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’’m curious to know where in zone 3, SW London is rough these days?

I know cyclists have had bikes nicked in Richmond Park, so I get that there are dodgy estates.

But would be interested to know where you are and your experience?

I tend to agree with this sentiment. The UK has generally been a force for good, and I think the UK's colonial legacy in (for example) India, is far better than that left over by the Belgians in the DRC, for example.

And in any case, what's to be gained by self-flagellation of something done centuries ago?

And you can say the same about the immigrant population here - if it's such a great country to come to and they're so desperate to get here, why do some of them treat it disrespectfully and not integrate into the very society they wanted to join?

Are you proud of your kids? Of your family? All an accident of birth

The culture debate (unsurprisingly) has gone straight over your head hasn’t it?

I think that attitude reflects on people who take the freedoms and basic culture of the UK for granted.

Yes, where I was born was an accident of birth, but I'm still grateful to be part of a country that has free healthcare, free education, equal rights for women and high quality laws. And recent events have shown us that we have a well-functioning democracy with stable transfers of power. We should be grateful for that - and proud too, I think. We all have an obligation to ensure that those benefits persist for future generations.

Sure.

I have seen your other posts. You have an agenda. Worrying that you work in the legal field. Hope it’s not with vulnerable people.

YANBU. We live in a very wealthy town and there’s been a visible increase in drug/alcohol users on the high street in the last few years. I don’t blame them hugely- they’re poor and our town (in a rural area) is a magnet as we have some homeless shelters and a rehab centre.

Britain is a lot poorer than it was in 2010. I grew up near Bournemouth and the decline there is very visible too.

Someone said to me recently “we’re not a rich country anymore; we’re a poor country with a lot of rich people in it”. I think that’s true.

Police numbers being slashed by Cameron didn’t help- smoking cannabis now goes unchallenged meaning drug taking in the streets and parks everywhere. A real decline.

the Tory's

Why is MN not stricter on this appalling disregard for the English language? 😛Plurals and possessives are not complicated!

Down with This Sort Of Thing!

I know. I have done quite a lot in my life of which I am proud. Being born isn’t one of them!

Well according to official figures in 2023 we were spending £8m a day housing Assylum seekers, by 2024 we were spending on average £41,000 a year on accommodation costs per assylum seekers. Once you had factored in all the other costs we were spending £5.6 Billion (roughly equal to 1/10 of our current defence budget) on immigration. These are Published home office figures.

By way of comparison our government is spending £25 million on palliative and hospice care- the equivalent of approximately 3 days of asylum seekers housing costs.

So yes this money could make a massive difference to the IK - massive.

No im not happy about the conditions, why are asylum seekers apparently according to you and contrary to my direct experience living in such conditions when they are having close to double the national minimum wage spent on their housing costs each year? What a waste of tax payers money.

Because it’s mainly people typing on their phones with predictive text. Personally, I’d like to see people discussing points rather than the idiosyncrasies of predictive text on mobile devices and accuracy levels of typing on very small keyboards.

Well people should blame the government, rather than asylum seekers. I'm not saying you're blaming asylum seekers but many do. This is all government policy. They used to be processed much more quickly but now sit languishing in hotels (through no fault of their own) for up to three years. It's ridiculous. They're not allowed to work, they have nothing to do except hang around, which makes people suspicious of them. They live with uncertainty for years on end. There must be a better way.

That's a very generous view and I'm sure it applies to a minority of cases.

In others, it is proof of a puffed up education system that declares people have never been better educated than they are now but, in reality, they have a below average command of their own language.

Part of the problem we're discussing.

Everyone has an agenda, it is what gives us direction and leads us to act.

Why would you worry I work in the legal field? Who do you count as “vulnerable people” why would you worry about me working with them?

I see you can’t argue your position effectively so move on, predictably to ad hominem arguments- it’s depressing and pathetic.

so what are your views on the level of expenditure that the Home Office admits to spending on asylum seekers? Or do you find that uncomfortable and don’t want to discuss how little (ie equal to 3days of asylum seekers accommodation costs) we spend on palliative care. I’d rather we spent £25 million on asylum seekers and £8 million a day on those in hospice and palliative care, as I think, most other tax payers would.

@shockeditellyou "recent events have shown us that we have a well-functioning democracy with stable transfers of power."

erm, lol? Liz Truss? £350m on the side of a bus? The prorogation of parliament?

I am grateful not to be living in a war-zone, yes. Although several of the world's current war zones are at least partly our fault. We have medium-to-good living standards but declining fairly rapidly (e.g. life expectancy). We mostly have a moderately well functioning democracy by global standards. It's no better than "OK' by European ones. It could be worse and it could be better.

But none of that is anything to do with pride.

I wonder if being conditioned to reject those parts of our identity we are born with (assuming we are white British) has led to the proliferation of synthetic identities - which we are compelled to recognise.

Herne Hill / East Dulwich. It’s not as bad as Stockwell / Brixton, but significant anti social behaviour, drugs, dog poo, human poo…. Etc

East Dulwich is in zone 2, SE London, not south west, surely?

Yes I can imagine there’s lot of crime even amongst all the naice houses and Oxbridge grads.

@Feelingathomenow I'm sure the 100s of billions staffed by the last gvt on a Brexit that was used to attempt to to prop up their right wing vote and has failed to bring sunlit uplands or investment could be damn useful right now- same with the 37 billion on a pointless track and trace system contracted to mates - and those illegal asylum seeker figures pre Brexit ? Considerably lower than now , as was legal migration from the non EU -

I agree that I would rather money was spent on other things so personally if I was Labour I would be saying bollocks to what people voted for- it has no benefits for very few 'ordinary ' people and set about building up a strong working relationship with the EU again- even if it means Norway type deal for the time being.

Lets encourage hard working younger single people from theEU again - tatger than making them feel like the shit on your shoe

Yes the same people who say you must not be proud to be British, are the ones who take great pride in identifying as genderqueer, anti Zionist, blah blah blah!

And somehow it’s just the British who aren’t sowed to feel any sense of national pride.

according to official figures in 2023 we were spending £8m a day housing Assylum seekers, by 2024 we were spending on average £41,000 a year on accommodation costs per assylum seekers. Once you had factored in all the other costs we were spending £5.6 Billion (roughly equal to 1/10 of our current defence budget) on immigration. These are Published home office figures.

Thing is, most asylum claimants have their claims granted- eventually. The problems are a lack of safe and legal routes in, and the ridiculous length of time it takes for claims to be processed. There was a radio programme on last week about asylum seekers and they interviewed a couple of young Afghan women. Both said they don’t eat every day, and that the food provided for them is horrible- unhealthy and inadequate. Their rooms are damp and mouldy. They’ve seen rats in their beds. I’ve no reason to disbelieve the programme (R4). So vast amounts of money are being wasted at the same time as these vulnerable people are being left to languish in awful conditions. Part of the problem is that immigration services are outsourced to private companies, one of which posted over £60M in profits recently. Why are private companies making that sort of money from people’s misery and taxpayer funds??

There will be increasing numbers of people from the global south moving into northern countries, because of climate change. We need to find a better way of managing this issue and also to make integration an attractive option, rather than accepting a rather British attitude to immigrating (eg make little to no effort to learn the language or the culture, stick together in cultural ghettos, and call themselves expats rather than immigrants 🫣🤣).

All this said and I do think the issues outlined in the OP are multifactorial, but I think immigration is only a part of what’s going on. There are deeper problems in play as well.

We can still encourage hard working people from the EU but this won’t stop the unwanted immigration. We can set our own immigration policy, we can give preference to people from certain countries. We have lots of people from Poland and the Ukraine where I live, and tbh yes many of them work hard and yes they respect the local culture. Absolutely these people, I think, enhance our country. What we are talking about is people who won’t integrate and whose values don’t match ours.

You could literally say the same thing about your parents. Or your children about you.

@Feelingathomenow When you say "whose culture doesn't match ours", the OP started this thread about white people in Wigan, is that who you mean?

it will get to the stage though where we have to remove ourselves from the whole asylum seeker regime, We seem to be an overly attractive country but we are a small island and don’t have the capacity to cope. Yes we do have many problems in this country, none of which will be solved by letting in so many people who do not understand or want to integrate into the culture here. If we don’t take action now the results will be catastrophic in the not so distant future.

We need to look at why people are leaving their countries and help them stay - men need to remain on their countries and sort out the issues there. Every country that these people are fleeing to has had similar issues - these were overcome by people creating change within.

Climate change is happening, we can’t accommodate the vast numbers of people who will move north. Many of these areas have high birth rates, again the solution is there, lower birth rates will lead to more resources. The part we can play is by slowing climate change. Putting more and more pressure on the west will only accelerate climate change.