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??

I agree in rest of the world I never see groups of unruly, rude and sometimes downright scary groups of teenagers ruling the roost like you do here across the country. In other countries children/teens are either far more mollycoddled or alternatively grow up much faster and have to work. Here we give them freedom but no rules.

The sheer scale of today's problem may be an unintended consequence but it is a consequence.

You may well be right, Mistress, but what to do about it?
The opiate problem is completely out of control and as far as I know there has been no effective way of stopping it.
Some countries in the Far East don’t have the problem but it’s only getting worse in many countries in the west.

It's a bit of a chicken and egg situation. What drives people to addiction? What allows drugs to be pretty readily available?

Hopelessness is a driving factor I think.

Capitalism focuses on money at all costs, the accumulation of it, the obtaining of it, the power having money confers etc. If dealing drugs is profitable a blind eye is turned because the goal is money.

I wonder if we will see complete collapse of society to be honest.

To the poster, your negativity it’s just overwhelming. Everything is conspiring to defile society in your eyes even the sound of the cars.
You’ve got a spiral going on take advice from your friends

Eh?

lol

It's a bit of a chicken and egg situation. What drives people to addiction? What allows drugs to be pretty readily available?
Hopelessness is a driving factor I think.

Yes I’m sure hopelessness is a driving factor but as you say, it’s a chicken and egg situation.
X says he drank because he lost his job and his wife left him….or did he lose his job and his wife left him because of his drinking.

If dealing drugs is profitable a blind eye is turned because the goal is money.
Maybe but countries have been trying to stop drugs entering because of the appalling damage wrought by them to society and the only people who benefit are the dealers and those running the cartels.
Drug use damages profitability as addicts are usually unemployable.
Capitalists countries like Singapore, Korea and Japan certainly don’t turn a blind eye to drug dealing.

As you can tell I'm pretty cynical which I acknowledged fully reflects the way my personal circumstances have dragged me into a pretty dark place.

You're not wrong that the countries you mention in particular are publicly very hard line when they get hold of drug dealers. However if that is a tip of an iceberg, how much goes on underneath?

Japan in particular has a strong gang culture with regard to drugs.

Another "industry" that is allowed to proliferate apparently is around sexual exploitation. The Internet has fueled that, particularly in the case of images of minors. Is it truly beyond the capability of law enforcement with access to technology to seek out the perpetrators and shut it down? Or again, are there people profiting both financially and serving their warped desires who are loath to truly protect the vulnerable because their selfish needs come first?

I know I'm being really dark here, but years of watching this all play out and apparently spiral out of control makes me wonder what the hell is going on.

It's as if we live in two worlds sometimes, the one where everybody is up in arms and determined on paper to improve things, but in reality everybody is too busy due to progress and trying to survive to actually do anything because stamping out serious criminality would upset the financial apple cart.

As Dirk Gently would say it appears everything is connected.....

This ain't going to be popular opinion here but we've got to start death sentencing drug dealers. Not just the damage done to lives of people addicted is ruined but also their kids who are neglected and victims of crimes like theft to fund the habit. Yes there are cartels in South America and fentanyl coming from china but it's supply and demand and I guarantee that demand will go right down if we start putting drug dealers out of their misery (I am not talking about teenagers who sell a bit of weed).
No way is it right that someone selling hard drugs should be coming out of prison after less than a year

You're not wrong that the countries you mention in particular are publicly very hard line when they get hold of drug dealers. However if that is a tip of an iceberg, how much goes on underneath?

I don’t know but I do know in the case of Singapore and Korea (I can’t speak for other countries in East Asia) drug taking is very frowned upon and if someone is caught they are ‘cancelled’.
The reaction is similar to what happens here is someone is exposed as a racist.
Sometimes actors are caught - a recent example being a brilliant Korean actor called Yoo Ah In. He was tested for cannabis on his return to Korea from America and traces are enough there to be arrested - he wasn’t found with anything on him. Then he was discovered to have illegally procured propofol from doctors.
He has lost everything and he hasn’t even been found guilty in a court of law yet.
He has lost all his drama/film roles and he’s even been edited out of a recent drama he made. Another film in which he starred has not been released.
This is what happens to celebrities who are caught taking drugs there. If an office worker or factory worker was caught they’d be out on their ear.
So there may be some ketamine in night clubs but I honestly don’t think there is an opiate endemic like in some countries in the west.

but in reality everybody is too busy due to progress and trying to survive to actually do anything because stamping out serious criminality would upset the financial apple cart.

Sorry, mistress, another question:
How would stamping out drug criminality upset the financial Apple cart for anyone other than drug dealers and cartel runners?

I think Jeremy Clarkson said something very telling on Top Gear once- they were talking to a bunch of Germans about people driving without licenses or insurance or tax etc- and to a man they all said 'but you can't do that- it's the law' - it simply didn't seem to enter their heads that people here did indeed do these things even though it's 'against the law' - a certain section of society (and it's not remotely linked to immigration etc) think that laws don't matter - take the consequences 'if' you get caught and a total lack of policing in all areas of life mean the likelihood of getting caught is way less than it was .. we have allowed the rise of the feral underclass . It's these people that then become dealers, Nick cars, deliberately cause crashes for cash insurance scams, they want the trappings of money but without being prepared to put the hours and effort in without instant big rewards..

Nail on the head. I remember seeing that episode and thought exactly the same. We seem to have lost our moral compass in the UK.

@taxguru I remember when we lived in Copenhagen being surprised that a member of Danish parliament was suspended for claiming 200 Euros on his expenses that he used for taking his wife out for a meal- I don't think it would even register here.

Because the supply chains are often embedded in "legitimate" businesses Because bribery and blackmail of people in authority is a thing. Because of money laundering. It's all a very complex Web. Because cut off one head, another two will grow.

So free market capitalism does not exist. A bastardized version operates globally.

Capitalism relies on selling a solution to, in the first instance, an identified need or problem, and convincing people to buy it. Psychological marketing tactics are big business, have been since Edward Bernays started working on it in the 20s and 30s. (Much to the delight of the Nazis who applied his methods to propaganda with great success).

Once a market is saturated, businesses need to get creative. They can do this by inventing a need that no-one thought they had, marketing it, and building on it.

Technology has aided greatly in this endeavour. Relax morals and standards, offer impossible dreams, make people desperate to "fit in" and voila, a never ending cycle of sucking "disposable income" out of the populous.

That's a very simplified version, but this is what's happening. And whether a commodity I'd legal, moral or necessary is irrelevant when the only goal is profit.

https://www.braintreeandwithamtimes.co.uk/news/24282577.braintree-lingard-fabrics-rayne-road-closes/?ref=socialflow&fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR0WntkqrmOYXts0NV8Xug9nwb5xRUZpU3LbLDtD9IvwPgnqz8-T0dpAV08_aem_ATaZFNiSfLmhMnsYJxPXYg-yjWtfXMay5V12ZmT9lXTrHtWSOZQnWPKH4Q7KOnLP814jHPz8mBbPS8dgQeho-MhP

I'm losing my teeth and gaining poorer and poorer health from many mouth abcesses, simply because there are NO NHS dentists for over 100 miles of where i live, and the private ones all wanting circa a thousand pounds per stub to remove whats left.. per tooth! I don't have that so am surviving on painkillers and soft food best I can, cant sleep , dont remember a day without pain in the last ten years and hate being out in public, it's humiliating. Cost of living and cutting of services are huge drivers for more people than you realise

I think people with good teeth do not understand that not having access to dentists does lead to teeth being taken out. Small preventative treatments at the dentists that used to be routine are now not happening for many people. So by the time they can see a dentist, tooth removal is often the only option.

Also the poster who said why are people not looking to their families and neighbours to sort out people who are falling through the cracks and to sort out their local environment?
This is an inevitable consequence of extreme individualism. You see it on here all the time. People generally think no one owes anyone anything except parents to child. Multiple posts about difficult elderly parents always have at least one comment about, just let them get on with it themselves, you do not owe them anything.
This is what individualism means. And this is what Thatcher ushered in with her uttering that there is no such thing as society.
The idea of a caring community who look out for each other with the state filling the gaps, is actually a left wing one, much more traditionally Labour. During Thatcher when industrial heartlands were being destroyed, people were told to move to where there are jobs. Their protestation about being part of a community was jeered and ignored. They were told communities do not matter.
This all has consequences. If you only value what makes money, it has a negative impact on the wider social fabric.

Multiple posts about difficult elderly parents always have at least one comment about, just let them get on with it themselves, you do not owe them anything

Go and educate yourself by reading the elderly parents board.

I know I’m on thin ice here but society seems to be moving toward the complete destruction of community and family groups altogether.

In the similar vein to elderly parents, posters sneer at anyone who has more than 2 children, and are fiercely defensive of older parents and only children. That’s fine, but in the next breath they’re complaining about being isolated, having no village to help with their child(ren), how they have no wider family to visit at Christmas. I feel like saying what do you think you’re setting your child up with then? Somebody has to put in the child rearing effort to create the big family network you want, if you can’t be bothered then why should anybody else?

I had my first in my mid 20s and I’m very aware some of my friends (middle class professional types) were secretly a bit amused by the whole thing, they clearly thought I was absolutely mad and made a lot of jokes about how my life was over. Well fast forward 6 years and they’re not laughing any more, many of them are now in their 30s, single and internet dating like mad with absolutely no luck because all the decent men were snapped up long ago.

There's a theory that heroin was allowed to be infiltrated cheaply into our inner cities after the 1981 riots (Brixton/Toxteth et al) to sedate the angry working class.

Similar theory in America in the 80s with crack in the black neigbourhoods.

"Bread and circuses" indeed. It's a thing. Sadly.

I’m not sure if it’s been mentioned yet but I think it’s worth pointing out that we have, per capita, a fairly low amount of police compared to other similar European countries, around 30% less or more. This cannot help when it comes to antisocial behaviour and crime, both low or high level.

Theresa May is directly responsible for some of that imbalance.
The old mantra of public servants = bad, small state = good…

So now shoplifters just walk into Tesco and fill a rucksack, knowing there isn’t the manpower for any kind of response. I was talking to the lovely people on the till in my local one about it the other day, they are powerless and have been told not to intervene.

Here’s a picture of our police numbers vs other European countries, doesn’t exactly tally with all the stats I’ve seen but the figures are roughly correct.