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??

This is an interesting if very depressing thread. We moved from London to a south coast town two years ago. It’s not my home town, bit further along. I was shocked at the poverty and how run down it is. The shops are mostly charity ones, lots of food banks, loads of kids and families on Fsm’s and UC. It’s really sad and very chavy (not a snob, it’s a fact) Yet house prices and council tax are crazy expensive. No idea how we get out of this mess really.

Agree

We’re witnessing the breakdown of society, and it’s happening faster than predicted by experts back at the turn of the century. It’s really sad and depressing. I fear for the quality of life my DS will have. The carefree days will become fewer and further between. Those predictions included the creation of ghettos which will eventually lead to civil war. That seemed far-fetched 20+ years ago, but you can see it happening now, divisions of race & culture.

Well said.

This is so well articulated. When I was growing up in the 90s/00s it did seem there was at least some structure to society and safeguards when things went wrong. Now a very individualistic attitude pervades and people feel they can do whatever they want. It's a harmful attitude to wider society. There are many people who come from abroad who start of thinking that the UK is a structured society, soon find out it is a total free for all, and then also start treating the country like trash, the way they perceive the native population behaves. It is very depressing and I don't know how we pull back from the brink.

Hi Liz! I hear your book sales are not doing as well as you expected. Maybe not enough jokes?

Those predictions included the creation of ghettos which will eventually lead to civil war. That seemed far-fetched 20+ years ago, but you can see it happening now, divisions of race & culture.

Yes I think there will be civil war. Whether it will be between the haves and have-nots or a race war or a religious war I don’t know. Nor can I hazard a guess who will win.

My hometown has gone through a similar downward spiral. It used to be quite a nice place to socialise and to go shopping. Now most of the bars have closed and the same with the shops. it doesn’t feel safe anymore in the town centre as it’s full of druggies and homeless people and everyone bemoans the loss of what was once quite a vibrant place.

made me chuckle that one
Now lettuce play nice!

Not sure about her as a person. Her logic on the other hand made sense, would be great if elements of it were implemented, will never happen in the UK. The rich and higher earners would flock to a country that did though…

My town has slid dramatically over the years. It started when a huge shopping centre opened a few miles away, with free parking and incentivised rents. All the anchor retailers - M&S, Littlewoods, BHS, Sainsbury’s, McDonald’s, Next, Tesco - left within six months. Then the charity shops and pound shops moved in, to be followed by fried chicken joints, betting shops, vape shops and Turkish barbers. Nearly all the banks have gone, and the collapse of Wilko - the biggest store in town - was a sucker punch. It is now one of the most under-occupied high streets in Britain. My local council’s answer to this decline was to spend millions on ripping out the cobbled medieval market place and installing new paving, bollards and a bench statue to someone whom I’ve still never heard of. The market now has around three stallholders on Saturdays. It is pitiful. Instead, we do our weekend shopping in rural market towns where we drive a hour or more each way, pay £££ for parking and have to stalk returning shoppers for a parking space. Why? Because they have a huge selection of independent shops with goods it’s often just not possible to buy online, in pleasant surroundings, with super customer service, and often a thriving market. My council could support initiatives to replicate this but would rather spend £7m on paving slabs for a part of town which only hosts a Heron Foods, a pub where you can buy stolen legs of lamb and hosts karaoke at 4pm, and a charity shop. Ironically, the shopping centre which precipitated this decline is also on the slide - due to changing shopping habits, I’ve no doubt, as well as the collapse of Debenham’s, BHS et al - and has just opened its first charity shop. There’s no denying that shopping habits are changing, but it’s refreshing to see the market towns absolutely thriving. There is still a physical shopping market out there, and it’s not necessarily chain stores, but so many councils just seem to throw their hands up in desperation as if there’s nothing that they can do, either that or they honestly believe people will travel into a shabby town centre just to marvel at paving slabs.

I think this plays some part to explain why we are where we’re at. The attitude of the Johnson government was a major shift away from anything this country had seen before. Governments in the past respected institutions and law. Johnson’s message was to ignore the law during Covid, lie anbout pretty much everything , attack the judges, attack the police, then proroguing parliament illegally, threatening the BBC, ignoring international law etc etc.

I think it made a difference (on a subliminal level maybe) to people and to attitudes, to see those at the top of governments basically doing wtf they wanted to, whatever suits them.

The attitude is "where are the police, where are the council, where is the housing" instead of "where are the brothers, where are the neighbours, where is the society"

100%
I've a good friend who lives in an ok part of Plymouth, moans about litter "why don't you pick up the bits outside your own house? maybe get the neighbours to do similar, would only take a minute or two"

Her reply "No way, thats the councils job"

Same where i live in rural Cornwall, litter gets left "its the councils job"

We are to blame for the decline in towns, we voted for Austerity, voted for shitty public services.. voted to sell off utilities... all so we could get a fucking tax cut.

We still have several useful shops on our high street but as soon as one closes down, its taken by the ' turkish barbers' and the balkan mafia cafes....no customers and 200k motors all parked up outside day and night....
I spend 4 months a year in Barcelona, no fake barbers or mafia cafes, and only one boarded up shop in the centre i spotted last week.....online shopping and malls are not so prevalent...people go out each day to get bread..groceries....stop for a coffee and a cake etc....most towns in the uk are depressing now.

Oh boy, you really have drank the Kool Aid.

My local council’s answer to this decline was to spend millions on ripping out the cobbled medieval market place and installing new paving, bollards and a bench statue to someone whom I’ve still never heard of.

The destruction wrought by councils up and down the UK in the last eighty years puts the attemps of the Luftwaffe to shame.

The Johnson government felt like a door had been flung open - i think it appealed to those who loathed authority and co operation. The anti-intellectual cohort we discussed earlier were on fire!

A couple of friends who have taught in rough areas have noted similar - school and study to a lot of working class kids felt like a prison. They couldn't wait to get out. People who hold such beliefs aren't worrying about uni fees or the loss of libraries.
I think the Johnson government stoked the newly vocal anti intellectual trend, a very male oriented, entitled section of the population (beer? Yay! Junk food? More Yay!). They absolutely loved his 'endearing' inappropriatenesses, his thuggish racial gaffs, similarly to how a lot of American's cheered Trump for having the 'bottle' to stick it to the experts.

This is around the time I began to notice a lot more racist and anti-female comments on youtube, they must have felt like birds released.

It wasn't so much a tory versus labour thing, to my mind. More a celebration of bad lads behaviour and the corresponding lack of consequences. The focus on 'nationalism' often struck me as a smokescreen for something much more brutal and self serving.

Yep, our council ruined one of the most popular shopping streets in our town around 20 years ago! They decided to "traffic calm" it by removing all on street parking and putting chicanes and street furniture to discourage vehicles, then ripped up the old concrete paving slabs and replaced them with slippy slate slabs. Not only did they do all that, it took them months to do it, during which time the road was completely closed and pavements were ripped up for weeks at a time leaving very difficult access to the shops. Now it's completely dead except for the usual turkish barbers, dodgy cafe, nail and tattoo bars - at least 75% of the shops are boarded up and derelict. Well done council! Yes, it's safer for pedestrians now, but you alienated most of the shoppers and there's nothing there for the pedestrians to go for.

In another part of town, we also suffered Mary Portas who got some kind of grant to make part of the centre more suitable for pedestrians, street entertainers, etc., by basically cutting off one end of the road and putting loads of paving down to create a large "square". It's never been used for anything except the drunks and druggies yet caused lots of damage to the shops by making the road a dead end rather than a thoroughfare.

What works in a well heeled suburb of a major city (where there's good public transport, lots of people with spare cash and spare time, etc), doesn't work in a run down Northern mill town or run down seaside town with bugger all in the way of public transport and people with no money or no time! One size never fits all. Given the sheer number of town councils wrecking their town centres, there must be some kind of "blueprint" going around that may work for a few places but is completely useless and inappropriate for most!

This is an example of why nothing will change as we always have the " but what about so and so"

I thought disabled people had extra money as discussed on another thread to pay for extra costs.

Well I have to say from the outside but inside, as a foreigner who really loves this country of yours (and now mine): i was trying to figure out what makes the UK so unique in a bad and good way, and i think there is something about this place that is very pagan.
I don't mean that in a snooty way.
But there is a kind of feral nature to the people here that I haven't seen elsewhere in Europe. Its about tribalism. For example, of course we have accents in France too. But if you take just England, the range of accents is quite incredible. How can you go from a scouse accent to a Birmingham accent to a Manchester accent in such a small distance?
It ties in with the development of football too.
There is a strange tribalism to the UK.

At the same time, the country and people are socially/philosophically much more advanced in many ways. There are more ways of being a person in the UK, than in many countries in Europe IMO.For example, people hold up Scandinavia as an ideal. But I have known many Scandinavian expats who couldn't wait to escape the linear, flat nature of their society. Apparently there is a big "tall poppy" syndrome there.

The UK really is a strange place. I think that's why I always was drawn to it. It's quite a scary yet freeing place. I think what makes it terrible also makes it great but I can't put my finger on it.

@Alexandra2001 and the tax cuts are pointless because we have a society where they can add hundreds to your rent or mortgage's 'at a stroke' plus allow obscene profits in utilities without any controls.

God what a depressing read this thread is :(. We are lucky to live in a nice affluent town but locals moan about things on Facebook too - it could be a lot worse as you describe. Is it a worldwide problem? 🤷‍♀️ I know on our travels we’ve noticed big (negative) changes to cities we haven’t visited in 15/20 years such as San Francisco.

This is a really refreshing comment and interesting to read.

There is no magic money tree, the nhs and all else is paid for by growth ultimately. Lower tax, higher incentive. Example, lower corporation tax, it’s how Ireland attracted business.

As someone said upthread, Scandinavia is not some ideal country.

Unpalatable but true.

I'm verrrrrrrry pro public transport, and am lucky enough to live in a big city that's still buzzing and has a centre that people want to be in. The council have been able to restrict car access and charge a lot for parking, not least because there are multiple public transport options. It's not perfect by any means, but there are millions of people who can access it this way and lots clearly do.

But... this only works if you have an offering that people can get to, and find sufficiently attractive to bother. Both boxes have to be ticked, to make the town centre viable. When they aren't, people who'd have used them a couple of decades ago stop coming in, and there is a vacuum left to be filled.