To think our towns and cities are just so run down lately, and our standard of living has decreased significantly?

@Lonelycrab I’ve avoided mentioning Brexit as I know some people will fight to the death that it’s a brilliant idea- but it is causing issues from so many angles as you have stated - many many good employers simply set up elsewhere and got rid of /reduced down uk centres. Many very good European workers decided not to stay as let’s face it they were made to feel unwelcome. This caused issues in staffing many services with jobs Brits simply didn’t want - hence Johnson decided to totally ramp up 3rd world immigration to try and disguise how shit the shortage was- this was an awful lot of families, all needing education, housing, health, unlike the many single Europeans who often shared houses and in the main in recent years have been quite young. None of these families will leave to go back to Pakistan, Nigeria, Phillipines etc and hence we have even more pressure on services. Nothing is actually cheaper because of Brexit- anyone doing a bit of work in Europe now has total pain in the arse situation to work there at all on contracts etc - we basically handed over a lot of our best business to EU competitors on a plate. It’s a pointless excercise that cost £300 billion approx - and was a load of complete bullshit. I wouldn’t invest here if I had a business that had import/export elements and no chance of EU grants/funding -

Well the people who presided over the decline of the last 14 years are out of office, at least.

I am hoping Labour find the backbone not to go down the same route as the Tories. Jury is out til 2029, so we shall see.

Me too 😊. There's an old saying I remember from my youth. Manchester man, Liverpool gentleman. That was 50 years ago mind.

My sons generation were talking about Chester recently and how down at heel it is these days.

Luton has always been a shit hole. I lived there for years. Couldn't wait to leave

They are the new population, though. We're funding their keep so that a few landlords are happy, at the same time we can't afford to live here. What even is this? I mean really? What has it come to when it's considered 'controversial' to say that someone who works full time deserves a basic life? Fuck this joke of a country. I'm actually happy to see it fall, because of the fucking morons in charge.

@Sidebeforeself I do partly agree as per my post below- A lot of this too is about people/attitudes

Omg yes. The horrendous vape shops and barbers with bright neon stickers and lights. I blame the councils tbh. There should be local conditions to keep shop frontage windows clear and the fascia’s a certain way.

Lord Street was pretty grotty 20+ years ago!

Elephant in the room that hasn’t been mentioned on this thread yet is Brexit.

It was supposed to yield trade deals, control of immigration/borders and growth and it’s failed spectacularly on all. Companies have left or gone under. No new investment.

It created division. It created anger and that anger is still seen as those voters wonder where their magic beanstalk is; this thread is a perfect example.

It occupied all of our political bandwidth and budget for years, ie nothing got done while the country and govt bent over backwards to achieve this pointless aim. And what did we get? Lots of money and energy spent FOR NOTHING

And here we all are wondering where it all went wrong, when it resulted in PMs like Boris fucking Johnson running the country, telling us the law doesn’t always apply, and just do what you like and make it up as you go along as long as you have a laugh. Go figure.

We got the right to pollute our seas and rivers as our (foreign owned lol) water companies see fit. Yay.

We got the right to become the worlds money laundering capital (screw the nasty eu and their financial regulations)

Those coming from our closest neighbours stopped coming anymore, even though they were the most likely to provide positive input to the uk.

Immigration from ROW has skyrocketed

Growth stagnated at this point too and hasn’t recovered, and likely never will.

And here we are, with a batshit US president, and us contemplating accepting chlorine chicken, hormone beef and a sliced and diced NHS

I’ll get flamed for this no doubt. But consider: Brexit was the biggest, most expensive political decision our country has faced in decades. Since it happened our society and economy has been on a downward trajectory.

Wasn’t it supposed to make us better off? Doesn’t seem to have worked does it.

Well asylum seekers are not allowed to work

@Nutmuncher I’ve been lots of times with work and really dislike Manchester to be honest -find it quite threatening - I know loads love it though so maybe it’s just me, I actually much preferred Liverpool and Leeds ,

Half the people who come here don't even work though, or if they do it's off the books with food delivery or money laundered barbers and vape shops, so they aren't paying tax.

Absolutely right. The run down towns closest to where I am are literally full of immigrants, mostly young men walking round aimlessly.

I am sorry but I can’t abide people saying it’s all down to austerity . I’ve “ suffered” the effects of austerity too. I have family and friends who live in “ rough” areas, low paid jobs etc. But they don’t dump their rubbish, spit in the street , threaten people for brushing past them etc . There’s no excusing it

I’m afraid I feel we have a hugely enlarged feral underclass who really don’t give a shit about others - I don’t mean hard working minimum wage earners with standards- I mean a very large contingent of people who know every trick in the book as to how to get the most out of the state whilst doing bugger all . Happy to let youngish kids run wild, no discipline, no morals - no standards when it comes to keeping a house relatively ok, chucking rubbish, will dump anything anywhere, let their dogs shit everywhere and they often have a few, have stonking arguments with partners and/or kids on the high st, perfectly happy to get blind drunk and argumentative and aggressive in public-

im actually socially minded and im not right wing but i do think there’s a section of society that need a few sticks and far less carrots and far less ‘you don’t understand these people’’ yep i do , i come from a mining town originally and there were lots of people who were not well off, but there were standards- people prided themselves on having a nice home with what little they had, being clean and well presented even if it was cheap stuff, and many of the miners prided themselves on being well read, knowing poetry , good political knowledge and if you hit into trouble with school or police you got some real shit when you got home- not blaming teachers or police.

Many people are just too comfortable to really notice it. They wfh or not at all and are also supported by government funds, they order their products online, drive everywhere and rarely go to the places now inhabited largely by overseas migrants. Head + sand.

All my grandparents lived in the Bournemouth/Poole area so I went there most summer holidays in the late 70s to mid 80s; it became a running joke how long it would take Grandad to frown and say, "Bournemouth's gone downhill, son"; it would usually be before the kettle had finished boiling soon after we arrived. Grandad wasn't wrong but I think he'd be shocked at how far it has gone downhill in the 30 years since his death.

I've read a few posts about Bristol; I had a connection to that city as well and on a visit in 2012 - 13 years ago, I was surprised to see a tent pitched up on the forecourt of a derelict petrol station near Temple Meads - I took a photograph of it.

I put my photo on Flickr and someone asked me in a comment - "Is that a tent on the forecourt?" - it looked so out of place. Now there's hundreds of tents in Bristol.

Immigration is absolutely a factor but there's a reason even the Tories didn't do anything about it.

In the 60s we had 1 pensioner to 5 workers, now it's 3:1 but it's not far off 2:1 which of course is not sustainable. I don't see governments turning away from capitalism anytime soon b

I agree. But still plenty of people falling over themselves to say “it’s all shit but just to be clear I’m not talking about immigration”. It’s a huge factor and people are still burying their heads in the sand.

I feel like there’s opposites with this. On some threads Temu and Shein are bad. The way to interrupt that is price increases. Which are very bad if you look at tariff threads.

I have lived in the same market town for 48 years and, yes, it has really gone downhill. It feels dirtier, noisier and nastier. It also feels dangerously overcrowded. It’s basically a market town with the population of a small city crammed into it. You can see the effects everywhere. The new build housing estates are disgusting - horrible rabbit hutch houses squeezed on top of one another. You also see it in the traffic. The narrow old roads and country lanes weren’t built for this volume (and don’t get me started on the screeching car engines and modified exhausts that bang and explode).

I hesitate to blame immigration. I work with people from Poland, Hungary, Norway and India, all of whom I like and respect. However, the left talk as if immigration is always, automatically, a good thing. It isn’t. Immigration can be positive, negative or neutral. It depends who you let in (and how many). I often drive across town at around 11am on a weekday. Everywhere I go there seem to be gangs of young men wandering aimlessly around. When I pass them, they are always speaking in a foreign language, and they clearly don’t work. One of the problems with this so-called ‘refugee’ crisis is that vast majority seem to be young men.

@PandoraSox the shift in it. On the one hand it's great but the financial implications are huge.

Exactly 👏👏👏

Absolutely were. I recall how people were shouting out for change back then, because state owned services were so badly run.

Ditto. A group of schoolgirls shoplifting in the local Lidl. The Security guard detained then and when the police arrive the 5 accused him of trying to sexual assault them and touch them inappropriately. He now wears a camera as part of his uniform. I heard it from one of the cashiers.

Apparently school kids entering the store in groups straight after school and shoplifting cakes & food is a very regular occurrence. Something they feel powerless to do much about.