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.

Let's see:

Disaffected young white men = unemployed older white men who hang around the town and end up in trouble.

They're disaffected because they grew up in poverty, and subsequently had a poor education. Combination of parents not placing value on education/ school not adequately providing schooling doe to funding and/or the lads skipping school.

So they left school with no GCSE's = no job. Which leads to crime. Then leads to MH issues.

And I'm sure there'll be posters from a Stow On the Wold perspective saying they just need to work harder, find a job, access adult education courses and lift themselves up, but this is difficult when you basically don't have any hope, really.

Plus the bloody vaping stickers stuck in there hundreds on every bloody bin!

Yes, white working class boys and men are often in the groups that struggle the most today. For lots of reasons. One of the problems is that for some (not all) of this group in the past, being white and working class didn't mean they couldn't find work. Being white and working class with little education or drive also didn't necessarily mean they couldn't find work - so even if they were being let down educationally and culturally and socially by government, local government, communities etc, they nonetheless were still okay longer term.

But it's more competitive now. And there are lots of people moving into those jobs who are educated and/or have lots of drive and/or are more flexible etc etc. So the fact that they've been let down for years is now really starting to come back to bite them and they are angry and upset because they don't understand what's happening.

I have a lot a lot of sympathy for them because they've been let down, but at the same time, of course we can all understand why they're not doing so well.

I live in Wigan too. I don't think it's bad place to live; far from it. But the issues the OP describes are common to most towns, I think. One factor that doesn't help is the hollowing out of our town centres, as department stores close, and more and more shops move out to 'retail parks' on the outskirts, leaving town centres full of vape shops, bookies, and Cash Converters.

There was exactly this problem with drinking in the street in another town in my county. Biggest problem was that drink has to exit which was also done in the street.
It became a Council matter and was explained that in certain Eastern European countries, it's the custom to drink outside. In other words, put up with it.

Huge alcohol problem apparently in A&E too, even with women.

I gave up writing the same comment in my local paper that the pavements are filthy, so are shop fronts. There used to be an electric sweeper that cleaned every evening, hadn't seen it for years. I found it when I called at the Council Offices, cleaning their forecourt!

Same thing is happening in our large Canadian city that used to be fairly safe for a big city. And it's much more noticeable after the covid. There's also a lot of immigration combined to steep price increases, so more people are on the streets.

I hear what your saying OP I see it a little in our regional town but it’s not a new phenomenon look at Hogarth gin lane
Personally I think the COL crisis plays a significant role, combined with a lack of affordable decent housing and in Wigan and others like it the decline in manufacturing. These are alll significant issues. My grand parents who died in the 80s saw education in the broadest sense of the word ie not just at school but educating yourself out of school learning musical instrument attending lectures night classes etc and campaigning politically for a better life for the poor as the way out of poverty and poor quality of life but I don’t think many people feel that way now.

Interesting post, at first I thought you were from my town as it sounded so similar. Then read that you are in fact a very close by neighbour of my town.

See the same, it's sad when there is so much being done to try and regenerate a town but so much against it. Our town centre problem really ramped up during Covid when there were less people around to naturally police our town centre, now it's uncomfortable and feels unsafe during the day if you just want to get a sandwich on your lunch.

I hate so much about England and English towns and cities right now: for the litter-strewn streets and roadsides, the stink of weed, the rudeness, terrible driving standards, gobby and aggressive gangs of kids, getting charged for dropping someone off at the airport, the exorbitant train fares, drug-added twats fouling up town centres, fighting and swearing and frightening the general populace, the horrible run-down high streets all pedaling the same mass-produced crap and full of money-laundering fronts like vape & barber shops and the dog shit absolutely everywhere.

Even things like going to a 'nice' country pub a few weeks ago was spoiled by the CONSTANT swearing of a couple of men at the next table. What is it with some people who simply cannot get through a sentence without at least four fucks and a cunt?

This thread makes me realise we’re lucky to live where we do our town is pretty thriving with not many empty units in the town centre. Granted most of them are beauticians/restaurants/cafes but there are some good independent shops selling clothes/cheese/bathrooms etc. very few bookies/cash converters/vape shops. We don’t have any department stores as they are all out of town but it doesn’t seem to be causing too much of an issue here! I don’t think I’ve ever seen a homeless person in the town centre or any particularly antisocial behaviour. Our area is not in the south and not hugely expensive so I’m not really sure why it seems to still be doing well.

A friend teaches English to migrants and says many are very angry.
M. pox is also spreading in the overcrowded houses of multiple occupation.
It’s not what they were expecting when sold a dream of a generous U.K. with free education free healthcare free housing.
Yet no government is willing or able to stem the flow of migrants.
No wonder services are creaking at the seams.

I have less and less sympathy with them I'm afraid. They all seem to have smart phones, they can see for themselves what the UK is like if they really want to.

I can honestly see a time when Reform or something similar gets into power and we will withdraw from the UN refugee convention. And sadly, by that time I don't think I'll give a toss. For the first time ever this year I didn't vote because I think whoever is in power cannot reverse the decline.

We live rurally in an area with a low population. No work, so not very attractive to immigrants. We have seen a town local to us go downhill badly since moving here 8 years ago, with all the problems the OP describes. The high street is just depressing, there is nothing to do of an evening, very little work locally, bad public transport and a lot of the locals are living on minimum wage, or benefits, that are either being cut or don't go nearly as far as they once did, thanks to COL and services are being cut left, right and centre. As @OhBling has pointed out, many of these white working class males simply are not walking into the jobs they traditionally would have once they left school - they are gone. As for standards going down - when my kids were at school, I do think they had to deal with a lot more violence than I remember when I was at school. I think they level of disfunction in some parts of society has one off the charts. But I think in general people feel let down and hopeless, which makes them angry and bitter and it bleeds into every interaction. I think we are changing a lot as a society and it is painful. We need to create new industries that employ people and work needs to pay people enough to live. We need to stop focusing on growth as a measure of how well our society is doing, because it means fuck all.

Report after report has shown that white working class males are the 'left behinds'. They are bottom in pretty much every social classification you care to name, so they are unloved and a bit despised, and this leads further down the spiral to the bottom.

Helping immigrants is seen to be noble, helping white boys is not. They are discriminated against in various areas - including recruitment to the services. One philanthropist wanted to set up an initiative specifically to help working class boys, but was told he couldn't because it was racist. These are just two proven examples, who knows how deep this goes. Two recent reports have said that we need to look at problems based on poverty and class, but race is where it's at the moment, and that's where all the attention goes.

Politicians are clamping down so hard on alcohol and sugar, taxing it trying to cut down on usage, yet our streets are flooded with cheap illegal drugs and legal highs too freely available. It's crazy.

When I was young (1980s) everyone went to work for the local big industry, there was a community in the town and in work. That's all gone and nothing has replaced it, and no government since then - including 3 terms of Blair's Labour government - have done anything serious about changing it.

You say this because you've never experienced it so you have no idea what you're talking about.

Edited to add: the perception of homelessness is that it's soemone who's got no choice, who is down on their luck. Who, given the opportunity, would turn their life around. That's not how it really works in many cases. Abusive exBIL for example - he's alienated his friends and family, been violent and threatening. Very clearly has significant mental health issues. But what must SIL do? Keep him in her home where he might turn on her or their children? He stayed with his brother for a while, but DB's wife had to kick him out because he kept smoking in their house, stole money from her teenager and threatened her with his fists? But SIL still pays for his phone.

I live in dewsbury another northern town over pennines it's gone down nick in the 9 years i have lived here. You know how in 14 years boris said there would be levelling up guess what there wasn't and in fact it got leveled down.

I started listening to that vid in @mumda 's link upthread. In fact there is a massive re-development going on in Wigan town centre now; half the town has been bulldozed, and shopping centres and leisure facilities etc are promised. Whether there's the customers for all these businesses remains to be seen, I'm not that optimistic. But it's unfair to say that nothing has been done. I thought it funny that the guy in the video quoted Nottingham as a place to aspire to: has he been there lately? 😀

MN didn't used to hate moaning about the Tories - that change just reflects a national shift to the Right.

Despite the fact that they have squeezed this country dry, they've somehow managed to infect more of us with their individualist, anti-society, I'm-alright-Jack mentality. Even those who are objectively not alright Jack, and are doing demonstrably worse than before the Tories got in.

It's how populism works.

You are right that white working class. Lads are falling behind, but let's not be kidding ourselves here. This isn't just because of governments.It's literally because of some parents don't give a s that their kids are in education or not.
How do you stop that?How do you encourage the parents to get their children to school
I am white working class and a woman. But trust me, even on benefits, I am, if I had a child, my goddam child would be at school and would be learning, because I would be saying, if you want to get yourself out of this s hole, you're going to have to get a better job.
I would be taking these young feral lads, and I would mean making them with hi, viz jackets on clean these God dam streets. The problem is, community service is not fit for Anything anymore.
They no longer put them and do that. They don't have the manpower, because guess what? The conservatives cut back on their probation service.
A multifaceted approach needs to happen, but the mayor of New York said no broken window. It starts with that because the rot starts small

Yes I agree with this. The working class area I grew up in was poor but people had their pride. No way would they have thrown rubbish or urinated in the street - and the rest of the street would have judged anyone who did these things.

I think the lack of judgement from the rest of society while a good thing in some cases gives an excuse for some people to inconvenience their neighbours. No judgement has gone too far.

That’s very sad - and yes, there are parts of the city here that aren’t great, but I’m not sure if they’re significantly worse than a decade or so ago.

I think "white working-class" could well be replaced with just "working-class". If the differentiation is between 'local people' and immigrants.

When I first moved to my current town, it was highly unusual to see a police car… now we have police sat at the bus stop to supervise the secondary school children due to so much fighting and racist abuse. There have been several incident lately with huge organised fights resulting in large numbers of police cars and riot vans at the local park. It was such a lovely community 5 years ago. We have absorbed an enormous number of the Afghan refugees and this has been the catalyst so the reasons here are different to yours. It is just so sad to see our lovely town fall apart like this. And yes to the dog shit! Why has everyone collectively decided to just stop picking it up! It’s foul.

Absolutely. I remember my Grandma scrubbing the steps. In fact, I've just seen an old black and white picture in a very Old Town with old ladies doing that. You are right, there is no pride. Anymore

Perhaps the problem is due to domestic demographics. Is it that people with problems such as substance abuse, significant mental health issues etc that prevent them from working, have more children on average than families who don't have these problems? Through my work, I know of several families who have child after child, all of whom are removed from their families at birth because their parents are unable to care for them. The children are then placed in foster care or adopted - but sadly, in many cases the damage that has been done even before birth (or as a result of their genetic inheritance) ensures that they grow up having similar issues to their relatives.

Since the fertility rate of women in general in this country (but perhaps not the more troubled women) has been falling for decades, the children from chaotic backgrounds now make up a higher percentage of their age cohort and are therefore more visible. We have seen this in schools for some time, and now these children are young adults and behaving in the way that you descibe.

These problems are intergenerational and I'm not sure what the solution is. Maybe in some cases benefits should be linked to the use of contraceptive implants to try to break the chain.

You see, unfortunately they are winning hearts and minds like you. That's how the fascist start. You need to use your brain and realise that if a country. has not put the infrastructuring to look after our own people as well as immigrants, this is what happens you need to be taking your fury out on the rich, but yet. You are being led straight to fascism