To just be so, so fed up of where I live:(

[GenuineRocks]

It wasn't so bad previously but really changed over the past 6 years or so. I grew up on a farm in on the edge of town and it felt like such a different world. Moved away after uni and only came back to assist when our parents were ill, and managed to get stuck here after.

It feels awful to see what was once a decent place go so much downhill. I don't even recognise the people, it is like another world, just so angry and loud and quite violent. What was once my closest town centre has become a drug infested hell hole, and the crime rate is climbing rapidly.

But what is most depressing is the vibe, everywhere outdoors is miserable, and I am not exaggerating. Constant sirens (only in the past few yrs) and police. Extremely loud, aggressive sounding vehicles, shouting and screaming in public, litter and shit everywhere.

I used to blame government for this kind of thing, policy, etc. But I don't know now. I see a growing culture of entitlement and selfishness all around. Maybe it's just this place? Of course the town centre died, like many have, but the trouble and violence that is visible is quite new here. It isn't all poverty, in fact it is a high rent area, and yet people really don't care.

I feel so depressed about this, yet know it is pointless. Life goes on and it isn't worth worrying about. Live and let live. But until we move, it has affected me to some extent, and even our own street has changed in the past few yrs.
It's like an alien place, that I don't recognise.
I long to be out of it, but reading some other posts I see this is common in many places.

I suppose it just got too much this past month, we have a new business opened in the street that revs all day, and how someone thought this was ok to go ahead I have no idea. Most of the original neighbours moved, and there is so much pet neglect , dog shit and litter here it feels hopeless.

Just fed up.

@FlowersOfSulphur I do agree but I sometimes wonder if some of the lack of courtesy, opening doors, giving up seats etc has been caused by the loud few who called it condescending and patronising (how dare you offer me a seat, I’m quite capable of opening a door! Etc). It became quite the hot bed whether to proffer a kind act. Like most things, they start small then blow up.

Do you think anti social behaviour was as bad then @SallyWD

Only a fool would say there has never been anti social behaviour until now but there is something more threatening about it now and, importantly, the will of decent people to challenge it has gone.

Were ordinary schols seeing the same levels of knife crime, excuses for appalling behaviour then as now. Yes, there was some but not at the levels it is now.

There is a complete lack of respect for authority now-idiots coming along and saying , yeah but they have to earn it.

No, they don't-by virtue of their posisiton-teacher, police officer, judge, rail guard, park keeper (none of them left) people have to respect the authority that has been invested in them.

I haven't done a survey but it seems to me the more cause someone has for not respecting authority, they more they whine about authority figures having to earn it.

It truly is all bollocks.

I'll go further, if you send your aggressive disrespectful child to school and the school throws him out then he is your problem. It is not up to the state to find a solution. It is better he is out and the other 29 kids in the class get an education. His being chucked out is for the greater good.

Let that set the tone for the rest of society. Shit on society and then no-one gives a shit about you, We need to get back to the idea of the Greater Good.

We all know that a good lump of people, many on this board, want excuses after excuses to spare their behaviour and then have the temerity to suggest that society should accommodate them.

The slogan should be Fit in or Fuck Off Behave as the rest of society expects or you are not part of it..

Of course, it will never happen.

How do I know that.?For one thing, for the amount of outraged or patronising responses my post will bring.

You say that as if it’s a good thing and not an indicator of damaging societal inequality.

The first mean comment I got on mumsnet was someone saying I was a weirdo for saying I loved my job working with the elderly.
Imagine being that rude about any other demographic, you just wouldn't.
The elderly can be awful, but that's because they were awful people, not because of their age.
And quite honestly I really don't blame a lot of elderly people for the times they can be rude, the pain the body can be in once its starting to age is unbelievable for many of them.
I can't imagine I'd be cheery all the time struggling to do things even a few years earlier I had no issues doing etc.
The elderly have it tough.
I was very lucky though, I got to care for people who were edwardians and they gave me some phenomenal stories.
I could write a book on the tales I've been told from these people.
My very favourite was a lady who told me during ww2 during rations, if a child in the street had a birthday the neighbours would club all their eggs and butter together so the child would have a cake and then the other children in the street would get a slice of cake.
For some reason it's always stuck with me, how in those times people really did look out for one another. I'm sure I'm romanticising it, but the idea if knowing it's wee Henry's birthday, let's all chip in to make him a cake, something beautiful about that.

I don't have DCs and no I definitely wouldn't spend my money painting the outside of someone else's property.

Honestly have noticed no changes in my area (south east, rural). It’s a fairly wealthy district on average but I’m sure there are also a fair amount of people who live close to the poverty line.

We get the occasional bit of fly tipping in the countryside, a few van break-ins and teenagers in local villages upsetting people by zooming around on electric scooters or leaving rubbish behind, but generally speaking people are polite and look out for one another, even strangers.

It may be worth you looking at moving and trying another area.

I think some of it is what you choose to focus on

Thatcher is where it all started - she destroyed communties and she destroyed the idea of community. She wanted a self-self-self nation.

But, yes, that was a violent time as well. One of the biggest causes of violence and crime is poverty. Look at the riots the other week, all the inner-city rioting were in areas of high poverty. Same in 1981. People aren't rioting in the leafy suburbs.

I think that opinion tends to come from a relatively privileged position.
My own home town is a completely different place to what it was growing up and it is In Your Face. So I can push it out of mind and focus on other things until the cows come home, but it would take delusional levels of looking the other way to manage not to notice or be sad about it.

@JaneEyreLaughing
Not from me!

Your parents' generation, aka my generation, had to work very hard to afford the deposit and monthly payments for their £50,000 house. Don't forget that salaries were much lower then, too. Repossessions were at their peak in the early nineties as was negative equity. Many of us are still helping our adult children for much longer and in a way that would not have happened in ourowngeneration. In addition to all this, many of us are lucky enough to have our own parents living much longer than in the past, so we are trying our best to help them. What makes you think that every person in that generation has become greedy landlords and accrued vast amounts of wealth? Many, many older people have never been in a position to buy their own home and will be renting until the day they die. The oldest boomers were born when there was still rationing and houses were in short supply so lived in cramped, slum conditions. By the time I was born (mid sixties), there was much more optimism and prosperity - for some. Continental holidays were coming in, but were very expensive so most people had a week's holiday in the UK if they were lucky.

This is the quote I originally had at the top of my post and to which I was replying, but it somehow seemed to get lost in the ether!

I actually think the anti social behaviour was as bad then. I grew up in a very deprived place and am quite traumatised by things that happened in my community. Two people I knew were murdered, another person I knew attacked someone with a machete, another guy I knew hid in a very old lady's house for a day then raped her. Several fruends comitted suicide. A man I knew had a breakdown and burnt his house down, killing himself and his mother. A friend's mum disappeared and her skull was found outside our school. Writing this all down, it sounds made up but all these things genuinely happened. I was also beaten up several times as a teenager by strangers. There were a lot of people with serious mental health problems and drug addiction in my area.

Wow that’s awful…@SallyWD

Are you from the Glasgow area by any chance? Just wondering because some of this was similar to what I grew up with.

When people speak of stabbing as some kind of a new problem in the UK I always think they clearly weren’t following the news in west coast Scotland in the 80s and 90s then.

No, I'm actually from the supposedly wealthy south east of England but a deprived seaside town.

Justanything great post, without extended family locally parents are stuffed.

I don't think MN helps promote positivity. So many want to moan. There are a lot of entitled posters who cannot believe that they are expected to work and take care of their children. If a poster is moaning about the way Cubs or Brownies is organised, someone might politely suggest they volunteer. There is always so much outrage at this suggestion. A lot of people expect everything to be done, given to them on a plate. The world seems to be divided into the 10% who believe in giving back and contributing to the community and the 90% who moan that their 'mental health' won't let them do anything for anybody else.

Some posters who are always ready to blame the wealthy for everything. The top 1% who pay 30% of the income tax in the UK are all fleeing Britain.

edition.cnn.com/2024/06/18/business/uk-millionaires-loss-record/index.html

And this helps OP how?!

I think it's a mixture of council budgets being cut and this generation growing up with 'electronic' babysitters.
My apparently lovely popular city is full of overflowing bins, homeless people using drugs on the street, and the pavements are overgrown with weeds and shoulder high nettles because the council stopped using pesticides - but didn't implement a plan b. We have groups of young teens (whose voices haven't even broken!) kicking off everywhere and terrorising the cities - I'm constantly seeing videos of poor bus drivers, shopkeepers and security guards being surrounded and abused.

More police and a return of the SUS laws? Yes, that will do it. I'll take a wild guess that you are not black.

I love this post. Thanks!

Omg yes, there is a definite sense of shitness. I am sick of seeing people yelling and spitting in the street. Going out in pyjamas. People aren’t classy anymore.

It's the yelling that I find really aggravating and intrusive. People who are minding their own business don't bother me.

I live in a bit of a shit hole as well. Yobs doing what they want. Dickheads parking their cars or riding their bikes on the pavements, fly tipping, the shoplifting, drug taking goes on openly etc. Similarly to you, it affects my mental health.

Sounds simplistic, but I do think having a regular police presence everywhere would help to some extent with the anti-social behaviours that are pretty much everywhere these days. I think it’s less about previous governments and more about some people having no respect for others, knowing they can do virtually what they want with no comeback.