To think our towns and cities are just so run down lately, and our standard of living has decreased significantly?

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I don't know if I'm just feeling a bit down and bitter lately but I just feel like lately our country seems to have gotten very run down. I went out into town today and couldn't help but notice how grotty and rundown everything looks. Litter everywhere, security guards everywhere - in nearly every clothing shop there is security on the door now, security wandering up and down the high street. It makes you feel really unsafe but they must be there for a reason now? Shops are dirty; filthy floors and used Starbucks cups just left off the shelf for some poor worker to clean up. Clothes for sale that are covered in makeup stains. I just found it really depressing. It's just not one town either, I've noticed it nearly everywhere I've been. I'm in my late 20s so it's not like I've had decades of life experience to draw from and I have a rose-tinted view of yesteryear, but it seems that in the last 5ish years things have really declined.

How long would you say that the appalling decisions of austerity, Brexit, and the mismanagement of covid (financially) should take to surmount? A year or two? More like a generation if you’re lucky.

But I agree that voters are fickle, and we will probably end up with Nigel garage leading the country blaming anyone who’s not white and British for all our ills.

Check out the high street at that point lol.

It was all foreshadowed in the first 2 minutes of Idiocracy.

I think many start voting in a get that lot out way when pissed off. So if things do get worse or no better it’ll be the same sort of thing in four years.

I wouldn't have liked to think Brexit was still fresh in people minds!

I work from home a few days a week. Have to put up with a group of migrant men who live in an HMO at the end of the road blasting their music out and generally being a pain. None of them work, none of them ever will work, none of them will ever leave, but I struggle to do my job to help pay their benefits because of how noisy they are.

And because I live alone and don't have a high salary, it's the best I can afford, so i'm stuck in high density area.

Brevity, government, house prices, cost.od living...none of those things have anything to do with people's inability to respect their environment and not spit on the streets, not drop litter and so on. Those are simple things every individual.persom can do to help keep their areas looking clean and tidy.

This is a result of people who have fuck all respect for their environment and noone fares challenge it because of fear of retaliation.

I've lived in my area for 12 yrs and as the demographic has become more diverse it's become noticeable how much more rubbish is left on the street even when we have a bloody recycling centre on our road you can walk to! But no the rubbish is dumped on the street. Sheer laziness. Then they moan the council is not doing enough to pick up the rubbish or the area is going downhill. Well of.course if you treat your area like garbage.

Brevity, government, house prices, cost.od living...none of those things have anything to do with people's inability to respect their environment and not spit on the streets, not drop litter and so on. Those are simple things every individual.persom can do to help keep their areas looking clean and tidy.

Not sure I agree. People are depressed, negative, malaise sets in & people stop caring.

Oh the vote has long since been a gone sharknado sure.

But don’t underestimate the impact it’s had on the way this country runs- it was a turning point in this country’s direction, and has had a huge effect on us.

@Lonelycrab I just don't get how so many can't see the damage it's caused.

The problem is Labour have no answers and neither does Farage.

If Reform actually do win a general election, Farage will look as stunned and rabbit in the headlights as he did the day of the Brexit result.

You haven’t posted stats or evidence - please can you link to the data / sources you are referring to when you make these statements

Yes. It’s austerity plus Brexit. I live in the SE and it’s really noticeable now wherever you go or drive anywhere there is just litter everywhere lining the roads, all along the A-roads even in the countryside — just litter festooned everywhere. I remember the 80s and early 90s of my childhood being like that, but in the 2000s things looked much better kept in general, and it used to be the case that there were litter pickers out, people had more pride in nice surroundings. Hard not to conclude that it’s having Tory governments that do this - all the public money goes to private speculators rather than civic life.

Plus Brexit of course. Friends of mine who come here from the EU are shocked nowadays at how run-down everything is —when only fifteen or twenty years ago Britain was the country that other EU states wanted to be like! They say it’s very noticeable to them how drab and poorly maintained everywhere is here compared to the rest of the EU now.

And that was certainly noticeable to me when I went to Paris last summer. Used to be that London was clean and pleasant whereas Paris was dirty and a bit unkempt. Now London is covered in litter and crumbling pavements, but Paris has had a glow up and is green, tidy, clean and eco-friendly! Plus you see constant litter removers and street-cleaning and washing machines out in Paris everywhere! It was quite a novelty, as I literally can’t remember the last time I saw a street in the UK being washed and cleaned.

I've often thought that the government should make people on benefits who are capable of work, do litter picking. It would smarten up our towns and countryside, possibly even give some of them a sense of pride in what they achieve, and would be some form of work in exchange for the money they get. Please don't get me wrong, I'm not a benefits basher, as being disabled and physically incapable of work, I have to claim myself, but I think that if people who can work, but won't, HAD to do litter picking to get their money, then they might soon decide that other work is preferable.

I live in the South and there are many towns here that look really down at heel, and are likely only going to get worse, as it seems there is very little sense of pride in where people live these days.

I agree with a lot of what’s been posted here. I live in St Albans so quite close to some of the not-nice towns mentioned like Luton and Hemel Hempstead. St Albans often appears on the naice cities list and so it should, it’s a lovely city however there are still issues with litter, drugs, aggressive people and l bad drivers. One thing that might be in our favour is a Lib Dem MP and a Lib Dem city council. I’m so grateful that for example, the verges are cut semi-regularly and new trees are planted. What a low bar eh?

I think we all need to take more responsibility for our areas. Yes we pay council tax, yes they should do it but they’re not. There’s no money. We all need to go out and litter pick and plant flowers and say hello on the street, not sit at home bemoaning the state of things because it’s only going to get worse if you don’t take action.

I've spent some time in Norfolk. The costal places are grim and actually made me feel really sad for people living there. I think we see what we want to see.

Thing is to fix the country will have so many changes and nobody would like them all.

Interesting, I grew up in Leicester and recently walked down Belvoir Street and Charles Street from the Royal Infirmary - for the first time in at least fifteen years - and thought it looked much smarter than I remember, I'm aware there is shocking poverty in parts of Leicester now though, I believe Leicester City and St. Mathews have one of the widest income disparities in the UK!

That's just poor excuses. I'm sorry but they wouldn't treat their homes that way. They would just eat something on the sofa and drop the rubbish on the floor next to them. They wouldn't spit on their carpet emor floor either.

You were old enough to vote in the Brexit referendum. What was your vote leave or remain in Europe or did you not vote at all thinking it wouldn't affect you?

Instead they make people on benefits go and work at places like Poundland for free.

Why provide a useful service to the public when they could be helping private companies turn a profit?

What I don't understand is, if everywhere is so run down, how come so many food outlets are surviving. It is so much more expensive to buy take away or wat in a cafe or restaurant than cook at home, and yet places that charge £4 for a coffee are thriving, while every other shop is a charity shop, barber or betting shop.

I sometimes feel like this. I'm not in the UK, but my family is pretty middle class, my sh a civil servant with a pretty good salary, I'm in a human services job with a lowish salary - but two FT incomes.

We leave in a pretty cheap house, we have old cars, we art as cheaply as possible, and don't travel. And we are rural. Right now, we could not even afford the cheapest homes in the worst parts of the city, and a cheap apartment rental is more than our mortgage.

I don't understand how people are managing to live in the city or commuter towns.

Did I read this correctly?

The entire city of London, Surrey and Sussex ( I assume East and West) is very very dirty.

What the fuck ???

YANBU. We've left the UK and comment on it every time we return for a visit. And we used to live in a wealthy borough, but that too is now full of potholes, Poundland and fast-food chains instead of lovely Spanish tapas bars etc.
It's the boiling frog effect. Most Brits don't see it - unless they travel abroad, queue in the "All passports" queue and notice how much worse dressed they are than the locals they used to look down on.

A few months ago I need to go to a small town, usually no other reason to go there, as there virtually nothing there, but I needed to go to a relative's bank branch and took my daughter with me.

She asked why it was so scruffy and dirty! Lots of boarded up shops. We are more used to going to shopping centres and outlet villages more so than small towns, I explained because the town isn't privately owed, they don't employ as many cleaners etc as the shopping centres/outlets. So sad really small towns going to ruin and looking through a child's eyes what they notice.