Grim towns you've visited lately...

[LoFiHamster]

Someone mentioned Andover - I grew up there (well, very nearby). When I moved back to the area (Winchester) a few years ago, a schoolfriend of mine from there was having a birthday party, so I went over to visit. Bearing in mind I was 21, I didn't expect to have to spend the party looking after a baby, because its 15-year-old mother (and everyone else in the house) was too drunk to do so. Pretty much sums the place up.

As for grim places recently, I'd nominate Kirkintilloch (just north of Glasgow). It's like god surveyed the beautiful countryside of the area, decided it was just too much, so took a dump right in the middle of it.

[Redlake27]

After a wonderful blast over the Brecon Beacons last month, I turned into a town for some food....

Merthyr Tydfil.

Saturday afternoon...most of the main street had shutters down. I felt I'd taken a left turn into the Soviet Union circa 1970. And I come from Burton on Trent......

[Obi Wan]

Jon C said:

Leaving aside the obvious and clear winner (Corby), honourable mention to Wakefield and Castleford.

Never been to Corby but I have been to Wakefield and Castleford. Castleford is especially but Airedale pips it as the biggest shthole in the UK.

[sniffler]

Fittster said:

Jack Pearson said:

Corby

Positive thing number 1 about Corby. Conservative Election candidate Louise Bagshawe

Please try to raise your level of posting!

Edited by Big Al. on Friday 6th June 22:07

[sniffler]

Fittster said:

Jack Pearson said:

Corby

Positive thing number 1 about Corby. Conservative Election candidate Louise Bagshawe

Inappropriate comment, hence removal.

Edited by Big Al. on Friday 6th June 22:00

[Ravell]

MentalSarcasm said:

I can't believe no one said Stevenage yet.

What is it that people always take this dim view of Stevenage? I've lived here now for a good 8 months and find it quite pleasant. Sure the centre could use a major overhaul as it's totaly out of date and I'm sure it does have it's bad areas. But on the whole it's green with loads of big parks and wide verges beside the roads and I've barely seen any crime at all. Maybe it's because I'm in a relatively new area that doesn't have any council housing, but still...

Maybe my standards have dropped signifficantly from having lived in a sthole area in the horrible concrete town of Hamilton in Scotland for 3 years.

[BB-Q]

Didcot

Abingdon.

Anyone from that area will know what I mean.

Didcot was always a dump and is actually improving (although it couldn't get much worse) but Abingdon has rapidly gone downhill by clinging to the fact that it is a Thamesside town when in fact it is just a hole with overpriced hoses and all it's history ripped out and built on top of.

[Chrispy Porker]

Another vote for Merthyr Tydfil.
Oh and Weston Super Mare.

[bill bob]

Great Yarmouth, It's grim, even on a good day.

[lotusryan]

All of America

[BB-Q]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

No, you can't be that Isaac- surely?

[Urban Sports]

Andy Zarse said:

Jason_W said:

Andy Zarse said:

Jason_W said:

Andy Zarse said:

Jason_W said:

Andy Zarse said:

I'm not overheated, I was just explaining why I don't like it. I think its worst aspect is its resident's total lack of irony and perspicacity. So stop going on about it unless you are prepared to defend it.

I'm not going on about it. Simply curious as to why someone who doesn't live there has so many issues with the place so it would be pointless trying to defend it when you have such hang ups about the county. There's no way I'd overcome your prejudices especially when your quoting Clarkson in your description of Surrey.

Alex, I think you may be right.

FFS! I'm not prejudiced about it, my comments are made with a reasonable knowledge of Surrey, so perhaps you could explain to me precisely what I an supposed to have "Pre-judged"?

Nor do I have "hang ups" (whatever a hang up means in this context). I simply don't like the place, so if you care to call that my "having issues" with the place in some sort of condesending manner, then so be it.

I would simply like to query why it is I am not allowed to express my opinion on Surrey? There's loads of places in this thread getting a sgging, why on earth should risible Surrey be exempt from it?

Anyhow, this little conversation is quite intuitive; you are displaying the parochial attitudes simply typical of a Surreyite: How very dare anyone disagree with your vision of Eden! Well I think it's a horrid contempible place and nothing you say will ever change my mind.

Oh dear, blood pressure is definitely raised. At the risk of repeating myself I know I'm not going to 'change your mind' but it is amusing to see someone go off the clock as you're doing over something so trivial. I was simply trying to get to the bottom of your issues with Surrey. Its not a town but a county as per the thread title, so you've gone out of your way to vent your feelings yet you constantly deny having any prejudices or hang ups about the place. I just find irrational posts like yours odd, that's all.

Irrational? My blood pressure remains as always a lovely 120/80, smack in the middle of the dial. I'm simply expressing my exasperation with you. Oh ye of little imagination! It has obviously never occured to you that anyone would ever see Surrey as anywhere other than a Valhallah-on-earth. Well I don't, yet apparently I am not allowed to express an opinion without having unpleasant adjectives hurled in my direction.

Anyway, you're the one who keeps biting, ducky! Clearly I've said some things to rankle you so. Oh and why don't you try answering the question, what have I said that is "prejudiced". Could it be that you haven't a clue what the word really means?

I've just been asking simple questions as to why you're so irrational about the subject but then again, as you use the phrase 'ducky', this probably explains your lack of reasoning. Suggest you re-read this thread when you've calmed down a bit and you'll see my point about prejudice because all you've offered up are re-runs of Clarkson/Gill sound bites - nothing concrete.

What a quaint display of ire. You're not making a shred of sense old chap, you appear to have become catatonic, showing classic signs of acute psychomotor disturbance. Now, take a deep breath, count to ten and we'll start again. All I'm asking is how am I prejudiced? If you can explain that, perhaps you'll also be kind enough to define why you consider this to be a bad thing.

Please realise that you are dealing with an apparent dimwit here, so I'll need you to spell things out to me in pretty simple terms.

Oh, and whilst nobody has mentioned any quotes from Clarkson, not so far at least, I do think Gill puts it so beautifully, far better than I could ever enunciate. Have some more Gill on Cheshire, it applies equally to Surrey, indeed the words are entirely interchangeable.

"Welcome to Cheshire. More precisely, that golden triangle of Cheshire that stretches between Prestbury, Alderley Edge and Wilmslow, the suburban trim’n’tanned aspirational nirvana that is the Virginia Water of the north. In a newsagent we buy a copy of Cheshire Life, a glossy magazine that yearns for a question mark after the title. It’s thick with ads for cars, bridal photographers, fitted kitchens and private schools, and looks like a spoof of a 1980s Tatler. Hundreds of social pages with passport photos of identical radioactively glowing women in white hair worn as a loose chignon for the evenings, holding flutes of champagne, their grinning husbands in designer dinner jackets with that dash of stand-out-from-the-crowd personality that only a brocade waistcoat and Day-Glo bow tie give you. My favourite article was on Dee Cattom, a sad but cosmetically smiling lady who says, “I’m 45 going on 25,” in the mistaken belief that it’s clever and amusing. Dee was, as she readily admits, so desperate to join Cheshire society (“beautiful county, beautiful people”) that she had herself built in Cheshire’s image. “I’ve had a brow lift, nose job, tummy tuck, jaw re-set and gone from 32AA to 34DD.” She’s also been fitted with a yellow Lotus Elise number plate, S111 EXY, which at £27,000 cost only the skin off her nose more than the plastic surgery. “I don’t regret one minute under the surgeon’s knife. Now I really feel as if I belong here in Cheshire.” There’s really no answer to that." - AA Gill.

What a pair of retarded Bell Ends.

[Rach81]

Forthright MC said:

Gretchen said:

Huntingdon at the weekend, have to go again in two weeks, makes my toes curl and bathe in bleach when I get home.

so very true!

its just a very downtrodden cheap and grimy town IMO, lets not get started on some of the residential areas now....

i have the same kind of gripes with Biggleswade too

Yep, did you see it on the cover of "worst towns in Britain?"
Also Goole is pretty high up there, total dump, gets worse everytime I go home, I read the local rag to see who's been jailed rather than birthday/marriage celebrations- glad I joined the RAF

[Jonny_]

I live in a fairly ropey little town near Doncaster, which means that my standards are pretty low. That said, I have found considerably worse places on my travels...

I think that Croydon should be nuked, repeatedly, until nothing is left but a smouldering crater. What a horrible, filthy, depressing hell-hole this place is. It seems to be mainly populated by lairy gangsta-rapper wannabes and other unpleasant street thugs. I spent a couple of weeks working there a while ago and I have never wanted to leave a place so quickly. Somebody please set the whole rotten dump alight.

Goole is also deeply miserable, with an even higher concentration of brainless chav losers than Donny; however, as I have all my own teeth and walk on my hind legs, I do feel like some kind of superior species whenever I venture into the town. It always makes "duelling banjos" spring into my mind.

[forsure]

Jonny_ said:

Goole is also deeply miserable, with an even higher concentration of brainless chav losers than Donny; however, as I have all my own teeth and walk on my hind legs, I do feel like some kind of superior species whenever I venture into the town. It always makes "duelling banjos" spring into my mind.

I had the misfortune to visit Goole once, had exactly the same feeling.

[CommanderJameson]

Jonny_ said:

I live in a fairly ropey little town near Doncaster, which means that my standards are pretty low. That said, I have found considerably worse places on my travels...

I think that Croydon should be nuked, repeatedly, until nothing is left but a smouldering crater. What a horrible, filthy, depressing hell-hole this place is. It seems to be mainly populated by lairy gangsta-rapper wannabes and other unpleasant street thugs. I spent a couple of weeks working there a while ago and I have never wanted to leave a place so quickly. Somebody please set the whole rotten dump alight.

Goole is also deeply miserable, with an even higher concentration of brainless chav losers than Donny; however, as I have all my own teeth and walk on my hind legs, I do feel like some kind of superior species whenever I venture into the town. It always makes "duelling banjos" spring into my mind.

These places have nothing - nothing - on Loftus, for sheer "do I actually share a genome with these...things"-ness.

[Turbo5]

Blackburn the home of Jack Straw, the town is a shambles, the area is a mess. I would rather live in a tent somewhere than live there. I am not biased even though I only live 8 miles away

Bacup has to be another on the list. This place is full of Dingles, they drink and as closing time approaches they start eying each other up for the end of night punch up. If you are from out of town you wouldn't last until the end of the night, some Neanderthal would have started a fight with you. (and half of the Neanderthals are Women !) Most of the population still wear clogs, I am convinced they all have six toes per foot, they do like to keep things in the family.

[Rach81]

forsure said:

Jonny_ said:

Goole is also deeply miserable, with an even higher concentration of brainless chav losers than Donny; however, as I have all my own teeth and walk on my hind legs, I do feel like some kind of superior species whenever I venture into the town. It always makes "duelling banjos" spring into my mind.

I had the misfortune to visit Goole once, had exactly the same feeling.

I tell people I'm from "near York" when I'm asked where I'm from

[Brown and Boris]

mybrainhurts said:

You do not want to know about Rotherham...

Oh, no.....

Where men are men, and fathers' day is confusing for people.

[jamiebae]

Doncaster is the nastiest place I've ever visited in the UK. I was trying to find the place I was having a meeting there and accidentally took a wrong turn into what appeared to be 'Coronation Street' except all the houses were boarded up and there was broken glass all over the road!