Is our town a shithole..

Don't know why it's outing unless you are the only person living in this town....

It’s common. The MC don’t eat such things.

Not at all like that here, but this is a very wealthy, very attractive small Home Counties commuter town. Very clean, very safe, and the only groups we see are yummy mummies visiting one of our many cafes, or grammar school kids clutching their enormous piles of books. However, the larger (poorer) towns nearby are terrifying now. They've been getting worse and worse for about 20 years though, so it's not a covid thing. I used to go to school in one, and lived there for a while in my 20s. I haven't felt comfortable visiting for about a decade.

I think the issue is the gaping, and growing, inequality we have in our society, and I would argue that really started around the early 00s. Possibly slightly earlier. It's just getting harder and harder to ignore. Unless of course you live somewhere like I do and just assume all towns are the same, and anyone who says they're not must be a lying bigot...

"The politicians have deliberately created this situation". So that people will look around them at their shitty towns and get annoyed and vote for someone else. Righty-ho.

I haven’t seen this in my town or others I’ve visited, so no, not every town and probably not most.

My town centre is still miles and miles better than it was in the 70s.

Sounds like a dump. I take it this is a poor area? I’m surprised you feel safe there walking around. Do you work?

Time will tell. You doubt the politicians are that strategic? Well they're certainly not being strategic about doing something about it. It's so striking now that nobody can deny it's happening. We're going to end up like Albania at this rate. Mogadishu if we're not so lucky. The UK is a shithole. Even the 70s weren't like this.

Perhaps it is tolerated decline.

I hate the response - oh you must be Reform or from the Daily Mail. Why cannot people calmly discuss what is happening in some towns in our country? Surely this blanket, oh it’s not happening or you must be a rascist etc to even think this way, will drive people into the arms of reform?

for what it is worth I don’t recognise this situation in my current town because it is affluent. But we lived for many years in a slowly ‘on the up’ part of east London and there were regular complaints about large groups of Eastern European men who were hanging about during the day in local parks, drinking and defecating in the park (including in the children’s hedge maze) or sitting outside cafes into the evening (no problem with that in general but some men harassed women walking past, it got to be such a problem that friends who lived on a road where the cafe was on the corner went the long way round to get home at night). Police got involved etc. So I have experienced some of these issues but always felt we couldn’t actually talk about them because of this fear of being dubbed a rascist. If we can’t talk how can we improve, and come up with solutions to help people?

sounds like you’re talking about basically street drinkers and people on the edges of society who generally come from a background of really serious trauma and being repeatedly seriously failed by society. I know that because I used to be a street drinker myself. austerity has stripped so many services back to the bones, there is increasing levels of desperation and poverty. How charming of you to only comment on this in terms of it making your town look like a shit hole.

@bostongirl222 no- Mansfield - luckily didn’t go Reform but it would have done if the right wing wasn’t split and has Lee Anderson 2 miles up the road in Ashfield - it was always working class with a few quite posh ‘pockets’ but town centre was vibrant and not unattractive- it is now unrecognisable . Some things have actually improved- a few niceish restaurants on the edges, train service resumed, some quite nice new housing and a few retail parks - town centre truly awful- one previously vibrant and attractive street just off the town square used to be full of pubs, cafes, newsagents, banks, all totally boarded up -

Many town centres are dying unfortunately due to the popularity of online shopping and out of town retail parks (sometimes with free parking). I think times have changed so much from when the town centre was a nice day out to go shopping on a Saturday!
I would think the majority of town centres now - not all - have empty shops (high rental rates, alternative shopping options [see online!] and the effect of Covid) and some of the problems you have mentioned OP, though not necessarily to that degree.

I assumed she meant men from Lincolnshire 🤔

OP it’s happening everywhere. I was recently visiting a very affluent, leafy, town. There was a large congregation of boozers gathered around a bench (yards from a Le Creuset showroom). One of the blokes sitting on the bench just started pissing. He didn’t stand up, he didn’t remove any clothes. He just sat there and pissed. His mates all cackled as the stream of piss trickled down the pavement.

I think Covid did normalise gathering to drink like this. Plus the closure of pubs, and the extortionate price of drinking in pubs. I don’t think drinking outdoors should be banned outright, but antisocial, drunken behaviour should be cracked down on.

I know a few seaside towns with rivers. Don't rivers run down to the coast.

I think seaside towns with a river often end with mouth, like Dartmouth, coastal town where the river Dart meets the sea.

Totally irrelevant but I just wanted to check I wasn't imagining things.

When I moved here in 2009 the town was considered quite 'posh' and probably most people would still associate it with that, but the vibe has definitely declined in the last few years. Not so much the people, but the centre looks very unloved. Lots of the shops have closed, paving is being replaced/filled in with tarmac, and it just doesn't look clean or well cared for. Meanwhile, the northern city where I grew up, long considered a bit grim, has had a real glow up. The council are investing heavily, the shops are all getting lovely smart signage and it always looks clean.

Sounds grim, and towns getting like this tend to go into a downward spiral.
Causes? Lack of jobs, lack of purpose lead to lack of any drive. Feeling disinvested in society because of the above leads to lack of interest in the town or community. If they are single lack of ties to family may lead to hanging out with like minded people to find their tribe. Certainly cuts to police visible on the beat have not helped.
Is it everywhere? Not where I live, smaller town, Scotland. Haven’t seen it in bits of England we have visited but we haven’t been everywhere.
How to stop it? Million dollar question and it would take several million and a will from government that doesn’t exist. Meaningful jobs, plentiful housing, genuine interest in regeneration of areas beyond building expensive flats.
Is it more visible in the last two months or so because of warmer weather?

Of course it’s not deliberate - that’s bullshit.

Yes there’s a decline for sure - but honestly - do you think the financial crash, misinformation over the benefits of Brexit, Covid shut down, Ukraine War, current trade wars and tariffs, rise in technology AI and loss of white collar jobs, war in MIddle East from Arab Spring, Libya, Syrian Civil war, Hamas terrorists and Netanyahu right wing ideology’ and the accumulation of wealth into fewer and fewer hands - have all been strategically masterminded to bring about the downfall of the U.K.???
This isn’t even counting Climate Change which will cause ever increasing mass migration.

It’s sad your town has changed. One thing you can do personally is campaign and push for changes locally, shop locally, support local business, push for zero tolerance on alcohol, campaign for areas where people can congregate or push for volunteer and clean up projects.

Definitely associate with the shops closing but that's partly because there's been a new shopping centre and many have relocated there.
Don't recognise the bit about drunk men passing out in parks.
There are a lot of teenage / young adult gangs riding around on bikes, motorbikes and e-scooters, damaging parks, riding them off road on footpaths and cycle paths and generally terrorising other path users. They do it because if they don't wear a helmet they know the police won't chase them so they get away it. I never used to use the cycle paths alone in the dark, now i don't use them in daylight.

I drove into my local town yesterday for the first time in over a year and I was shocked at the deterioration and the pissheads just drinking in the street.

Normally it looks lovely at this time of year as the trees are in full bloom etc. but it all looked shabby and awful.