AIBU to loathe the people here?

[OnenessWithAllStrife]

Some people say that feeling a negative emotion or having unpleasant feelings about something shouldn't define you, that you should let the thoughts flow and then let them go. OK. I hope this to be true :(

But i have lived somewhere for the past 6 years that has brought me to conclusions and created feelings in me that I am not proud of. For the first time in my life I have actually come to loathe people and feel a sense of terror about being stuck with them. This is not particularly politically 'correct' when put into words, unfortunately, but I can't think of any other way to express it.

I moved to a town6 yrs ago in which I don't have much in common with the residents. It isn't unusual, just an ordinary large town which at one time contained more diversity, but in recent years has become very insular and homogenous. Everyone is angry, anti social, or depressed. If you don't openly discuss some sort of prejudice (racism, sexism, anti-intellectualism) you're 'soft in the head' or a 'bloody weirdo'.
Wherever I go here, in any direction, you will either see kids or drunk adults destroying property, or else screaming at each other in the street. There are a few select areas that are less challenging and rough, but the vibe is somehow the same.

Education or reading is a mugs game, football is the only passion, kids are yelled at for merely existing. Any conversation with a seemingly friendly stranger results in them wishing all the foreigners to go home. There is a general air of brutality to everything, a leathery, hard resistance to any kind of sensitivity whatsoever. Art, creativity and self reflection are suspicious, and the only permissible clothing is black or sport branded. Every damned street is choked with the fumes of endlessly revved up vehicles with ear splitting exhaust modifications. The environment is filthy, full of dog shit and bordering on dereliction.

I would once have considered all of this a problem of poverty, but it isn't quite that easy to determine, having witnessed it. There is no seeming variation in behaviour across income brackets here, it looks to be more cultural than income related, although the attitude towards learning, etc will obviously have the effect of creating more poverty regardless. It is like a self perpetuating cesspit of no hope and hard hearts. I thought i was a leftie, a socialist, but when I leave here I will be fucking marked by this and hope to never exist within it ever again.

We moved here for DP's work and are set to leave this coming year. I also appreciate that the residents and I have experienced very different upbringings and we do not share much in common, but even so, I think that you have to endure this to really, really see it, to come to fear it. It is easy to sit in a comfy armchair miles from it and 'defend' this stuff because you haven't truly sampled the existential sickness of it on your own doorstep.
I wish i didn't feel it, but it is difficult to lie to oneself, and the fear has probably evolved from having felt 'stuck' in it for so long. I wfh and DP does part time (some here regard us as 'pretentious' for this and have suggested we ought to do some 'real' work). It all feels very dated and odd, to be surrounded by values that repulse me and contain so little diversity. I mean, this is the type of place where you'll get side-eyed for cooking from scratch or having the audacity to flavour a dish with pesto.

Does this mean I loathe them? I don't know. I imagine I will chill with it when we have moved, as it all becomes a distant memory, but it has certainly left a mark. It feels wrong to state these feelings and observations, but I bet I am not the only one who has thought them....

Interesting perspective @Otherpeoplesteens
thanks for sharing

Interesting discussion especially inferiors post. Don’t know what the answer is but selfishly was so crucial for us to bring our kids up in an area full of likeminded people. You don’t need private schools then.

When Dh got into Cambridge to read law from his state school he opened his results on the local radio station that’s how excited his teachers were as so few “made it”

You're welcome @TheRigatonini. Since you and @JollyJoon were both asking about Lancaster, I have a theory on that too.

Lancaster itself is quite small and compact, so the rough bits are never far from the nice bits. The rough bits are also small and parochial enough that everyone knows everyone, and there is probably still just about enough of a sense of community and shame that anyone wanting to engage in mindless petty crime and disorder might display some insight and not shit on his or own doorstep.

Whilst most of Lancaster is genteel and posh, there is the odd business which attracts miscreants - Yates' for example, and that weird pool hall that used to be opposite KFC just down from the Penny Street Bridge hotel for example. Places like this have just enough critical mass to stand out in the rest of town.

Or, it could be that since there is now basically nothing left in Morecambe that people from there come across to Lancaster to antisocialise.

YANBU!

We bought a house in a (what we thought of as a) nice town. Awful. Tedious and reactionary people everywhere . We were just incomes and not given the time of day. Our dd invited someone to stay over for the night and after this girl left we discovered she'd stolen a number of things. Awful.

We now rent it out and live far away.

@FriendWoes111 @knackeredcat Yes I know what you mean. I grew up in a poor country...not quite third world, but a place where people's material standard of living is objectively much lower than in the UK. Yet many people from my country who come to the UK for a "better life" become depressed. Many go back, some stick it out for a few years and then move back once they've made some money, and others move on to a different country. I think it's partly the climate and partly the lifestyle.

In my country (and many others similar to it) there's what I call "street life". Lots of outdoor communal areas with benches where neighbours sit and chat in the evenings, children playing out, and every neighbourhood (even a poor one) is interspersed with all kinds of shops, street vendors, cafes, bars...in summer people are out in their neighbourhood until 11am-ish going for a stroll or having a few beers. There's just...life. Also people are a lot more expressive with their thoughts and feelings, even negative ones. This comes across as rude or intimidating to Westerners, but actually, if two neighbours in my country are yelling at each other, it's unlikely to come to blows and they can usually sort out their differences.
In the Uk it's not seen as acceptable to express negative emotions, so people bottle them up and then explode. If someone here is raising their voice at you, you never know where it's going to escalate to.
And people here live in a much more isolated way - houses with private gardens on big estates with not much there other than other houses. There isn't really the street "vibe" or outdoor communal life I described. So if you can't afford to go for a night out or an organised activity, you just sit in your house and watch TV. People are a lot more alienated and "in their own world", where they don't consider anyone else (eg when they play loud music or generally behave anti socially). On many poor estates there's an air of hopelessness and despair that I haven't experienced when living in an objectively much poorer neighbourhood jn my country.
I dunno, I could be wrong, these are just my observations as an "outsider".

@InPeppaPigHell

This is similar to what I wanted to say earlier in response to someone’s comment about people not experiencing what real poverty in other parts of the world was like so how pathetic that they find a British town depressing and hard work.

My experience (although I’m from the UK) echoes yours. I’ve spent time in much much less wealthy countries with real poverty, and without diminishing or brushing over the impact of poverty, material deprivation is not universally coupled with the harsh, apathetic, antisocial kind of environment the OP describes.

Where I am at the moment in the UK, there is not a lot of money but there is a culturally diverse community, and I was just saying the other day to my partner that this is one of the things I love about the area – there is life on the streets, including the evening, people sitting out on benches chatting, the warmth and buzz of people knowing each other – community. It reminds me of other places in the world where I’ve spent time. It’s really nice.

It’s funny as it is in marked contrast to ‘nicer’ areas where people leave their house in the evening to go to a supermarket or an off-licence, are in and out, and everyone is tucked away alone and atomised in their houses. The streets are quiet, interchangeable and anonymous.

@TheRigatonini I'm trying to think where you are...Bristol? It's the only place I can think of that has that kind of continental vibe.
I also think the Uk is a very segregated society. There are so many class markers and people of different classes don't generally mix much, so are suspicious of each other.

@inferiorCatSlave. Did you live in Mansfield or Sutton in Ashfield by chance?? Your comments fit well with it— not particularly deprived in my opinion but closed minded and full of middle aged Male know it alls — I

@InPeppaPigHell

Not Bristol! Are you thinking of St Pauls kind of areas there?

Agree about Britain being very narrowly segregated by class and ‘tribe’ as well. And age actually.

@OnenessWithAllStrife You are supposedly in Greater Manchester. Do you find it difficult to travel into Manchester, on the train or whatever? That town is 'happening' as my mum would say.

Just count down the weeks/months.

@TheRigatonini that's a really interesting observation. Community is so important and makes such a difference to how you feel about where you live in my opinion. I find many Brits focus heavily on material things and having a big house and garden and then keep themselves to themselves. There really is an obsession with living in houses rather than flats here. I live in a city with a friendly local community and regularly socialise my neighbours. Its multicultural and a real cross section of society. We live in a flat anf don't have much space but I love the atmosphere and would rather stay put rather than moving out just to have a bigger house.

I wish there was a like button for this post

We are in exactly the same situation where we live.

The area is full of idiots with nothing going for them it’s a horrible area we have been changed by having to live with these people.

Though I use this site and a few others and it seems that this is becoming a part of ordinary life

@OnenessWithAllStrife

Ok ladies it is sitting snugly and proudly between Manchester and Liverpool.

Widnes? Runcorn?

@TheRigatonini Not sure, I was only there a short while and lived around the Gloucester Road area (Bishopston, I think?).

@Gem176

I've been to Wigan once. Train had to return to the station after someone jumped in front of it. 20 minutes into a 3 hour visit and I realised why the person jumped! You have my full sympathy OP!

Crikey!!

@Otherpeoplesteens

That is a fascinating insight into Lancaster - very incisive!

[quote InPeppaPigHell]@TheRigatonini Not sure, I was only there a short while and lived around the Gloucester Road area (Bishopston, I think?). [/quote]
I have to admit I don’t know Bristol that well either But I think Gloucester Road is not too far from StPaul’s (somebody please correct me if incorrect!).

You can't move towards greater equality if you still think, deep down, for whatever reason, that bowing to muppets in palaces while you claim benefits and struggle to survive is fair and OK.

It’s not the bowing to muppets that’s keeping people “in their place”. Monarchy are not part of real life. It’s the massive divide social between haves and have nots that people rub up against every day. It’s going back 200 odd years where match sellers froze to death selling crap in the streets whilst the rich had beautiful horses and gardens that still attract crowds today.

@SenselessUbiquity

I grew up in the North West - not Wigan - but I recognise the gratuitous, constant nastiness that some places have.

I was depressed, it was depressing, adults who worked in universities and had educated friends told me that it was all somehow my fault that I was miserable and lonely and couldn't find anyone on my wavelength.

I don't live there now, but I am not a snob. I have lots of friends on my wavelength who don't work at universities or similar (or at all), but in some places it's possible to have a generosity of spirit, and in others, there is something about the place which means it just isn't.

Look here's a 3 bed house for 90k
www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/111757136#/?channel=RES_BUY

If you're one of the posters on this thread giving the OP a hard time, and you live in a place where a 3 bed house is 350k min - even better, if you have 90k equity in your house right now and could sell up and buy this one for cash - I challenge you to do so, move to Wigan, and prove the OP wrong. Then come on here and boast about your mortgage free lifestyle, enjoying the simple things, volunteering in the "community", and "looking for similarities" and so on. Go on. Try it. I dare you. If you don't fancy it - why ever not?

^ ^^ yes.

@FlowerFlour

I was going to guess Wigan when I first saw this thread!

I'm from a nearby town that has very similar social problems. The town centre goes: vape shop, nail bar, cheaper version of Poundland, Greggs, charity shop, pawn shop, BrightHouse. Most of the men in my family (and a few of the women) have been battered senseless on the street for 'looking at someone funny' or something equally innocuous. A person with a non-local accent would be taking their life in their hands by going into some of the pubs on a weekend night, I certainly never let my ex go on a night out there when we went back to visit my family; he would have been twatted for sure. I've seen many men get a severe kicking by a gang of others, or being glassed out of the blue; it is common. More people from my school went to prison than went to university. These places exist and they are grim shitholes.

There are no good, honest, working class jobs anymore; just zero hours contracts for the minimum wage. There is no local pride or chance for people to earn a decent living. Anyone who wants to make something of themselves leaves. The only ones left are the ones trapped by poverty and circumstance, so the toxicity becomes more concentrated and entrenched.

The government needs to invest more in local industry, in apprenticeships so young people can find skilled or semi skilled work that gives them a sense of satisfaction. But the government isn't arsed and is happy to let their citizens live these violent and poverty stricken existences, with low life expectancies and high rates of crime.

Yep. Then they compound it further by voting Tory.

Is this Aberdeen?

Wigan @sky

@OnenessWithAllStrife

Yes i am angry being stuck with racist, sexist shit bags. I am tired of people abusing pets, setting fire to cars, spitting out of upstairs rooms onto the street, walking around with their hands in the pants juggling their balls. Im fucking tired of street shouting and seeing smashed windows.

I am obviously just angry, if i look at it differently it will all go away. It must be me!
It's ok to smack your kids around the face, leave dog shit on the pavements, shout at foreigners, block all passages along the canal with boozed up aggressive men, to see trash piled sky high at the end of your street.

i evidently am the problem.

just fucking tell me you'd be ok with this.

It sounds horrendous

Perhaps this should make us all begin to wake up - the creation of an underclass ends up making life nastier for us all.