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??

You're blaming poverty alone, as though being poor means you're destined to end up drunk on the street roaring.
I'm saying, informed by my own experience that, that that's not necessarily so and I've given social reasons that have been protective.

I will say that the correct interventions can work wonders though. A good example is Glasgow, which had a tragically high youth knife violence rate in the late 90s and early 2000s:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-45572691

For those who are saying that both parents working has a big impact on society, I agree and I also think that daycare really sets children up for mental health issues and often poor behaviour. It's unnatural for both the mother and the child.

The thing is that stay at home mums were far more common but now are rare. This can be isolating for the mums of today who do stay at home. No longer is it a common thing to see your neighbours doing it and forming your own community circles because they go back to work.

Capitalism has destroyed our culture and values, but every time we cheer the erosion on bit by bit for this idea of "progress". We are not enlightened or benefited, but the rich are.

Absolutely absurd to compare UK towns to what is obviously a tourist area of India and relatively safe compared to the many villages, towns and cities there riddled with beggars, people living in shanty housing and crime including women being raped on a minutely basis. Try harder.

Oh actually you're right, some of the alcoholic middle class sometimes drive into town to knock about with the smack heads. 🙄

Do you really think the kind of people we are talking about come from well adjusted backgrounds with plenty of support? I imagine you might not have experienced much of what we have been talking about on this thread.

Not everyone's situation is a choice. The government are happy to tacitly let you believe that the people who approach you coming out of train stations begging for money chpose to do it. It must be a choice, right? You made all the right choices in life which is why you don't have to do it, isn't that right? Keep telling yourself it..

Having to work from 5am to 11pm should not be lauded as a great way to be living or considered the norm.

You seem to have a very weird and quite aggressive reaction to many posters.
This thread has been really fascinating in how we have been throwing ideas around and free flowing across quite a few different themes, from town planning and sociology to history and politics.
You are bringing down the tone by giving us the same one-note solutions we have heard bandied around since circa 2016 and the Brexit days. "Government bad" isn't a particularly interesting line of inquiry, and I'd normally let it slide but you've laid in to quite a few posters here who have offered up food for thought.
Please do better.

Absolutely absurd to compare UK towns to what is obviously a tourist area of India and relatively safe compared to the many villages, towns and cities there riddled with beggars, people living in shanty housing and crime including women being raped on a minutely basis. Try harder.

Please don't get all bunfighty, make your point in a less hostile way or a very interesting thread is going to be derailed.

I don't think you can compare the situation in run down towns in the UK to places like Asia in this way.

People there may well be working hard to make a living on the streets but in the UK you can't just open up a food stall and start trading - you pay for licenses, need insurances, need cooking facilities deemed suitable by environmental health and so on, not to mention capital to buy produce.

If you started trying to repair tyres on a car park, the council would turf you off in seconds, not to mention cars these days require specialist spares.

If someone homeless knocked on your door and offered to work, how many people would be suspicious and report them rather than applauding there entrepreneurial gumption?

I understand your point about attitude but I think it's disingenuous to suggest that it is possible to support oneself in the UK without the stability of a home and capital already behind you. You have to be employed by someone, and if you are not suitable, you have few other options without some kind of support or initiative. These things are few and far between, in fact just as Rishi announced his plan to get the "lead swinging disabled" into work, it was revealed just such a scheme had just been axed.

There is a complexity here which is overlooked because it is counter intuitive and frustrating to hear the "just do anything" to survive rhetoric when if you do, you might end up criminalised for it.

Quite often we get stories in our local rag about buskers being moved on or fined for their anti-social behaviour of using their talents to get money. They're in the wrong place They don't have a license. They are using an amp and are too loud. People don't like their music But they were trying, Godammit.

Now your counter argument may veer into negative mindset territory much beloved by the MLM crowd. It's not a dodgy pyramid scheme, it's an opportunity and if people don't want what you're peddling you're just doing it wrong. It's not that the products are over-priced and in the case if the "health related" ones possibly downright dangerous, it's that you're not trying hard enough to flood social media with false advertising or doing enough parties or whatever, it's your "mindset" that's the problem

I'm bringing MLMs up because they are in there with "available jobs" and target women in particular with promises of riches that depend on recruiting other people into a costly cycle of misery.

Things have gone very, very wrong in many areas - it is complex and some people are not able to just get on-line or utilise the wonderful technology etc.

Sorry, I could rant for hours about this but my Dad needs a cup if tea and his breakfast and I've overslept, so I must go into dutiful daughter mode.

I have contributed various points, if you go back more than 2 pages. Many people are making good points but it is disappointing when the problem of poverty in a first world country is waved away as 'some people make bad choices'.

If it is 'bunfighty' to defend the horrendous poverty on our doorsteps then hand me the heavy éclairs.

I'm priming a couple of stale doughnuts 😘😘😘

I didn't make the correct choices. My parents did, despite being poor and not particularly educated, as did most of the others in our area. That made it easy for me to grow up well and make the correct choices in my turn.
I think we're agreeing on the whole. Vicious/virtuous cycles continue.

Where I disagree is that it's some sort of built in consequence of being poor, it's not, so stop conflating having a low paid job with being an ineffective parent. Its not poverty alone, there's something cultural/societal that causes parents to make the wrong choices and lack of money means you can't mitigate the consequences to the same extent and its therefore more visible.
People arguing for more state supports are arguing for mitigating the visible effects but not getting to the root of dysfunctional families and communities.

Things seem to be getting worse, on a family and community level and the consequences are much more visible. There's always been poverty so its something else that's changed.

It's 100% culture. Britain used to have a very Christian culture where strong families were encouraged and Christian values such as kindness, care for others and responsibility for oneself were ingrained. That was disparaged and a culture of selfishness took hold in the sixties (way before the eighties as some seem to think). I actually think it goes back to the war and a reaction against that.

If it is 'bunfighty' to defend the horrendous poverty on our doorsteps then hand me the heavy éclairs.

You can defend poverty and offer your ideas without calling other people's viewpoints absurd, rolling your eyes at them and telling them to "try harder".

Anyway enough derailing, I'm genuinely interested in all the thoughts on this thread.

The collapse of religion has created many problems.
Therapy has stepped in to replace the void left by spirituality.
But where spirituality connects us to a greater whole, therapy connects us to the self

I would suggest that our culture has become capitalism pure and simple. The things you mention that have declined are simply monetized and used as leverage. Look at tele-evangelists in the States. Rich as Croesus because their congregations, often poor, hand over money cos God says so.

And ultimately whatever your situation or problem, there's an app for that. Free to download but for the full tantalising experience please make these in app purchases.. ..

It's 100% culture. Britain used to have a very Christian culture where strong families were encouraged and Christian values such as kindness, care for others and responsibility for oneself were ingrained. That was disparaged and a culture of selfishness took hold in the sixties (way before the eighties as some seem to think). I actually think it goes back to the war and a reaction against that.

I think there's something in this, and not just in the UK but eg the US. If you read say Little Women (and granted that is fiction, and pretty sacharine), their aspirations were to be good, kind, unselfish, serve others etc. Now it's all live your best life, have your own boundaries, the focus has completely shifted. I'm not saying it's 100% bad even but obiously there are consequences on a societal level if people's priorities shift away from serving others and the collective good, to a focus on what is best for them.

With parenting, I think there used to be much more of a focus on discipline as parents would feel shamed and shown up by a misbehaving child. Again, I'm not saying the changes there have been 100% negative as clearly there's more understanding about SEN etc but again on a societal level the move away from essentially training children into good behaviour and consideration will be felt.

I think we're dealing with a huge mix of things both local and global relating to society, the economy, mass immigration etc. UK-specific we've got quite bad antisocial behaviour and the impact of austerity and Brexit, but the US certainly seems to be having plenty of it's own issues - plenty of youtube videos about the mass, open drug problems in various cities, the huge homelessness problems etc. In Europe (including Ireland) there appears to be rising tension relating to immigration.

Overall it feels quite negative and fraught, and there's no sense of an easy answer or that any good times might return any time soon either.

I'm uneasy about bemoaning the decline of religion. It's a bit of a tangential issue because religion was essentially politics before politics. Churches wielded huge power and ruled by fear. It was a means of keeping people in their place and encouraged community via the idea you would be shunned and punished not just by beardy Big Daddy in the sky, but the humans around you claiming to act in his name.

Pregnant outside of marriage? You're tainted. We take your baby and give it to suitable parents. You were raped? You obviously led the man astray. Your husband hits you? Well why aren't you submitting to his authority correctly?

Things like this underpin religion.

Spirituality on the other hand, we'll, that's different and labelled delusional unless you're feeling your chakras and flogging crystals mined by child labour. (And I'm on the woo side myself).

It's interesting that Jesus (if he existed as one person) didn't set up his own church. I wonder why that is?

I don't feel like religion has gone away, I just think it's being replaced. I've felt for a while that certain beliefs of the progressive US left, that then get exported, are akin to a new religion.

Like everything, changes bring upsides and downsides. Loss of religion = a less judgemental society but also a society with worsened behavioural norms.

In defence of (some!) state services, immigration is completely out of control. When you have services to look after the most vulnerable, then expected to look after 100 times or more the number of people, rapidly increasing daily, someone has to pay for it or the general service will reduce at best.

There is no political will to curb it, because in the main, society doesn’t want to change it. It irritates me a little, as people demand more social housing. It’s being built, but those that get it are often not from the UK. More help is needed for addicts, well yes but more and more are arriving all the time, what do you do, build addict towns? There are no magical wands to waft around, which is what it would take to fit support and manage the amount of economically inactive and vulnerable people in a small country with sea borders. If nothing else, even if the money is thrown at it, there isn’t enough staff or people prepared to manage it. So here is your result and it’s going to get a lot worse.

But are the behavioural norms worse or are they just more exposed? People have hidden behind religion while perpetrating awful abuse behind closed doors. They have justified it as their interpretation of God's work. Priests have gone against the teaching of Jesus who said (sic) not to harm one hair on the head of a child.

If every religious person simply followed the good bits, we'd be fine. But human nature being what it is, that doesn't happen.

Interestingly there is a resurgence in evangelical Christianity at the moment, especially in theUS. Al Jazeera had a couple of videos about "Praying for Armageddon". Religious zealots who do have the ears of people in power are all over the war in Gaza because of ancient prophecies that say Jesus will return if the temple can be rebuilt etc. They're hanging out for the Rapture. I shit you not.

This is a very good indicator of worldwide instability and fear - we can't make things better (or more accurately the people in power don't want to) so we'll turn back to God. If that isn't denial if personal responsibility I don't know what is

Most of the people executed by the guillotine were the political opponents of the people currently in power ( it changed pretty rapidly). The vast majority were either members of the middle class who were perceived as being slightly richer than their local customers, or who had just picked the ‘ wrong’ side. The aristocrats and the very rich mainly got out in time . Nearly all the leaders of the Revolution ( Danton , Robespierre even the bloke who wrote the Marseillais) ended up on the scaffold. When Napoleon appeared they were gasping for some stability ….

oh and Nuns. They seem to get it no matter who was in power.

Holding them to account isn't removing their human rights. Yes they need education, jobs etc. but many of this type have jobs and cars and houses. They're still making people's lives a misery though.

The aristocrats and the very rich mainly got out in time.

That’s very interesting and it’s what would happen if revolution broke out here. The very rich would jump in their jets and off they go.
Re the aristocracy - there are still plenty of rich ones but how many have substantial assets abroad? Their escape might be similar to the Russian revolution in that they’d grab what they could carry in the form of jewellery and paintings if they had any.
Would the less well off ones be guillotined because they’re ‘posh’? Probably.
There are plenty of posters on mn for who ‘posh’ is the worst insult.
I guess the same would happen to the better off middle classes - as you describe in the French Revolution.