to think chavy, tacky hen parties should SOD off [Edited by MNHQ at OP's request]

[CannoninD]

I’m fed up.
I’ve lived in my beautiful, respectful and historic city my entire life .... but over the last year it’s been invaded by GOD AWFUL hen parties!

20+ strong groups of horrifically common (referring to behaviour not social class) women who inflict their horrific behaviour on everybody within reach.

They’re EVERYWHERE and I know it’s not just me as there are sunbstantial concerns being raised by residents all over the city.

I counted 23 large groups this weekend (I only walked into the (small ish) city centre on Saturday morning and witnessed the following behaviour-

• Loud swearing (F and C word) right in front of/across young families and children just trying to enjoy a day out.
• Shop doors slammed in elderly shoppers faces (too busy pratting around to pay any attention).
• Stock being damaged by pratting about (and then hidden) to avoid paying.
• Horrifically vulgar and inappropriate content being loudly discussed in family areas (a garden/park area) to the point that families got up and left.
• Completely inappropriate Lingerie being worn in the street (before 2pm).
• Vomiting in the street! Whilst being jeered by the rest of the group.

Personally I would rather bleach out my own eyes than go on a hen do like this- but honestly at what point do we just call the police on these ridiculous idiots inflicting such unreasonable behaviour on families and regular people? What’s worse is, I bet back home they’re perfectly normal women. They just all get together and come away from home and behave like total arseholes!

Being in a large group and celebrating an event- does not give you a hall pass to behave like scum. 😡

PASTIES????

PASTIES YOU SAY????????

They are all here 🤣

I am English working class. I understand what common and chavvy means. I imagine that those people from the US or who have migrated there also get it, but are being deliberately obtuse. Chavvy, common, rednecks or trailer trash - we all know what this means. It's nothing to do with people being working class or poor. These people are cunts.

Or maybe those people like SenecaFalls or MathAnxiety who live in the US and have boasted about their higher standards and zero tolerance by local authorities and police don't get what is happening in England and should just butt out

For what it's worth, I have lived in the UK and travel there fairly often. I'm one of those older American tourists referred to by several posters above, and this behavior has affected me personally.

I was just trying to point out why some posters reacted negatively to the OP's original post; I think some of it had to do with her word choices.

Ah limited give Seneca a break, she’s one of the good guys

I think you’ve coined what they really are very neatly though.

Ah limited give Seneca a break, she’s one of the good guys

Hear, hear.

Thanks, y'all.

I am not boasting and I am sure SenecaFalls and MissConduct are not either.

I have lived elsewhere in times of police/public service cuts and there is a direct correlation with declining quality of life. With continuous cuts there is an eroding of public expectations and you get a vicious circle where certain behaviour becomes the norm, and residents are advised with a straight face that it's not really a problem if some pubs are making money from it, and they can just avoid their own town centres at weekends if they don't want to trip over drunks or wade through pools of vomit.

Maybe people who live in the US can see what works in terms of policing and quality of life? Maybe people with experience of life elsewhere can offer encouragement in terms of concerted public action to pressure politicians and chambers of commerce, or even individual premises, etc?

The UK doesn't live in its own special little bubble where nothing will work to curb an allegedly hopelessly unreachable minority that operates beyond the remit of the law. You don't have to resort to silent, impotent fuming and using derogatory terms for miscreants making a nuisance of themselves.

I happened to be passing the central library at 5.30 today, and thought of this thread. There was an unconscious female on one of the stone 'benches', being tended to by someone wearing a 'mother of the bride' sash, and a couple of other hen types. FFS.

Any city is unpleasant on a Saturday night. It sounds like York is a bit of a special case though. Like a pp I also spent a year living there doing the LPC there before the College of Law moved to Leeds and it was raucous but not really horrible.

I really don't get why, because you are getting married, you have to get stupidly drunk, wander around a city in not much in the way of clothes, and watch a stripper. Yuck.

I went to a spa for my hen do. For a day, not an expensive weekend. It was really nice. Afterwards we went out for a nice meal with a couple of glasses of wine. I don't feel I missed out!

The idea that any city is unpleasant on a Saturday night is an example of eroded expectations that create a slippery slope.

Yanbu OP. Thought of this thread today actually. Was at the station at 11.30. Train from Middlesbrough arrived. In the carriage we were getting on alone at least 10 people got off holding beer bottles/ plastic glasses of wine etc. One guy had a bottle in each hand and roared loudly as he got on the platform. So that's ten people per carriage, already pissed, before midday. On the train back, as we left Leeds the guard came round and warned everyone that we were getting into York soon and to watch out as there will be people getting on who have been drinking all day and that they will be drunk and obnoxious. So that's how much of an issue it is, that train staff need to warn people about it. This was at 7.30 pm. Then our train was held up getting in because two pissed up women were walking on the tracks. When we finally got on we saw them being escorted by police, they could barely walk. Fucking ridiculous.

It’s all very well the train guard warning you but what are you supposed to do about it? One way forward would be to not let the drunk and obnoxious board the train in the first place.

I agree. It just seems to be accepted. By the council, by the police (I mean ok so they arrested the two that went on the tracks but they do nothing about the constant drunk staggering around and shouting we see every weekend), by security staff (they'll chuck out people fighting but won't grab a hold of them and get them arrested), by everyone really. The train guard's view was that York is a place where people from Middlesbrough go to get pissed during the day and that's just how it is.

I think that the council's attitude is key here. Pretty much the entire city has long been run for the benefit of visitors, be they tourists or students. Transport, housing etc, all civic decisions have for at least a generation been made on this basis. And this seems to be the logical conclusion, that even when visitors are actively harming the city, by causing damage, committing criminal acts, making the centre of town unsafe not only on a weekend night but at midday, because they're visitors, what they do isn't curbed, and bugger the effects on residents because no one gives a shit about them anyway.

Hasn't drinking on trains been banned by TfL? Surely it's time the other train companies followed suit. People would not be allowed to board a plane in that state, why should train passengers have to out up with it?

Yes, TfL banned drinking on trains some while ago. Other train companies have apparently some "dry" trains, but mostly they haven't followed suit.

I agree they should.

Drinking is not allowed on trains in NSW, Australia - and it's banned in many public places too - makes this sort of occurrence much less likely!

Hasn't drinking on trains been banned by TfL?

It has but no one listens to it. Not even Diane Abbott I saw a man get on with a pint in a glass Stella challis last week!

York is fine in the week

No one wants to go on a city break during the week. No one.

Maybe its time for direct, collective action like the residents in Venice

Yeah because Venice has always been a hotbed of geordie hen parties

They are all here
What, you think every geordie hen went to Madrid to pay 11,000 euro to watch Liverpool win the European Cup? What a fucking weird thing to say. Or are you one of those odd people who think football fans are all savages.

Sorry SenecaFalls. That was very rude of me. I just get a bit fed up with people talking about the British problem with alcohol in a way that seems to suggest that we don't know about it and they have all the answers.

That includes British people. There have been some pretty mad suggestions from British posters that remind me of the Nail 'Em Up scene from Life of Brian.

Likewise people who insist there is no class system or derogatory terms or ways of 'othering' people considered lower class or outsiders in their country. Of course there is, it's just different.

I realise that was not what you were doing and again, apologise. I hope you accept.

scene from Life of Brian

No one wants to go on a city break during the week. No one

Why not, I am semi retired and would rather go in the week,

limitedperiodonly

It sounds like York City Council should stop pandering to undesirable transient visitors and the businesses - bars or private landlords who rent to students who are anti-social - who cater for them.

I guess the people of York have already thought of that one.

My local council doesn't. I live in a residential area of Central London with a large number of year-round tourists attracted by the reasonably-priced hotels. You might have even stayed here SenecaFalls.

I welcome them. They literally enrich the area. But that's because we're not a destination for hen and stag parties.

Residents have a lot of influence in this area because this is a rich and influential part of a rich borough and the council listens to us. But I don't kid myself. It's because I live in a privileged part that the council cares about my views. It's different in the poorer pockets of the borough. They are ignored.

The next-door borough is the fabulously rich Kensington and Chelsea where 72 people burned to death in Grenfell Tower because they lived in a poor part.

So I feel uncomfortable telling the people of York or Bath or Edinburgh or anywhere suffering this problem what my local council or police do and the pressure I would bring to bear on them like they hadn't thought of it. I kind of think they're ahead of me on that one but the councillors don't care.

That's my objection to advice from outsiders - however well meaning. You're not on the ground.

Thanks SenecaFalls. I mentioned you again in my last post but don't mean it to be insulting. I'm just trying to explain my frustration. {flowers] to you too and I could recommend you some nice places next time you are coming to London if you don't already know.