at 5:30pm is enough to fill me with dread. Youths wearing covid masks on those stupid scooters. Drugs openly smoked and handed to buyers. Men hacking in the street, spitting everywhere. Groups of middle aged men hanging around like we did at 13 - really odd. Groups outside the 20 barber shops that have sprung up. Surely there is not enough hair to make 20 plus barbers a living in every town - they are known as money laundering places.

It is really grim. And it’s not due to people being poor. As I mentioned above rewatch shameless. Many people were poor in the 80s and 90s but it wasn’t like it is now. I lived in a few poor areas as a student and this is very different. I had friends who were very well off and friends on benefits who were like the families on shameless. But Neighbours knew each other and looked out for each other. Now it’s HMOs and overcrowding.

Immigration and it effects do need to be discussed. As does the cost of immigration on our culture and the £ which cannot be spent elsewhere.

These are our sunlit uplands OP
We're getting exactly what we voted for.

Someone on 30k pays 5k income tax and national insurance. Someone on 130k pays 49k income tax and national insurance.

The government spends on average 17k per person. As higher earners leave the UK we will have more problems funding the public sector.

Comments like yours aren't particularly helpful.

We should bombard parliament with video footage of all the dreadful things occurring in our home towns/areas

I agree completely with this. I think being judged or the fear of being judged and shamed by your community was what kept a lot of stuff in check, including kids behaviour and parents keeping their kids in school etc.
I’m not saying we should go back to unmarried mothers homes or anything awful like that but being expected by your neighbours to be clean and sober and keep your kids in check and caring what they thought might improve things somewhat.

This is what Liverpool was like 25 years ago. It's much better now.

I'm sure this is the case in some places. But in many of these northern and Midlands towns, most people are white British and immigrants are not numerous enough to be causing any problems .

Exactly! And then the people who are primariily affected by immigration - those in working class areas -are further disenfranchised when their frustration of not being listen to boils over. All the do gooders are safe away from it all. It’s only when people are personally impacted do they start questioning the narrative.

A society needs a single culture as its focus. For Britain it has for centuries been Christianity (even if you don’t believe in God” and a proud history of strength in the world. Anyone coming here, of any race can integrate by buying into the culture of the country they have chosen to call home. We have a strong history of welcoming people who buy into our values. But now we are expected to welcome ideologies and values that directly jar with those country’s and people are fed up of it. Fed up of having something the want to be proud of and are proud of by idiots who are too stupid or blinkered to see the fall out over their drowning in about multiculturalism. We’ve tried it, and it’s failed- spectacularly. Anyone of any race can intergrate into British culture and that is what our focus needs to be on.

I feel it’s especially bad in the north. Leeds city centre is going the same way as Bradford, which is genuinely terrifying at times. People shooting fireworks at each other and all sorts. Leeds was a really friendly and vibrant city when I moved there for uni 20 years ago.

The community spirit on shameless surprised me too.

Something has gone badly wrong in the U.K.

If you haven’t watched it for a while it is eye opening. Especially if you watched it first time round.

Well yes, huge inequality is also a big part of the problem. And the corruption at the top of our society impedes efforts to improve things. And there are doubtless far too many people living in deprivation.

But I don't really agree that many British people are in absolute poverty. We live in a society with free education and healthcare, minimum wage, employment rights. Anyone can get educated and get work and make a living for themselves. If they don't earn much they get topped up with benefits to the point where they can have a nice lifestyle by world standards or compared to the UK 50 years ago. The issue seems to be that (some) people don't have the mental capacity to manage money or to improve their lot. It's not like India for example where the poorest people will always be poor no matter how hard they work.

People always want more than they have, that's the human condition, but really what's lacking is community structures and a normally functioning society , not a lack of money at the level of individual households.

Screens probably have a lot to answer for

Oh it’s been a long time since I watched shameless. But yes I think there was less fly tipping then and a sense of community funny that.

I'm Truro, which used to be lovely 20 years ago. It's been going gradually downhill for a while but the last 5 or 6 years, rapidly so. A bloke stopped in front of me and pissed against a wall the other day, full daylight and everything. It's so sad. I travel a lot and have noticed the decline everywhere. The trains too! Absolute cess-pits.

I’ve noticed this. I watched shameless season one the other week and commented to a friend how clean and tidy the streets look compared to now. A friend laughed at me, then watched it and agreed with me!

I knew a homeless man, he used to visit my workplace, I saw him sleeping on the streets. His family had done all they could to help him, but they couldn't have him living at home, however were still in contact with him. It's not a question of "allowing" someone to live on the streets either - how do you stop an adult? Mostly these are people with alcohol/drug/mental health issues. You must live a very sheltered life if you can't understand this.

It's a bit tricky to have respect for authority when our leaders don't - partygate anyone?

Unfortunately we now live in a world where the monied classes can buy "justice" which is an increasingly nebulous concept, and the poor are always used as an example of fecklessness even when the system has blatantly screwed them over.

In addition, plenty of people who have tried hard to get ahead fall foul of corrupt market practise and eventually give up hope.

Morals, principles and ethics make for a pretty lean diet.

what did people expect was going to happen when we started telling people they couldn’t be proud of their country? It’s no surprise they lose pride and act in disrespectful ways

There's some truth in this IMO.

IMO part of the problem is that we’re not allowed to say what we think for fear of offending others. The reality is that we have a growing underclass with zero values. We have swathes of the population from other cultures with different values. The powers that be know this, hence why it is a statutory requirement for every school to teach ‘Fundamental British Values’ including for example respect and tolerance and rule of law. How on earth can we reverse any of this when we aren’t even allowed to talk about it? I’ll await posters to come along and lament my use of ‘underclass’ and accuse me of racism as a case in point.

I grew up in Wigan and have family there.
It was never an aspirational town. It was expected that if you were a boy, you went to work where your dad worked and girls got a job in a shop. It never seems to have moved on from this.
I remember telling my teacher that I'd like to do medicine and he laughed and said that if I worked really really hard I might be able to apply for nursing but that I'd never be able to get into a university.
I did in fact get the grades for medicine but didn't have the confidence to apply for it. I was the talk of the street when I went off to uni and not in a good way. I was "above myself" or I "hated my family for leaving". Such an insular view.
I was SA several times as a child on the various "away days" or kiddies Xmas parties arranged by the various working men's clubs and miners welfare clubs.
I wouldn't want to repeat what I saw at the weekly under 16s disco held at the bus depot (of all places) but those men should not have been driving school buses for sure.
Every week someone's Mum would get "knocked about" by her husband and would turn up at the school gates with a bruised face.
My saving grace was the library. I was horrified recently to see it had closed.
It's a strange place Wigan. Geographically it's quite beautiful, no heavy industry to spoil the views and vast tracts of wild meadows and marshes through Platt Bridge, Ince and Abram. It was amazing for birds and there was talk that the RSPB was going to buy up a lot of the land and flashes. I think that proposal got blocked by the Dover gun club though.
However from a socio-economic point of view it still suffers from poverty; financial, cultural and of any sort of ambition.
The misery of the place inspired the Verve well.

Warrington is just 7 miles away. It isn't as ecologically wild, it is busy and scruffy but it has better healthcare and a much more positive vibe.

I completely agree with everything you have said. The problem is we can't have a conversation about immigration without being called racist and that attitude doesn't help anyone.

Crawley?