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

I live abroad and swear that in the UK it's down to online shopping - something not so prolific on the continent. We have local shops with actual queues outside - butchers, cake shops etc. Our high street is buzzing. The local market is crowded. People like to go and choose clothes/meat/sofas etc and don't so much subscribe to having it all delivered. If you want shops in the High Street you have to use them - unfortunately I fear it's too late in many places.

Rubbish has picked up here since Christmas. It’s depressing to see.

Our past few governments have decided that giving people a free life because they're from backwards countries/ never intend to work/ in a large number of cases, both of these, is top priority. This is despite the voting population showing clear displeasure with this for decades now. All so that the money is funnelled straight into property investments keeping them unnaturally inflated. It really is a joke to be honest.

Oh, and our streetlights have been dipped by 40% to save money. I hate walking home in winter, I'm scared for the first time and use a blinding head torch now.

Money laundering. There's always a new Mercedes with blacked out windows lurking nearby and shifty looking men going in and out of the shop. Ours has even taken their shop front sign down to cut down on genuine customers. I went into a phone shop once to ask about a screen replacement and he couldn't have been clearer that he couldn't be bothered to do it. This was before I knew about the money laundering thing.

Yep, it's a slap in the face when council tax, tax, and everything else is going up in price and in return we get worse conditions. Water companies are pumping literal shit into the waterways on the go ahead from the gov ffs let alone everything else. I don't see how it'll be getting any better either.

I moved to the U.K. in 2008 and felt like those were some glorious twilight years. I’ve lived in the same area of London since 2014 and even in spite of investment into the high street, the litter and antisocial behaviour has got a lot worse. Or should I say, it used to be anti-social behaviour and now it’s frequently violent crime happening at 4pm on a weekday. I still love it here though.

It is quite eye opening when we go back to my home country, where there doesn’t seem to be as many of these kind of issues.

I’m in Scotland and it’s the same here. Rubbish in the streets, shoplifters, antisocial behaviour and drugs everywhere. Really depressing. Visited Germany a few months ago and it was a different ball game - clean, steeped in history with architecture that was actually looked after and everything was just much, much nicer. We’ve let this country go to the dogs.

Totally agree @blahhhhgand others. It’s especially stark when you go to other, better run, better cared for countries. Local amenities, public spaces and town centres are just better than the UK’s. And I’m not just talking about tourist destinations.

I live in a small market town that has quite a nice high street, although markedly less nice than 15 years ago. What I do notice that makes everything look run down though is the state of the roads. The surfaces are terrible, the markings dangerously unclear, the verges unkempt. Not to mention the litter and fly tipping. I drive a couple of times a year in Northern Europe and the difference is marked.

Basically the Government and most service providers eg banks, the Post Office etc have withdrawn from many of our towns and cities.

Wages as a percentage of GDP are dropping and the distribution of earnings is increasingly unequal. At the same time housing costs are rising.

Services are being cut and maintenance of the 'public estate' - roads, public buildings etc has been cut so they are now deteriorating.

We need to spend more, tackle housing costs and improve pay.

I am in a "naice" area. The only reason that it stays nice is because every weekend there is a team of "in bloom" volunteers who are out maintaining and litter picking.

I agree. I won't go into the city centre ( Leicester ). tThee last time I met friends for lunch there it was £7 to park for two hours. The only store I did go for was M&S and that has shut now as you say. I no longer feel safe. We went out for a meal in the Highcross area a few weeks ago and there were gangs hanging round and a teenage girl beaten up. We saw this gang it must have been just before the attack took place and felt lucky we had just got back to the carpark. I've lived in Leicester for 45 out of my 57 years but hope to leave when I can.

The Turkish barbers here are ran by mostly Pakistani nationals. Just all seem to use the name. All have the exact shame chairs with the metal in fake gold. A music Chanel showing on tv lots of golden clippers and such. Mini fridges with pop and the actual chairs empty 90% of the time I go by. Often a sign implying you’ll get a discount by booking rather than being a walk in yet his still sat there with no customer. Maybe a few of them just sat there chatting on their phones no hair being done. In most not all. There is one that’s always rammed then again maybe that’s the dodgy one 🤔

@SpottedDonkey Went to Glasgow in February and their city centre M and S had closed. Also Sunderland was earmarked for closure so probably has closed by now.
In cities abroad, you have to pay city tax. You might get something for that (Basel gave you free transport on the trams round the city and half price to some museums) and you might not (Rome gave nothing and the area round The Coliseum was a disgrace, so much litter there).
So maybe we need to start charging tourists a city tax and using that money specifically for that city where tax was paid, to tidy up and make it nice again.

In my city this isn't always the case. My son and DH go to an excellent Turkish barber and have got to know a lot about them.

The ones in my town are run by Turkish people. But that's not the point. It's the number of them - three barbers in a small town. We don't need that many barbers! Three restaurants all selling the same cuisine within less than a mile of each other. There simply cannot be enough customers in our town to keep all these businesses afloat. We're barely bigger than a village. The maths don't make sense.

Now you've mentioned it and I'm thinking about it, we also have an over representation of nail bars and 'beauty spas'. Run by a variety of nationalities, but I suspect at least some of those run on modern day slavery.

I agree. I live in what I have always thought is a reasonable area but just lately things have gone downhill. Fly tipping everywhere, people just seem to empty their cars of fast food waste and just leave it in the gutter it's shocking.
in the past few weeks numerous car thefts have taken place, my 88 year old dads window was shot at by air gun or similar and smashed, our lovely local country park has offroad motorcycles tearing through it and kids breaking up fences and starting fires. No where feels safe. Kids are ransacking shops and shoplifters just walking out with bags of chicken etc. It's awful.

I agree with you on this. Central Belt, small town, our services have been cut over the last few years, bin collections stretched out to four weekly rotations, street bins removed, massive pot holes, communal areas left unkempt with rubbish & overgrown trees & bushes, the smell of weed in the air and the high street and town shopping centre don’t feel very safe to walk around any more but our council tax increase was the highest in the country. Stark contrast with the clean and tidy places we visit on the continent and in England on holiday.

There are 9 on my local shopping street so just a suburb.i reckon there are 40 shops total at the most

Leicester has a perfectly fine M&S demographic but I think they signed the death warrant of the city centre branch when the huge one opened at Fosse Park, just a matter of time. Too many places' parks have succeeded at the expense of the city centre.

Turkish barbers refers to a type of barber. It doesn't mean they are all from Turkey. Just as a French manicure doesn't mean it's done by a French person.

Yes and I live in what is deemed as an affluent area and pay very high council tax. However the area is now full of just eat mopeds, an array of empty barbers and hotels housing male immigrants who hang outside the local all girls secondary school.

Interesting thread. And depressing.

I remember similar happening in my parents' town. And that was in the 90's.

Plants growing out of brickwork

See, I love that! Nature taking over. I always smile when I see dandelions pushing up on a pavement by the side of a building. It gives me joy.

I've been in countries where a whole tree has sprouted up from a derelict building, 3rd world mind you....