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.

@Seekingstyle I totally agree- and I'm left of centre- otherwise you run the risk of the situation in the states where the Democrats have realised that not everyone thinks the same as themselves and some have become fed up of the liberal agenda but without many discernible benefits to themselves.So rather than vote Trump , many didn't vote-

I don't think you can remove immigration from the agenda given the ludicrous numbers the Tory's allowed in their last few years- I almost think it was a deliberate final f* off from them as I think they knew they would lose- I think they knew it all along once Brexit failed to have any benefits at all - and their antics during covid where the final straw. I do think though that people feed on total disinformation- like the person who posted about 900k illegal migrants in the last year - nope the figure is actually 38,000 so yes illegal migration figures aren't great but are totally dwarfed by the numbers the gvt allowed in fully approved-

That’s not what this post is saying at all. It is drawing a parallel between you kids being proud of you as their mum and people being proud of their country. Have you never heard the term “mother country” it is a great and long established analogy

People don't like being talked at, is what it boils down to. The current undertone to political discourse right now is it you don't agree with the liberal left on even a small issue you're a bigot, a phobe and needs to have your life ruined. There is no allowance for reasoned discourse or understanding that someone questioning an idea isn't a personal attack it's them trying to gain a deeper understanding of your views.

It's all very black and white at the moment and very uncomfortable.

Its also completely unsustainable. The number of people who want to move to Europe is out of all proportion to the numbers Europe could successfully sustain. In fact the number of people who could seek asylum here is out of all proportion to our capacity to sustain. In terms of deeply messed up countries, Afghanistan alone has 42 million people (so roughly 21 million women & girls, who I think we could all agree are entitled to want out). The current mess of an asylum 'system' basically prioritises young fit unattached males with a reasonable amount of money by their home countries' standards. I'd love to see the UK move to a system which firstly settling on a number the UK could meaningly support (properly support - decent housing, care for physical & mental health, real hands on support with language learning & integration), then took those numbers direct from the countries with the greatest need, prioritising women & families. Its not very PC, but large numbers of young rootless men cut off from the stabilising influence of family are just never good news, whatever their ethnicity.

That's the thing though. The political class live in nice areas so they tend to see the best of immigration, in terms of people who come here, have done well for themselves and are wealthy.

The working class get the worst of immigration and see their areas swamped and all called racist for objecting. Then they vote Brexit to stick it to the political class (foolishly maybe but they felt they had nothing to lose). Next it'll be Reform.

@UsernameMcUsername

Its not very PC, but large numbers of young rootless men cut off from the stabilising influence of family are just never good news, whatever their ethnicity.

That's true.

My mum met my dad at a housewarming for mutual friends - mum's pal had married someone from Dad's country.

Her pal told her that the priest had remarked that, on his regular visits to the mineworkers' hostel, he'd found it to be rather "rough". To be expected, I guess, given that the inhabitants had all lived through WW2 and the vast majority had been soldiers. (The pal's husband was an exception - he was younger than his wife and had only been a boy when he found himself swept up by events and had landed in a Displaced Persons' Camp.) Mind you, the priest also told her "They're happy so long as they're kept well fed!"

Dad didn't tell me a lot about life in the hostel, but I know that a great deal of gambling went on.

The country is overrun by single men and when they're young as well it's problematic.

I think people would be less bothered about immigration if it was more diverse. The backlash against the boats is it's all young men. If it was women and children they'd be welcomed.

You keep saying being English is an accident of birth. I say it is no accident at all, you could literally not have been born anywhere else, just as your kids could not have been born to any other set of parents.

You should be proud to have been born of your parents, who come from a long line of people that sacrificed and worked hard to bring you to this point.

You are both a function of the genetics of your family and the environment/genetics of your country. You should owe a lot to your country but it seems to be failing your people quite a lot, caring more about their global obligations than increasing the living standards of its own people.

This is why people don't want to go out late at night anymore. Night life has declined . I've noticed people would rather eat out and be at home by 10 on at the latest .

You feared your parents

I agree there's been a loss of respect in recent generations and it's a problem, but just had to point out that children often feared their parents because their parents hit them. I'm sure no one's advocating for a return to that. Children should respect their parents, not fear them.

Spot on. 14 years of austerity mixed with Brexit so no EU grants to mitigate the deprivation.

But we always gave away far more money to the EU than we ever got back, so it's not as if leaving the EU has meant we now lack the money we would have been 'given' before. We don't need the EU to provide us with money for anything. We just need to prioritise the spending of our own money on the right things.

Most teenagers carry knives? Really?!
I have three teens and live down south and luckily it’s not like that here. Certainly can’t imagine any of their friends (or them obvs) carrying knives!!

My home town is a lot better than that but I have seen a deterioration in the quality of living since I moved here just over 20 years ago. It has gradually become more and more crowded, the roads are frequently rammed as though there is a local law banning cycling, the situational awareness of people has deteriorated meaning it feels like everyone is in your way, and the thoughtlessness of people has definitely got worse since the pandemic (e.g. blaring phones on public transport). It is as though the population is trying its hardest to to turn the country into an insular, ego-centric neo-liberal toxic clone of America, and anything America does badly, we'll try and be worse. The sad thing is they are slowly succeeding.

The economic hit from Brexit has cost us heavily financially, there is no way we are wealthier as a result. Brexit will go down in history as one of the dumbest decisions any country has ever made.

This. Blimey, a homeless person's life is grim enough and now they're not allowed any pleasure in life??

Although, having said that, I'm not sure how pp was able to establish it was Netflix. Could have been something saved to the iPad, in which case he wasn't committing the cardinal sin of spending any money on making his life a little more tolerable. Who knows.

My observations

1. Some councils are shipping people to other areas (eg London 300 miles north) which will make a difference (might make a political difference too as the ones moving seem a little RW or outright bigotted (not a big sample but enough to be concerned).
2. I don't know about skunk but I am smelling a lot more weed around...If the police walked around more a police dog would not be required.
3. A little bit more antisocial but that tends to come and go in waves.

So yes I've noticed a change and do think it's partly down to people who 10-15 yrs ago would whisper angry bigotted views are a lot louder and angrier due to politics generally spiralling down into a cesspool of hate.

I've got my fingers crossed it will swing the other way (especially when some angry old geezers pop off). The silver lining being I am finding a lot of younger people tending to be much nicer and empathetic recently which hopefully bodes well for the future.

My old town was rated third in the most miserable list of places to live and honestly it wasn't that bad years ago. Something has changed and a lot of it is just down to people who seem to have lost their morals and common decency and don't care about their environment. It is sad to see

@Seekingstyle I can't disagree- I for instance even though I'm what a right winger would I'm sure call 'liberal left ' politically - am totally fed up of constant wokeness and box ticking dominating agendas -be it trans issues constantly being brought up when a topic had nothing to do with that or people being constantly offended at the slightest thing - its all incredibly humourless- guess I'm old these days at 62 and learnt to say'go f* yourself' if anyone was inappropriate or give as good as I got.

Unfortunately there are those on the right who are just as bad but in a different way - I remember when explaining to someone about our business and Brexit and why it was logistically a huge issue -and they just said 'tough shit' rather than trying to understand commercially why for many businesses with an import/export element it's a real downer. They of course worked for the council -so commercially didn't affect their job.

As you say - it's all become very black and white

All that niceness and empathy and tolerance won't keep the economy afloat while we keep taking more and more immigrants who cost the country far more money to have here than they contribute in taxes, though, will it?

Nail on the head.

Those living in wealthy/nice suburbs of London benefit from multi-culturism via highly skilled immigrant professionals and top quality ethnic cuisine.

For those living in, say, Bradford, "multi-culturism" is something VERY different indeed.

Not going to argue about Brexit, but the rot had set in LONG before Brexit and lots of areas had gone downhill a decade or two (or even longer) before the referendum. You really can't blame everything happening today on Brexit or Covid, despite lots of people trying. Perhaps in YOUR area, things were all hunky dory until 2015, but that's not the case in lots of run down seaside resorts, lots of ex mining/shipbuilding/mill towns, etc., which were down and out 20/30 years ago!

I agree OP
i have worked in a Gp practice in a seaside town for over 35 years and it was bad back then. Now it is antisocial behaviour from the children and grandchildren of that generation. I’m sure austerity hasn’t helped but things were in decline well before that. It feels like a dumbing down of society/ morals and care for anyone other than themselves

I disagree actually, but that's beside the point and not a debate for this thread. However, it's simply misleading to imply that we have 'lost out' on EU grants for regeneration projects, because all the EU ever did was take our money then give us small amounts of it back, telling us exactly what we could spend it on.

Compared to the lovely bit of the East of London I live in that all sounds quite normal. We are apparently the poorest ward in the poorest London Borough, it's delightful but as I live in a council house I can't afford to move anywhere nicer.