My town has really changed

[CatbellsOnTheSeashore]

In a confusing and not very pleasant way.

It was gradually changing for the worse before covid, but the pandemic seemed to accelerate it, and I am wondering if anyone else has noticed anything like this.

It became more insular whilst more populated, the population increased quite a bit over the past 5 yrs. More and more dereliction, low council maintenance and an influx of troubled people housed around the town centre, which is now a no-go zone. Areas surrounding have steadily grown worse also, as it seems to be spilling out.

What does feel really different is that there are now lots of groups of men, hanging around drinking or sat on pavements together (not begging). Drugs took over the local nature paths and canal walks so now there are large groups of people out of their heads lying on old sofas at the locks, it's really grim. Women who used to cycle and run in these areas have more or less moved elsewhere or stopped.

More and more standard sized houses in low to middle income areas are becoming HMO's, yet with poor refuse organisation and not enough parking. I'm not exaggerating when I say there are literally trails of dog shit in the streets in many areas, too, which pretty much hangs in the air and the place stinks. That, and skunk.

We live in a decent part of town but it is coming closer, and I only have that perk due to inheriting my parents bungalow. More and more people are moving out.

On a walk to Sainsbury's yesterday two guys were holding onto a sign pole hovering over a bin. As I passed by one of them vomited into the bin and then spat/gobbed an inch from my feet - he didn't notice me particularly, but it was quite sudden or I'd have given them a wide berth.
This isn't unusual now.

I know people usually blame the cost of living and covid, etc, but this was definitely on the rise before. There is far more noise pollution as more buildings go up, usually industrial, and the roads are a nightmare. Infrastructure for actual people is decreasing.
That said, I don't think most of these people were thriving before, so it isn't a sudden change. It is as if a new kind of culture is growing, that doesn't care a damn about anything. Everything is vandalised or shat on. More and more windows are broken in properties close to the town centre, and I doubt most of these people were thriving before the pandemic hit.

Is this bad luck or is anything like it happening elsewhere?
We are definitely looking to move away.

I would also make it illegal to film police going about their duties. I would give the police more say in the removal of kids. We need to stop leaving kids to grow up in homes where both parents are drunk at 8am, but apparently it’s ok because there’s food in the fridge.

There is a massive difference between the standards and training for police across the country (I know this as my DH moved areas). And yes to height and fitness levels men should be min 5ft 10 and women 5ft5. We need to get away from these ideas about discrimination when they get in the way of effective policing.

To those ‘British born losers’ Farage is their hope.
People like you, constantly blaming lower class British people is why they give up.
Farage is gaining in popularity because of the constant put downs. Just stop. If you haven’t lived in poverty you have no idea what life is like.

You mean the long term impact of years of axing local council, local projects and policing budgets?

It feels like the social fabric has dissolved. Even 10/15 years ago most people would say something about littering, dog fouling etc. There was contactable police and a dog warden.

Now in my nice ish area we have kids in balaclavas causing mayhem on electric bikes and scooters. The police do nothing. Also so many people are aggressive and anti social.

Reading through (not every single post) and a couple of thoughts crossed my mind…
Bristol used to be bad for homelessness in the 80s, but it’s far worse now- people camping in the city centre and shanty towns of live-in vehicles under the motorways and up on the Downs. That’s a combination of house prices and the expanding population, and austerity (of course, local government is funded in a way that means the poorer the area is, the poorer its council is and the more the council has to fund). Local wages just don’t meet the costs of living. People in my area are struggling too, with the canals more and more filled with people living on boats- half of them desperate looking things which you can’t imagine are even watertight let alone secure and cosy.

The lack of equality and the proliferation of deceit and corruption in political life undermines social values as well as some of the other things mentioned previously. (Yes, Johnson, I’m looking at you, but not just at you). If those in power look as if they’re out for all they can get and not bothered about paying in, those who have nothing see no point in trying to care for it. I mentioned Johnson but David Cameron claimed carers’ allowance when his disabled son was alive, and it’s recently come out that the royal family make huge profits from renting property to the state (for ambulance garages and the like). That sort of thing is frankly disgusting when so many are going without basic needs being met. But it suggests that it’s ok to take what you can and sod everyone else, just look out for yourself. And then influx of county lines and even weed becoming hardcore (skunk). It’s a real mess.

How can someone be homeless... yet have access to an iPad, a Netflix subscription and (presumably, since he's on the street) a 4 or 5g data plan?

It's easier to find £30 for data than it is to find a £3000 deposit and £700 rent, I guess.

In a town with mostly white people, white working class men aren't the bottom of the pile - they're the majority. The small immigrant population will be keeping their head down and trying to fit in. I honestly don't think people in most places have much awareness of how things are elsewhere. Certainly I don't recognise this multiculturalism being a problem thing in my local area.

Anyway I think British exceptional ism is what's caused many of our problems. Including the current feeling in some quarters that we're responsible for slavery and all the issues of colonialism. We'd be better off accepting that we're just normal people like anywhere else, no better, no worse (albeit we did good in ww2 but that's about it).

There are lots of things to love about Britain (stiff upper lip, sense of humour, language, countryside, ww2) and lots to dislike (poor work ethic, bad weather, corrupt politicians). We really need to move away from this idea that we're better than other countries.

It’s also partly down to social media. The online world became an addictive, Wild West, rabbit hole for those already isolated from wider society. The really negative narratives like Covid is a hoax, the vaccine will kill you, mobile phone masts are implanting things in your head, and all the messed up Andrew Tate stuff about how to treat women have flourished. The Tory HQ realised that this fear based thinking worked well for pushing voters towards their ‘us and them’ ideology where big businesses is king and society is a tax expense. If you look at the Cambridge Analytica stuff, they were actually funding a lot of this negative, fear based stuff to boost their election campaign on FB.

Unfortunately, fear, us against them, and the gradual draining away of resources makes those who were already susceptible angry, hopelessly and on it goes.

Also, let’s not forget that funding was funnelled into already affluent Conservative voting areas and Labour councils were more likely to have their budgets slashed.

That's interesting.
I didn't have that experience myself, although I grew up outside of the town proper in a fairly privileged situation. We were all expected to go to uni when at high school, although most of our parents were already in the professional bracket.
There were known areas of 'trouble' (my DH came from one of them!) but we never saw anything quite like what I see today. I think most lifelong Wiganers are in despair of what happened. many miss the shops being local or in the town centre, it used to be a full day out for many.
We used to meet there as teens before going to the Pier. King St was known to be a bit rough but we avoided it (our boy friends had long hair, lol).

Trouble came in pockets, it was never all over and in everything like now. Never aspirational, true, but people had pride in the place.
Most left after university, even I went off to Shropshire, but eventually returned when my parents became unwell. I am sad to say that I am glad they never saw this decline.

My DH confirms what you say about 'getting above yourself' as his mother discouraged hi from study and wanted him to work at 16 to bring home money (of which she took most). He left home shortly after to go to college and they cut contact with him unfortunately . Since then, he has at least reconnected with his siblings, but there's an 'edge' to the atmosphere.

So I have seen both sides, but this more recent change doesn't really feel akin to that past. Something feels off in a different way.

Well OP, what you describe is the inevitable decline of this country into a 3rd world hellhole. It’s been heading this way for some time now, now only faster.

Exactly any disenfranchised group wants someone to listen to them. If people don’t want Farage to be the one that group turns too, they must be willing to listen and understand.

I don't know why im still shocked that people think immigration is the one and only problem.

Many people that immigrate are educated and have professional qualifications. . The issue is government policy stops them from working until their asylum is agreed. In all honesty, we keep getting told we need immigration as the UK population is not growing fast enough to support the aging population. Yet, there is no 'legal' way of claiming asylum until you actually get to the UK illegally.

My town is very multicultural and has several large hotels being usedin-house people claiming asylum. 95% of the antisocial behaviour is from UK White British people, mostly men.

Over a decade of austerity has caused the downfall of the UK. 2010-2020- life expectancy stalled and started to decrease, services cut, inequalities between rich & poor growing. Throw in Brexit and COVID,=more economic turmoil, the country is now one of worst developed countries with the biggest divide between rich and poor.

People simply can't afford their basic needs anymore. Even people working fulltime well above the minimum or living wage are struggling. Poverty has a massive impact on every factor in life, the UK makes it nearly impossible to get out of poverty. When you've got nothing to focus on, then people do turn to drink and drugs and general antisocial behaviour. Not all, but as a PP stated, there's less support services, less police etc, so now all the antisocial behaviour has increased and nothing gets done. People also don't have the energy to make their environment a better place, if you're cold, hungry and the only way of getting away from that is to hang around with others like yourself and drink, you're not exactly going to be lobbying for more street cleaning are you? Yet, people that do live their that don't have these issues, are just relying on someone else make the effect and don't want to get themselves involved.

I live in a large town and it's turned exactly the same as OP. When we've been on breaks in the UK, I've noticed exactly the same in other towns/cities.

In your case I would move.

There's something 'man's man' about Farage, I really don't like him or trust him one bit.
Perhaps some of his supporters in struggling towns believe that his faux working class style pint swilling chumminess will magically reinvigorate a return to our majestic empire,when men were real men and women were real women....and er...

As for people not being able to afford basic needs anymore: well food can certainly be cheap and much of it persistently resists inflation,,,, so can clothes, household goods, and bulk buying online, etc.

The giant anomaly is the cost of housing. It makes everything else feel like the straw that broke the camel's back.

i’m also zone 3 SW London and seeing the same. The large group of men drinking in street has become a thing in the last few months. We live near nature and the amount of litter in the parks and river is disgusting.

Families are also being pushed away more and more due to the lack of available family homes (or those available being marketed super ££££ and in need of full renovation), which I think also impacts the situation. The ones staying is the wrong crowd.

Edited to add story: my husband took my DS to an appointment today and they took the bus. A short 15 minutes journey. They were halfway when the bus had to be evacuated because a guy took a shit in the upper deck. I couldn’t believe it when he told me

@CatbellsOnTheSeashore yep you have it in a nutshell - it's all fake bonhomie- he just likes cash and power - and knows which bells to pull to get the votes of those who really don't look at a wider picture and like blaming folks not like themselves -

I think that BTL housing plays a huge part in this. In my city and I do not doubt in many others, the majority of cheapish property is bought up by private landlords who do not give a shit about their tenants. A few years ago i had my house valued and the estate agent told me that it would sell very quickly as landlords bought online and "bulk bought" property in my area. I did not sell as I can't afford to live in a better area and I certainly cannot afford to go up another council tax band. To illustrate my point, the house next door to me was a private rented and was in a right state as the landlord did nothing to repair it, He then washed his hands of it and it was sold (quickly) at auction. I was initially pleased and thought that the new owner would do it up. To my horror he spent 4 days slapping some emulsion on the walls and at the end of the week, 10 people moved in and off went the landlord never to be seen again. He told me he would be back to complete the repairs, (there is no fence, the rendering is falling off the walls, the gutters are blocked and water gushes down the walls. He also told me that the tenants had been vetted by an agency and off he fucked. Tracked him down via the Land Registry and he lives in another city in a property worth almost one million quid!!! The tenants who claim to have "no English" yet managed to call me a mother fucking cunt when I complained about the hours of endless noise pay the rent in cash. Of course the landlord will not be paying tax on this. The house is collapsing and sometimes I recall my lovely neighbours when I first bought my home and I could weep.

T Blair started this by not limiting immigration from eastern europe which the rest of European countries did. It was about 300,000 a year. That would have been 2003 or there abouts so twenty years ago. if all immigrants stayed our population will have increased by 300,000 x 20 so 6 million, MPs constantly promised to reduce the immigration. Now we have one million in a year. The majority of our industries have left during the last 10 years+.
I would say it's surprising there isn't more rioting in the streets! Huge increase in population and no jobs.
Our problem is ill-informed people (us - falling for the lies of various would be MPs) and bad government once these liars got into power.

I must say it doesn’t matter how poor you are it costs nothing to not litter, to not spit all over the path, to be polite and share space.

With regards to culture again I was sat thinking. The mention of hmos came up. We have been as a place on slum landlords. Always hmo illegal or not properties, in a very multicultural area, owned by a certain ethnic group, who when then turf out the tenants or are closed down, fly tip the entire furniture of the property onto the street in front or just fill the garden of it left to fester and rot and attract vermin.

Now I can completely see why someone who lives next door to something like that wouldn’t feel very proud of their home area and feel disillusioned about what’s the point in keeping theirs nice when it’s a proper dump next door.

But that’s the problem isn’t it doesn’t matter what culture or whatever you should want to be proud of where you live or what you own. You should want it to be nice and clean and tidy but with a huge tide of people who dngaf in your area your one house of roses is still in the middle of a huge cow pat stinking and infecting everything around it.

If you not spending on drinks and drugs you could afford to eat.

Many of the " poorest " areas have plenty of off licences, betting shops and vape places. But if you are that skint you can't afford this stuff. Yet they stay in business

i understand he has yet to do a surgery in Clacton, and he lied about being advised by parliamentary security not to do so.

It has not been one of the best countries in the world for a long time.

The UK has high unemployment rates some of the worst health outcomes in developed countries, one of the highest infant mortality rates in the EU, biggest divide between rich and poor, life expectancy is going backwards, 1 in 3 children now live in child poverty, etc. Whilst I'm aware that globally many countries are struggling since COVID, the UK is definitely one of the worst and the combination of COVID & Brexit have been the icing.

This has been going on for a few decades but the last 14 years have brought everything to a head.

Amazing, who could’ve predicted that 🙄

I can dream. To help all towns.
Make on-line shopping companies pay taxes in the country where the goods are paid for, these taxes can then go towards refurbishing towns.
All chain cafes and eateries pay the correct rate of taxes in this country not in Ireland (Starbucks etc)
All self checkouts (for every 8 hours of use) should be charged the price a person gets paid in unemployment, that goes for all AI machines.
Free parking for two hours, to encourage shoppers back,