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??

It's nearby, but my post is not a criticism of Nottingham. I have friends in Sheffield, Greater Manchester and Chester who report similar. I think the positioning of a LOT of single person flats close to the town and right next to a residential estate hasn't helped. Most of the flats are a no go zone now.

@WoshPank you have a point. Many of the large scale town retail areas aren’t really going to be able to cope with the way people buy things now I know. But some or maybe many can, if the incentive is put there for smaller businesses? Idk.

A big element of this thread is about social cohesion, and how having shops and people out and about buying (even small) things has a knock on positive effect. Wish there was more to encourage that, and less isolation, getting everything plonked on your doorstep and not interacting with each other.

Oh no I understand, I was just wondering where it was, to be honest my first thought was Mansfield. I don't live in a particularly great area myself but I feel posh when I'm in Mansfield 😂

Retail is dead, and there's no going back imo.
The future of town centres is spaces for interaction. Restaurants, cafes, bars but maybe also concepts we haven't invented yet. Just as coworking spaces were a whole new concept.
What other meeting spaces could we create for our town centres that would be a brand new idea to fill a need?

Personally I have often thought (bear with me because I know it sounds crazy) maybe our modern lives could do with a whole new idea of: "rent a parent". Imagine a space where you could go and it would be like a cross between a church, a yherapy centre, a family home, and a community centre. Somewhere where people could just be and feel supported somehow by relaxing. Like a big massive living room. Maybe like pubs would have once been but without the alcohol. Maybe there could be like big huge armchairs you could pay to use (also subsidised passes) and the idea is you just go there with your book, or phone, and you engage in some activities. It could become like coworking spaces but for leisure time, and accessible to everyone

I really don't think that a decrease in physical shopping is creating so much social dysfunction in certain areas. The social dysfunction has grown in to the places, seemingly here in the past few years.

I think anyone who has witnessed this happen to their town will know what I mean. Everything becomes shady. You can walk for a few miles in any direction and all you will see is the same type of people. Why? I don't know. But it isn't due to a few shops closing, especially in our nature areas and waterways.

This is exactly how you get totalitarianism though. Actual real dissent-forbidden, no right of appeal, your individuality is worthless, type of totalitarianism.

Problems go on and on, and the same few people profit and profit. Things go so far and then a strong man cones along, whether he be Lenin or Hitler. He sorts things out, enough to appease a sizeable portion of the population, and if eggs get broken in the making of this omelette- hey, eggs were being broken anyway and all that was being made in that case was a mess.
It's not one bit surprising.
Though I hate to hear actual fascism being conflated with reasonable calls to sort things out.
Can sort things out before radical surgery

No, I must've had some form of PTSD when I first moved abroad as I feared groups of teens but there isn't antisocial behaviour here like that. It seems to be a UK problem.

and do you think the type of people in my OP would go there, or just trash it up?
It's a lovely idea, but only those of us in a certain social bracket would really use it. Gangs of pissed up men wouldn't really fit..
There is so much more to this than retail death. It isn't about what people do in a disused space, but more why so many people now fill these spaces with aggression, drugs and vandalism.
It reminds me of apocalypse fiction - the previous troubled outcasts rise up and take over. Sounds OTT until you see it.

It's just people being priced out of city centres is all.
These sorts of people have always been around, but they used to be in the cities and estates. Now that even bullshit parts of cities have been massively gentrified, they have been pushed out to market towns. Consider yourself luckily you've only just met them.

I doubt many of these people here have gone further than their own streets in their lifetime
You rarely see them at the train station. They don't gravitate out.

@Loulou599 I like your insights into our country and also your idea for social space. There's something in that.

Pubs are in decline here. I think that adds to a lot of animosity online. When communities met up together and had face to face discussion it was easier to see a person's point of view. You got to know people and have your own corners rounded off. Now people are in little silos in their own home, sending out for groceries, clothes, take away meals....people aren't so used to being humans out in society as they were.

Removing human rights from 5% of the population is not reasonable. It's fascist.

Pubs are in decline here. I think that adds to a lot of animosity online. When communities met up together and had face to face discussion it was easier to see a person's point of view

Part of this is due to govt policy in this country, alcohol duty in pubs. I read the other day that the average pint in a German pub was around €3.5 euros. It’s 7 bloody quid in a lot of places here.

It’s no wonder people sit at home on their own with a 4 pack from Tesco for five quid instead.

How people describe these places now are similar to what happened to a lot of northern industrial cities (Liverpool/Glasgow/Newcastle etc) and pit towns during Thatcher's reign of terror.

Some of those places are better off now than then after recovering from that era, but others who may have done okay with Thatcher are now really struggling. 40 years of neoliberalism has come home to roost The liberalism dream is dead.

Yes, and we are moving to Shropshire within the year!

Sure Start centres with practical parenting classes are exactly the sort of thing that was improving outcomes. Austerity killed it.

There's no irreversible change in the human condition that couldn't be influenced by a less cruel ideology in charge.

I don't know why councils want to keep grotty town centres going. They should be scrapped and the buildings used as residential places that the councils could rent out. Just have a couple of essential things like a mini supermarket, bus station, whatever. No more gangsta money laundering dives, Turkish barbers, nail places etc.

There needs to be places where drug addicts can go and do what they do in an environment away from ordinary people so the streets can be reclaimed. If you're going to get off your face, then you're required to do it in an appropriate setting. They can fight, spit, vomit, scream, swear, fall over etc. in such a place. Employ licensed bouncers to keep an eye on them and clear up the blood afterwards.

But far more than 5% of the population can't go out in their communities due to fear of violence, harassment, robbery etc. It's certainly affecting their human rights and they haven't done anything to deserve those restrictions.

How about yobs learn to behave themselves then their human rights won't be at risk? Too radical?

I think what we are seeing across western Europe and America is simply the decay of the end of capitalism.
Certainly I'm no hippie but I truly believe we have reached the apex of what capitalism can give us. And it has given us a lot. In many ways it has liberated us, it gave us social mobility and equal rights to the best of our capacity. It created an open floor for creativity and international exchange.
But now we need a new model because it has become the serpent that eats its own tail.
Political parties across the west are struggling because the old models like socialism won't work either.
We need a new concept for a new era, and maybe like with many revolutions we have seen some heads just roll.
Unfortunately it's possible that because we all have just enough now to keep us somewhat content, like "the underclass" as it was named earlier in the thread, a revolution might be stillborn.
In earlier times révolution came about due to desperation. But are the masses today feeling the same despair to the same degree?
Revolutions can only happen when people feel they have genuinely nothing to lose.
The problem is that with capitalism we are given just enough to make us feel we have everything to lose.

Echoing pp on councils, my local council put up parking charges and pedestrianised the town centre. It wasn’t exactly extremely popular before but people would nip into M&S etc. They made it much harder for someone to pop into town quickly the result was that a lot of people stop being arsed and there were nicer places to go anyway that were just a 15 minute drive away.

I think it’s the shift away from collective good to individual good tbh. Like keeping extremely disruptive children in school. You make sure that child has the best opportunity for an education as they probably don’t come from the best background but all that happens is you impair other kids learning and the feral one is no better off for being in school. We can’t deport asylum seekers who sexually assault or murder because their individual rights trump that of the rest of society.

I don’t think a lot of these people who are drug addicts or roaming around being aggressive to others are socially isolated at all. Given that many stagger around with friends I think it’s just that a) we have a worse drug problem than we acknowledge and b) theres a sub-culture that really is awful but there are no real consequences. It’s about minimising damage.

Amsterdam at one point sent a problem family to live in shipping containers really far away from town centre. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-09-10/yes-amsterdam-really-did-banish-an-entire-family-to-a-shipping-container-scum-village

The rich will never allow a revolution to take place. They'll crush the population before they go down that path.

George Orwell wrote in '1984' that hope lies in the proles rising up and causing a revolution, but he quickly realises it'll never happen because they lack the intellect, drive and are just happy consuming porn and drinking cheap alcohol. Sounds familiar? It's even less likely now that they're no longer receiving an education.

Capitalism (at least the Reagan/Thatcher version) died in 2008. Nothing has replaced it though and we limp on, it needs something bold. Instead we've only really had the old socialist ideas of Corbyn or Bernie Sanders which is too far the other way. Starmer or Biden dance around the sides with not much to offer and then you have your Trumps and Johnson's who spout populist rhetoric with no vision.

The Truss shambles showed the old system is dead, she basically tried to be Thatcher revisited.

I think what we are seeing across western Europe and America is simply the decay of the end of capitalism

I agree with this. It was always a one way street with a finite lifespan…and besides, the only place in nature that unrestrained growth occurs is mostly within parasites, invasive species or cancer. Go figure.

I think it’s the middle classes that usually lead the revolution and I suspect those people are too bloody tired to be kicking off.

True, but they won't want to leave their homes in case they're seized or trashed I suppose. We do have too much to lose.