Is our town a shithole..

[FroggletTowers]

Or is this happening anywhere else?

I have been discussing this with friends, family and colleagues recently so won't name our town for privacy reasons, but it is a regular, large town in England, UK.
Nothing particularly special or awful about it, previously.

Since the pandemic, the entire vibe has changed. Almost unrecognisable.
Yes, we have some heavy shop closures like many towns, but the council kept it looking decent as much as it could. Some nice buildings and nature areas, etc.

What stands out most, apart from the general vandalism and dog shit is the weird accumulation of male groups hanging around boozing in public.

So far they have taken over the local park, river walks and nature reserves. They often cluster beneath bridges or across paths where people like to run, cycle walk dogs or take children, making it less safe and filling these areas with waste. Off road bikes have ruined the nature reserves, so less people visit

Sadly the authorities don't seem to be doing much about it, it is as if these people don't have to abide by laws that the rest of us have to. Some buildings adjacent to these areas have windows put through on a regular basis, even in what you'd call 'nice' areas.
Many of them cluster at river bridges and block the path for others, most are very drunk or out of generally.
It isn't unusual to see a large man passed out across the pathway, blocking anyone getting past. If you had a pram or bike it would be really uncomfortable to have to rouse a large drunk at 2pm in the afternoon. Most are local men, with a growing amount of middle eastern men. The vast majority of them are unstable.

We see less women out cycling, walking or exercising now, and this encompasses both MC and WC areas. These people seem to have just multiplied and spread across the entire borough and have taken over all public space.
We live in a decent area that is now seeming to go downhill.
It isn't unusual to see day drinkers sat alone, surrounded by cans on a quiet residential street. And they won't move to let you past.

It's really depressing.

It's not complicated. In real terms councils have less money per person than they did.

https://ifs.org.uk/publications/how-have-english-councils-funding-and-spending-changed-2010-2024

So each year they've invested a bit less and cut back a bit more. The first few years probably only the people who directly lost out noticed a difference, but over time the effects get more and more obvious. The tidying up that used to happen after the anti social behaviour doesn't happen so the results hang around. The services that used to keep people falling towards the cracks from falling through them aren't there any more. People who aren't hugely community minded but by and large would have been living up to the standards of their community start living down to them. People who would have felt like making an effort to volunteer, keep the place smart, pick up a bit of litter in passing because a little effort made a difference lose motivation because they can't see any way to make a difference.

Is the money there to make it better if we wanted to? I honestly don't know. Take a wider view and maybe the welfare state, NHS and public spending was never going to be affordable in the long term. Maybe the UK was living above its means on the wealth we gained from the British Empire and not what we earned as a nation and that has been gradually running out, maybe sometimes helped on its way by short sighted government sell offs, but ultimately never sustainable.

What I am sure about is that we can't cost-cut our way into wealth. There has to be investment and training and growth or all the tax cuts in the world just let you keep a bigger slice of a very fast shrinking pie, and a shittier and shittier place to spend it.

@RvethetgergwtbtehThe men hanging around smoking dope in our little park in London are exclusively not white. Cannot say exactly if they are British or not but it’s a policing issue.

What money councils had or don’t have now was never aimed at policing parks and the streets. Also why should hard earned money paid in council tax have to be directed at clearing up after a small minority? There’s always been a minority who trash their own space. We used to think it was living in slums that was the issue. Take people out of slums and give them decent homes works for many but some will trash anywhere. It’s an attitude that goes down generations with more added as time goes by.

Good point, well made.

When I was young, we lived on a lovely street, council estate, and they moved a ‘problem’ family in, the street was ruined. This happens everywhere. The council would have us believe it’s to encourage the arseholes to become better behaved. I don’t believe that.

Sowing discord is a very useful tool.

Agree on all counts.

You can do it using you tube, son showed us

The little tourist town near us complete with castle only has a drinking problem on the streets in the summer so the police are repeating the ban on street drinking again this summer. To be fair they do arrest and take them away. Come September everything returns to normal. We don't have many rough sleepers. The baptist church opening their doors for a meal and a bed was a great success until the council condemned the electrical wiring and banned sleepovers. I suspect the upmarket homes on the seafront behind the church brought pressure to bear.

We don't have an immigration issue, we're a retirement area, no jobs legally or cash in hand around here. We don't have Uber, much of a just eat need. We're pretty dull pickings for the young.

It’s not just the young! Plenty of people (families) have messy front gardens, drop litter, dump waste and unwanted furniture or take drugs. It’s generations of people who seem to have a “could not care less” attitude towards other people, their community and the countryside.

Definitely a generational thing. People of all ages can be crap.

Voting record for Nigel Farage - MPs and Lords - UK Parliament

Perhaps you could explain further?

Isn't this just one effect of Brexit?
I.e. lower economic growth, less EU imposed standards, & regional funding programs, replacing (mostly Eastern) European working immigrants with many middle Eastern non working immigrants, etc, etc, etc.

Well done Tories & Nigel - a complete generational cluster f@@k!!!

Something to be proud of 👏 !?

Council is changing high street to more of residential area now… more flats instead of shops

There are more street drinkers and people obviously sleeping rough in the centre of our town.

I know where many of them came from - our nearest city dumps large numbers of homeless people in hotels in our town.

Initially the city just started doing it with no discussion, so large numbers of people with complex needs were appearing in our town totally unsupported.

The two councils are at least talking now but it's still a huge burden on services in the town and it feels unfair on everyone for the city to literally dump people with issues on us.

I don't doubt the underlying issues are connected to so many years of Tory austerity and to Brexit. And to the financial burden of bailing out the banks after the last crash, and of Lizz Truss's catastrophic short time as PM. And now a Labour leader with no vision or solid ideas how to solve it.

Tragically, many local people are convinced all problems are to do with immigration however, and are going to vote for Reform, who will undoubtedly make it worse, should they achieve any real power.

There’s a big need to shrink shopping zones and build more homes or convert buildings to homes. However some people don’t look after anything. That’s not the fault of councils.

It’s also a fact that higher earners pay the most tax. By a long way. Too many don’t pay for much at all but consume the resources paid for by others. Over taxing and not appreciating the contribution high earners make gets us nowhere. We need more high earners. Not less.

Isn’t this just broken windows theory writ large? Public budget cuts mean public spaces aren’t being maintained/policed adequately and this eventually compounds into more serious issues.

I live in a city in South Yorkshire and there are parts of the city like this but have been for a number of years. A lot of unemployed men /asylum seekers hanging around. I do avoid those areas

My midlands town is exactly as you describe. DD is at uni in Leeds and we have noticed the stark contrast - she doesn't want to come home.

Unlike pp, the majority are middle aged local men. I've said I won't be getting another dog once mine passes, as I don't feel safe on walks anymore.

I'd also like to add about the constant anti social noise. It's like everyone is active 24/7 with bikes and car revving all night and power tools constantly going.

Life is loud and overwhelming.

@OooPourUsACupLove It's not complicated. In real terms councils have less money per person than they did.

That will be fixed in the Autumn when "Rachel from Accounts" will be allowing Councils to hike the Council Tax up 🙄
Here it's going up 5%, some areas will have higher rises.

Seems a bit incongruous with our illustrious leader's promise "we will not tax working people"...🙄

I noticed the noise levels started up at the time of Covid, in fact a lot of bad behaviour started then. People at home not knowing how to entertain themselves looked outwards at others and became nasty. And intrusive. It’s stayed that way. Hell in a hand-basket,

Ours has always been a bit of a shithole but it now seems a lot of what I thought were nice places have caught up.

My town is the same, it’s awful and depressing. The situation for mine is due to an influx of migrant men involved in criminal activity to make money. You can’t do anything about it or talk about it as you get called racist.

It sucks for us who live with it but we can’t offend the elites who live in nice areas and hate us plebs.

Maybe in some areas. But the damage to smaller/local shops were the supermarkets and retail parks of the 80s, 90s, and 00s. It's very noticeable that the towns which are still looking "prosperous" with a variety of shops are the ones that are nowhere near big out of town retail parks/supermarket sites. Along with anti-car councils, they've sucked the life out of the town centres, but lots of town centres muddled on as best they could.

Then along came internet shopping which has been the fail nail in the coffin over the past decade or two and which is now harming the out of town retail parks and big supermarkets too! Seeing "Big box" units on retail parks empty is something we've not seen previously until the last few years - THAT's the Amazon effect.

In fact, Amazon and other online shopping channels may well be helping lots of the smallest of businesses, such as small specialist shops, smaller manufacturers/distributors, etc., as huge numbers of them are using "Fulfilled by Amazon" where Amazon hold their stock and deal with the packing and delivery etc. There are also lots of other "fulfilment" firms which small businesses are using to hold and deliver their stocks if the business has it's own website or other e-commerce channel. Ironically, the internet may well prove to be the saviour of the smallest of businesses and they can compete against the big firms on a national scale, which is something small shops couldn't do when their competition was a retail park or a huge Tesco Extra with a free car park!

never seen a policeman or woman on the street in the last 5 years. The local police station is open 3 days a week 9-12 noon 😱

Blimey, I thought ours was bad, but it's open 10-2, Mon-Fri.

You almost never see a copper on the street (although there are a couple pf PCSOs that I see from time to time), but as the force HQ is in my town, you see loads in Tesco around lunchtime, picking up sandwiches for their lunch.

Having said that, it's a low crime area compared to the bigger towns in the force area (two counties and a city), especially the coastal towns, so it makes sense for them to be deployed elsewhere.

There's a lot of nihilism among parts of society who feel they have nothing positive to live for or work towards. If you have some or all of: no education, loads of family trauma, complex mental health issues, addictions, and no prospect of any work above minimum wage, it's very hard to feel why you should buy into civic norms. The oblivion of drugs or drink, or the catharsis of smashing things, become much more appealing when you feel you have nothing constructive to live for.

I think this is why there's finally a lot more attention to the problem! My home town became a shithole in the 90s when the seaside trade had long gone, attractions closed (meaning no day trippers either), and the council filled the empty boarding houses by bussing in "Problem" people from other areas, such as newly released prisoners, but put nothing in place to support them, employ them, etc. It was entirely foreseeable that putting people into areas with little employment and few amenities that they wouldn't be "rehabilitated" and become worthy working members of society! No one listened then.

Now that the contagion is spreading to towns which had remained "naice" over the past couple of decades, people are finally talking about it and wanting action. Shame that those in "naice" areas didn't show any interest when it was seaside resorts, and ex-industrial towns that were in massive difficulties. Now it's spreading and literally "coming to a town near you", more and more people are seeing it for themselves and suffering the consequences.

It's been clear for 2 or 3 decades that town centres needed to be remodelled and redeveloped with the shops closing down and remaining empty. Yet successive governments have kicked the problem into the long grass. They've relied on property developers to buy and renovate the properties that could make them a killing by conversion to "posh" flats or student lettings. Nothing was done about all the properties that the developers didn't want, which continue to lay empty and deteriorate, being a blight on the High Street!

Local and national politicians have turned a blind eye to it all which is in itself a national disgrace. But now it's so widespread, they can't ignore it any longer, and, in part, it's why Farage and Reform have become so popular. Boris was popular when he said he was going to "level up" such areas, but sadly, as history proves, he could talk the talk but didn't walk the walk!

For 2/3 decades, the only "investment" in such areas was stupid expensive statues or other artworks in the middle of roundabouts funded by the EU. These areas needed jobs, they needed town centre redevelopment - stupid expensive statues don't do anything for those unemployed or minimum wage workers who can't afford their utility bills nor food!

@newhouseplans

I don't doubt the underlying issues are connected to so many years of Tory austerity and to Brexit. And to the financial burden of bailing out the banks after the last crash, and of Lizz Truss's catastrophic short time as PM. And now a Labour leader with no vision or solid ideas how to solve it.

Seaside towns like my home town were "dumping grounds" for such people LONG before Tory austerity and Brexit. It can be traced right back to the mid 80s. I was in the police during the mid 80s, and we were seeing it every time we did foot patrols (remember them!). Whole blocks of boarding houses in one end of our seaside resort started to be occupied by newly released prisoners and other "problems" from bigger cities. You could almost see the deterioration progress every week. More and more drug dealing, drunkeness, flat fires, vandalism, theft, fighting, etc. When I first started, we did solo foot patrols, but by the time I left (escaped), it was compulsory to work in pairs as the streets were getting dangerous, and that's 40 years ago!

I've no doubt that Brexit, the 2008 financial crash, austerity, etc have made things worse in more areas, but we really have to go further back to see when it first started. Of course, few people were affected by it back then - it was only seaside resorts and ex-industrial areas, so all those in "naice" areas showed no interest at all.