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

[blahhhhg]

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.

AND! had to wear the school uniform correctly, including felt hat, caps for the boys,
until we were home, including on the public bus
We were fearful of the cane, or hours of mindless lines. I hated skool

Goodness you’ve reminded me of the school uniform knickers.
Maroon and granny style which occasionally we had to prove we were actually wearing

I loved school ….just not those knickers

ps. Girls were given the slipper in our school, not the cane. The head though used to cane the boys in the gym so he could get a good long run at it 😳

@SoOxon we were not allowed to wear tights till 5th form - Fawn colour knee length socks only - all girl grammar

Not the same town. Debenhams left ours a few years ago sadly. M&S has also gone from the centre is in on a retail park instead.

@Doggard that’s got to be Canterbury -we lived there 2003 to 2011 and I remember nasons well

Fellow Bournemouthians - have you seen this?

https://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/25078693.bournemouth-skyline-change-new-tallest-building/?fbclid=IwY2xjawJm_eVleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHpx5aUq_haEaUwpdyrPO-Df-Qq9rOtUrfMry4C9G056BtP1fjQVx_gLecAx8_aem_UBVfoTNink0SuU5SdXQnDQ

Oh my days.

Dear God, is there nowhere architects wont ruin? Yes there is, the quaint small villages and towns full of period listed buildings in which many architects live. That is hideous.

Just got back from Rome.
No high rises in the centre. Unless you count the colosseum. No vapes or barbers or nail bar on every corner. Not real takeaways a few maccas and burger kings. No Starbucks costa etc. just locally run family cafes Rome was busy. Crossing the road was scary it must have issues but it looked like they have priorities straight in that respect.

The shops on streets follow trends. Use them or lose them. Councils tax them and rents are too high for “hobby” shops. Therefore it’s survival of the fittest and they reflect the neighbourhood. Always did and always will.

Going to do my front of my house today. x

I've got the email from hell to send the council, councilors and local scaffolding company today. They've been working on a building near us and yet again the scaffolders can't see the cable ties they've littered everywhere around the building.

Once you start seeing cable tie litter dropped by lazy workers it's utterly enraging.

Just back from Poland - everywhere spotlessly clean, buildings renovated and well maintained, no litter on the streets, people well dressed and slim overall. Flew back into Luton - no toilet paper in the ladies toilets and rubbish dropped all over the sanitary bins. Disgusting. Welcome to the UK.

It’s the scummy people who cause this though, and people need to take responsibility to clean up after themselves

That's never going to happen, so what is the answer? Bigger fines? More police? More council officers? Something needs to be done. We're long past the stage of morality and expecting/hoping people will behave better.

True but I don’t understand it

@suburburban I do agree- I’m still gobsmacked who the scumbags are that don’t flush - even when there’s clearly nothing wrong with the flush or scatter loo paper about like confetti -

@Bitteralmond Are you talking about Leicester? Because, like you said, we lost Debenhams and now M&S has moved out. I don't want to be one of those people who say the city is worse than in the 'good old days' - lots of parts are much better. But it's depressing to lose such important shops.

We had that before privatization.

before my time as a bill paying adult but wasn’t water usage tied up with rates so no separate water charges but I could be wrong

You may believe the water was polluted prior to privatisation but we weren't extorted by owners before privatisation. Since privatisation, consumers have paid increasing bills, money which we were assured was vital for the owners to invest to improve water quality. Instead of which, the monies paid have gone into paying investors, with huge salaries to those at the top. With bonuses. There is also massive debt from borrowing to keep investors happy and our rivers are full of filth. At the bottom of the scale, that's fraud. Up there it's good business practice. Absolutely disgraceful.

When you walk around Manchester City centre you really do question whether you’re in one of the country’s ‘most exciting and prosperous city’s’ or whether it’s a bad joke. Who is living in all of those glass skyscrapers that dot the skyline? It can’t be all those downtrodden unkempt sickly looking people surely?

From a distance the city can look promising but once you’re there walking the streets, dear god it’s depressingly bad. Given the ridiculous number of Deliveroo and Uber Eats riders swarming the roads someone needs to urgently look into why so many people are seemingly housebound in a city apparently loved by young people? Litter, vomit, graffiti and dirt line every pavement, drug addicts and alcoholics stagger and stumble from doorway to doorway, peddlers of sweetcorn and phone covers fill the main high street whilst very loud ghetto buskers shout and scream all day long. It’s abysmal.

Is this it for the big city’s? They just rot away as services and funding gets stripped to the bare bones? It feels bleak like there’s no coming back because society is largely broken. Yes some areas may have pockets of hope but they’re flashy glossy hotels and bars which don’t cater for the masses. Where do the decent normal people go?

No one goes to shops because they cost more.

People "pop into" town for a look around twice a year and expect it to be thriving by other people spending more in shops to keep them open for when one "fancies a look".

It's unsustainable.

I come from a large town of about 50,000 people. It was always a well regarded town, not posh but ‘nice’ and a gentle feel to it. I went back in 2013 and it seemed to have got even nicer, more cafe culture type shops, nice restaurants etc.

We did a drive through when we were passing by last week and OMG it’s gone so downhill in 10 years - rubbish and graffiti everywhere, boarded up shops, every other shop is a barber/vape/nails. It had a weirdly menacing vibe and just felt like a totally different place. It’s so sad.

Firstly I agree with you that our towns and cities have steadily become more run down and would say that this is true for the country as a whole, it's just more noticeable in a more built up area. Secondly I don't think that this is necessarily a recent or sudden development but more of a trend that has been going on for the last twenty plus years.

There is no one single cause for this but rather a combination of factors such as:
Population increase - size 2000 the population increases n the UK has increased by 10 million or the equivalent to one new London or eight Birminghams. This is due to a combination of longer life expectancy but mainly due to increased net migration. I don't want to get into a whole migration debate but the simple fact is that infrastructure and services have not kept pace with the population increase (for example the last new water reservoir built in the UK was 1992) so quite simply stuff doesn't work so well.

The de industrialisation and outsourcing of manufacturing to China has removed an entire source of work for those who are not able or don't want to work as say IT professionals or high voltage engineers. The idea back in the late 1990s was that the developing countries would do all the low skilled manufacturing jobs whilst the West up skilled. Unfortunately not everyone is either willing or able to become software engineers and it's not easy to retrain unemployed manufacturing workers into well paid accountants. Plus funnily enough the developing countries also wanted to up skill and coming from countries with minimal social security nets they were more motivated.

This has created over 9 million people that are economically inactive, many on health benefits and many of these due to mental health issues. Again I don't want to get into a benefits debate but the reality is that many of these people are genuinely suffering mentally from the hopelessness of their situation that perhaps might have been averted had they been able to secure work with a liveable wage at an earlier age.

Lastly every Government (Con &Lab) have tried to paper over the cracks in this managed economic decline by spending more money financed by higher debt and higher taxation. The issue that is relevant right now is that increasing debt further is no longer an option (as Liz Truss found out the hard way) and increasing taxes slows economic growth (as Rachel Reeves has found out).

As a result sadly the managed economic decline continues and no electorate would be willing to accept the tough choices needed to fix it.

Sweetcorn?? Was that a typo