To feel so sad about what happened to our town?

[AbstractThought]

I wasn't born here, DH was, and I have seen it discussed on MN in the past. I am aware that many towns across the UK are in a similar situation, so this probably isn't anything special, but since most people talk about shop closures I wanted to look at it from a different angle.

In the past decade we have a ton more issues in the town than previously, often relating to homelessness and addiction, and the town centre, what's left of it, has become completely over run by these problems with groups of people fighting and street drinking. A lot of these people are in extreme difficulty, whether mental health related and/or drug issues. Crime shot through the roof, and even about 8 streets away from this it spills outwards to us in what was once a fairly quiet place to live.
We now have a constant stream of siren noise, day and night, helicopters are daily and whilst we personally haven't felt in any actual danger there is a horrible sense of decay and hopelessness. Just nipping to the closest supermarket is depressing, there are a lot of neglected animals and people having meltdowns in the streets.

It is how it changed so quickly though. I can't get my head around where it all started or why. I am aware of the contribution of politics, covid, all of that stuff, but it seems so incredibly extreme. The siren noise is the worst, it is piercing and never seems to end. This also seemed to explode around the same time as the area went downhill. Probably a mix of police and emergency vehicles. It is difficult to work or relax at home and if you are a light sleeper it can have an impact there too.

What I am wondering is if this is commonplace now, in what was once a thriving town? It is the sheer amount of troubled people which seems to have escalated the most, and I can't get my head around how this has evolved, in such a short space of time. It is like they weren't here, then suddenly appeared, it is difficult to describe it. Obviously the council can't do a great deal to help and I have no idea what the answer is. The most upsetting thing is that a lot of these people are so messed up that they can barely talk in a way that is decipherable. This includes children, and there is a growing amount of people who have barely any teeth. This is a fucking severe problem and I have no idea what will help it. We have mucked in with a few local charities but it barely scratches the surface in my opinion.
We are moving due to work relocation soon, so whilst it may not be 'our' problem after we have gone, this isn't the point. I am just so sorry that it has come to this, in likely even more places than just here. WTF happened??

@JamSandle those people still feel a sense of investment in society.
We are talking about people who would not be able to navigate moving or immigrating.

I'd call the Mail and Express 'working class tory done good'. The more conservative old school curtain twitchers
I am more concerned about how our tabloids absolutely DO exploit the less educated, more insular citizens, those less likely to have travelled, live in less diverse areas, less likely to have worked overseas or studied beyond high school - pretty much an older more traditional leaning generation. None of the tabloids support an underclass, but make a lot of fun and repulsive pokes at them to entertain their target audience.

The tabloids rely on knee jerk, emotion responses every time. Not a great source of information.

It's 50x stronger than heroin and instantly addictive, easy to get on the street in America. The trafficking of it is increasing exponentially worldwide.

Dr Gupta explains the global risk
https://news.sky.com/story/the-million-dollar-streets-strewn-with-bodies-contorted-by-the-effects-of-fentanyl-12871961

I'm really scared of this drug and we've lived through the heroin era - if it catches hold it's going to be far, far worse

Also it is so cheap to manufacture that a lot of people overdose because the dealers use it to bulk out other drugs.

That is the biggest problem

I thought fentanyl was already here?

I have this horrible vision of further ghettoisation, towns strewn across the country heaving with drug and related health problems, largely out of reach of useful services. Anyone who can will leave. It never had to come to this.

I don't know how it can be avoided or fixed, now. As a country we are all so very different in our beliefs and approaches. Politics in any form seems to have no idea. Nor do they seem to care. We go around in circles voting left or right or something inbetween yet nothing ever changes. It grows worse. No one is prepared to tackle it. No one bursts through with ideas that won't harm at good chunk of the population.

Definitely this idea

So much fly tipping as well

@AbstractThought Ha- I can feel a lot of daily mail reading women bristling at the fact they are working class Tory done good!!

Rough doesn't always correlate with 'poor' here, the worst streets are heaving with litter and household rubbish. Bins are overloaded and left behind. Some of the bins are becoming a safety hazard. I am talking two vehicle families/couples with dogs, holidays, etc. There's definitely a contingent who don't give a shit, who shout and create disturbance constantly. It isn't economic in this example, more like a 'poverty of care'.

Such a mess of so many interlinked problems, chickens have now come home to roost, it’s hard to know where to start. If I had to pick one word to sum it up, it would be hopelessness. Hopelessness for an increasing number of young and the less affluent.

I think a large part of this in the young, and the reason they just don’t care anymore is that getting (even renting) a place is so desperately expensive, ditto running a car. Late 80s aged 17 I left home, got what would be now a MW job and soon after rented a flat with some friends. I ran a cheap crap car, and could afford to go out and enjoy myself a couple of times a week in the pub or club. It was tight, sure, but doable. So actually working, even a crap job bought you some real independence, and fun and it was worthwhile.

Other friends went to uni to get a degree, but without the horrendous debt one is now burdened with.

Both of those have got to be nigh on impossible with rents and other costs/debts these days, (unless you have rich family to help) so more and more young adults think fuvk it, might as well go and get wasted, cause some aggro, some might start knocking out 20 bags of weed and Charlie instead, because there’s no hope of much better coming along, and it’s more exciting than sitting staring at the wall all day at your parents where you’re probably going to be stuck, if you’re lucky.

There are many other factors at play too, but I think (lack of) affordability with housing and the cost life in general is a large part of it. More affordable social housing and rent controls might help. Property and rents are now out of the reach of so many, especially the younger so many are giving up caring anymore. I probably would if I was 16 again and looking at my options.

Some of that is probably simplistic and I’m not claiming that this is the entire cause of the demise, I’ll probably get flamed now, but I do think the prospects of achieving much for the younger generations (unless they have family support) is looking more and more bleak by the minute.

My town centre is the same. Some of it is Covid. We had a lot of offices just outside the centre so during lunch breaks etc people would pop in to get things from shops, supermarkets and cafes but a lot of them started working from home so the footfall went down.
Now it’s empty shops, drug users and homeless people. There is a couple of areas that are nice, including a street that is all independent shops, but the rest is crap.

I think a lot of the problem is a lack of shame. People in the past were poor but they looked after their houses and local area.

I was in Germany a couple of weeks ago in a small city. It was heaving. Every shop unit full, cafes busy, people properly dressed (ie actual clothes not pyjamas). There was a visible police presence. We saw one man running down the street and someone else running after him shouting to stop him. A couple of by standers tackled him. I went into a shop, bought something and came back out by which time the police had arrived and removed him. Yes there was homelessness, especially around the train station, and there was graffiti, but no litter.

We are all WC to a point, unless connected to generations of one traditional class structure.
Most born since WW2 moved up via education and access to culture, becoming professors, doctors, lawyers. I was born middle class but my heritage goes back to WC, even if that is a great grandparent. Many wealthy 'working' people in the north especially made good from the industrial revolution, yet were from more modest backgrounds prior to that.

I did a lot of research into Beatrix Potter at uni, a similar case there - humble northern grandparents with her father making wealth down south. Beatrix born securely MC.

Tabloids are a muddle though, in reality you can only make assumptions about readership.

On another note a woman I know is really struggling with her little boy (I teach in his school). She has been given a place on a parenting class but it’s online. She doesn’t have WiFi at home, her phone data plan isn’t anything like enough to handle a 2 hour video call. It’s in the evening so the library is shut. She can’t do it. Moreover if it had been in a community centre or local hall then she would have the chance to meet other parents and get some contact.

I will presume it's a minority (although I don't know) but it seems a lot of people are being left behind. You would hope that something like this could be resolved easy enough by the school/council providing her with a temporary device.

We do need a renaissance of 'human contact'.

I wonder how this works in other European countries? It isn't something I have looked into really.

But that kind of is left vs right. Left being localism. Proper left that is, not Blair and now Starmer’s centre right left 🙄

@AbstractThought

Yes definitely similar in my family

Newcastle's city centre square set to become "a foodie paradise"
https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/news-opinion/a-foodie-paradise-newcastle-city-29058340?utm_source=app

Princess Square- it is forgotten now. No one goes there.

There has been a decline in the value of a family unit as well.

on the drug front, every other TV program I watch has scene of drug use as if it was normal and expected. It’s being normalised! If only people knew the devastation they are causing by taking drugs, not only to their own bodies, but indirectly to countries producing the stuff! I wish there was more education about it.

The revolution...Well, its great that that happened

LouLou if you think it was great that the French Revolution happened when it did, do you think it would be great if it happened today (in UK, obvs.)?

i for one am not in the mood for another Robespierre!

There was a thread a while ago on whether people should look after their parents. To me it's a no brainer - yes. Unless your parent has been truly awful to you. But they are your parents. Who else is going to do it? Same with kids. Who else is going to look after them? Pets. You've got to walk your own dog. A slide in people accepting responsibility

I have decided i wont be doing personal care for my elderly mother................because of the way carers are treated in this country @MistressoftheDarkSide has already mentioned it on this thread. Perhaps you missed it. Too many people expect others women to give up their lives to care with no reparation and then they get called scroungers or worse for doing so. There is no respect only derision. And then when the caring is over the attitude is "so what have you been doing for the last few years" If the state wants to treat carers like shit (along with the public cheering them on) then the state can do it.......oh and while im at it

There are several threads running on MN at the moment about the carers allowance scandal and how family carers are treated. The NHS workers are conspicuous by their abscence. Its like tumbleweed. Yet post a thread about how can we improve the NHS and its like a klaxon has gone off and the health workers on here (not all of them but a good amount of them) are lining up to patient blame and moan about how families arent doing enough yet post a thread about how family carers are being treated re CA and they couldnt give less of a shit!
despite the support they got during the strikes. Would that be reciprocated if family carers went on strike?!

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/ami_being_unreasonable/5048517-to-bring-your-attention-to-the-carers-benefit-fraud-scandal?page=1

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/chat/5045433-carers-allowance-and-benefit-fraud?reply=134540759

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/ami_being_unreasonable/5049094-to-think-the-carers-allowance-scandal-shows-the-uncaringness-of-the-dwp#:~:text=The%20pressure%20on%20the%20prime,a%20few%20pounds%20a%20week. The threads are nowhere near as long as the NHS ones are either

If this is about 'managed decline' and wealth extraction, where will it leave large parts of the UK?

Earlier in the thread a pp laughed at me for saying that I felt so hopeful in the late 90's. I was very young, but I think my point was that I didn't feel such hopelessness, confusion and anger in my fellow citizens. Now I do, and it's difficult to put into words. It's a feeling of unpredictability and chaos and cynicism. It isn't surprising, but it's very sad.

@AbstractThought the feeling of the nineties is hope. Loads of people have said that, it was not just about you being very young.

Nah you're not unreasonable in feeling that, it's definitely a thing. I was only a baby/ very young child in the 90s but I remember vividly that life was better and people in general were more connected, way more of a community feel. There used to be loads and loads of small/ independent businesses, pleasant areas made just for the public, people talked to each other more. Now a lot of our wealth has been siphened off to the few extremely wealthy, quite a few of them aren't even in this country so there's no chance they'll even spend it in our economy. People.spend all their measley pay on property and have nothing left to actually upkeep it or go out. Meanwhile we've had unprecedented immigration while our austerity-starved public services are crumbling. It's so sad, I feel really sorry for people who live in areas that are feeling it worst.

Really? The vast majority of all the sixth formers in my kids various schools have gone to uni. Problem is degrees are ten a penny now if most ppl have one and getting a 2.2 isn’t the same as it used to be, when just having a degree set you apart.

A lot of 'nice' areas around here are starting to look dog eared to be honest.
Places that locals consider desirable. There's an air of something depressing all around. I notice it when I travel out to see family or friends.