Am on the (overground) train. Ticket inspector (guard?) came through. Opposite me is a young (18-25 I'd say), IC3 male, sort of not quite an afro, smartly enough dressed, backpack on the seat next to him. He showed his ticket and then the guard asked him for his railcard.
So far so good.
Then he asked for my ticket, which I showed him (on my phone, @Anabobazina don't panic) and....HE DID NOT ASK ME FOR MY RAILCARD.
(And without doxxing myself, and for reference, I am not a young IC3 male.)
Probably thought you were bad news and not to push his luck
I think he glanced at my computer screen, saw the name "Leon", and hightailed it out of there as soon as he humanly could.
"He has kept a receipt of every single Big Mac he’s eaten every day since that first one, and he’s retained each of the burgers’ containers..."
What a moron
He eats his favourite food every day. Don't knock it. And iirc American celebrity investor Warren Buffett eats McDonalds every day too. Donald Trump mixes McDonalds with KFC and is the picture of health, at least compared to his opponent. They've made it past the biblical three score years and ten.
"He has kept a receipt of every single Big Mac he’s eaten every day since that first one, and he’s retained each of the burgers’ containers..."
What a moron
He eats his favourite food every day. Don't knock it. And iirc American celebrity investor Warren Buffett eats McDonalds every day too. Donald Trump mixes McDonalds with KFC and is the picture of health, at least compared to his opponent. They've made it past the biblical three score years and ten.
I feel like the Donald Trump diet isn’t going to be winning many adherents.
Am on the (overground) train. Ticket inspector (guard?) came through. Opposite me is a young (18-25 I'd say), IC3 male, sort of not quite an afro, smartly enough dressed, backpack on the seat next to him. He showed his ticket and then the guard asked him for his railcard.
So far so good.
Then he asked for my ticket, which I showed him (on my phone, @Anabobazina don't panic) and....HE DID NOT ASK ME FOR MY RAILCARD.
(And without doxxing myself, and for reference, I am not a young IC3 male.)
Do you even qualify for a railcard?
P.S. I used to have a 'SOUTH EAST RAILCARD' – on my phone, praise be, so I never forgot it.
Veterans.
Don't like the sound/name of it but there you are.
How do we rescue these towns? I'm not sure you can
They were built for the industrial revolution, now that has gone and is never returning. AI will destroy the few jobs left
Probably the best thing that could happen is that they are all levelled, and returned to grass, and farms and woods. Depopulate the north, it's not worth saving
The problem since 2010 has been compounded. Decades of local Labour corruption and underfunding by (mainly) central Government has been joined by the decline of the rural market town, like Evesham, and Leominster. I can't remember who let them down. Probably the EU...
I was in Leominster last year and it seemed fine. Can't say the same for Hereford, it was in a right old state
Evesham has been weirdly crap for quite a long time
We have fucked the country with mass immigration on a spectacularly thoughtless scale, and from all the wrong places. That's really all there is to it. There is no point in lying to ourselves any more. The election of a sectarian MP campaigning on aggressively Muslim issues simply underlines this
And this is unfuckable. Roll on the AI Apocalypse
There is a solution though: invite Hong Kong migrants to move there. They should sort it out pretty quickly.
Am on the (overground) train. Ticket inspector (guard?) came through. Opposite me is a young (18-25 I'd say), IC3 male, sort of not quite an afro, smartly enough dressed, backpack on the seat next to him. He showed his ticket and then the guard asked him for his railcard.
So far so good.
Then he asked for my ticket, which I showed him (on my phone, @Anabobazina don't panic) and....HE DID NOT ASK ME FOR MY RAILCARD.
(And without doxxing myself, and for reference, I am not a young IC3 male.)
Do you even qualify for a railcard?
P.S. I used to have a 'SOUTH EAST RAILCARD' – on my phone, praise be, so I never forgot it.
Veterans.
Don't like the sound/name of it but there you are.
Genuinely curious, what would you prefer? Just keeping the HM Forces card?
How do we rescue these towns? I'm not sure you can
They were built for the industrial revolution, now that has gone and is never returning. AI will destroy the few jobs left
Probably the best thing that could happen is that they are all levelled, and returned to grass, and farms and woods. Depopulate the north, it's not worth saving
The problem since 2010 has been compounded. Decades of local Labour corruption and underfunding by (mainly) central Government has been joined by the decline of the rural market town, like Evesham, and Leominster. I can't remember who let them down. Probably the EU...
I was in Leominster last year and it seemed fine. Can't say the same for Hereford, it was in a right old state
Evesham has been weirdly crap for quite a long time
We have fucked the country with mass immigration on a spectacularly thoughtless scale, and from all the wrong places. That's really all there is to it. There is no point in lying to ourselves any more. The election of a sectarian MP campaigning on aggressively Muslim issues simply underlines this
And this is unfuckable. Roll on the AI Apocalypse
Leominster fair enough, but yeah Hereford is on its arse. Bromyard, Upton, Great Malvern (the Link is OK) Ledbury, I'd argue Newent. And not many Muslims in Ledbury or Newent.
I also went to Bromyard and Ledbury and they were fine, Upton I don't even know, I have heard sad things about Malvern which pains me. Newent lol
And yet Shrewsbury thrives, Ross does pretty well, Ludlow is recovering fast, it's a strange mix, in a beautiful corner of the world
Mass immigration is, of course, not Britain's only problem, but it is at the root of SO many of our problems - from the new violence in our politics to the terrible pressure on our welfare state to the horrors of Birtish housing, built and unbuilt
It is a catastrophic failure, and a reckoning is coming, Tho it will happen in mainland Europe first: they are ahead of the curve
Am on the (overground) train. Ticket inspector (guard?) came through. Opposite me is a young (18-25 I'd say), IC3 male, sort of not quite an afro, smartly enough dressed, backpack on the seat next to him. He showed his ticket and then the guard asked him for his railcard.
So far so good.
Then he asked for my ticket, which I showed him (on my phone, @Anabobazina don't panic) and....HE DID NOT ASK ME FOR MY RAILCARD.
(And without doxxing myself, and for reference, I am not a young IC3 male.)
Do you even qualify for a railcard?
P.S. I used to have a 'SOUTH EAST RAILCARD' – on my phone, praise be, so I never forgot it.
Veterans.
Don't like the sound/name of it but there you are.
Maybe he looked at your beret, regimental tie, brass buttoned blazer festooned with medals and corduroys and realised that no sane person would dress like that just to save a few quid so you must have a veterans railcard.
If the old world of shopping has gone, then we need to start adjusting, which means knocking down shops and old shopping centres.
May I humbly suggest that the cure to Wellington Way Shopping Centre is to knock it down flat and turn it either into a car park or a field. You could make a nice field out of it and it would give you somewhere nice to walk your dog
Am on the (overground) train. Ticket inspector (guard?) came through. Opposite me is a young (18-25 I'd say), IC3 male, sort of not quite an afro, smartly enough dressed, backpack on the seat next to him. He showed his ticket and then the guard asked him for his railcard.
So far so good.
Then he asked for my ticket, which I showed him (on my phone, @Anabobazina don't panic) and....HE DID NOT ASK ME FOR MY RAILCARD.
(And without doxxing myself, and for reference, I am not a young IC3 male.)
Do you even qualify for a railcard?
P.S. I used to have a 'SOUTH EAST RAILCARD' – on my phone, praise be, so I never forgot it.
Veterans.
Don't like the sound/name of it but there you are.
Genuinely curious, what would you prefer? Just keeping the HM Forces card?
"Veterans" is a US import I believe. In my mind it refers to people who were at the Normandy landings.
If the old world of shopping has gone, then we need need to start adjusting, which means knocking down shops and old shopping centres.
May I humbly suggest that the cure to Wellington Shopping Centre is to knock it down flat and turn it either into a car park or a field. You could make a nice field out of it and it would give you somewhere nice to walk your dog
Or you can build some nice houses.
Fields (well a riverside park) is what Stockton are doing...
Am on the (overground) train. Ticket inspector (guard?) came through. Opposite me is a young (18-25 I'd say), IC3 male, sort of not quite an afro, smartly enough dressed, backpack on the seat next to him. He showed his ticket and then the guard asked him for his railcard.
So far so good.
Then he asked for my ticket, which I showed him (on my phone, @Anabobazina don't panic) and....HE DID NOT ASK ME FOR MY RAILCARD.
(And without doxxing myself, and for reference, I am not a young IC3 male.)
Do you even qualify for a railcard?
P.S. I used to have a 'SOUTH EAST RAILCARD' – on my phone, praise be, so I never forgot it.
Veterans.
Don't like the sound/name of it but there you are.
Maybe he looked at your beret, regimental tie, brass buttoned blazer festooned with medals and corduroys and realised that no sane person would dress like that just to save a few quid so you must have a veterans railcard.
Ridiculous.
I have a pair of smart fawn-coloured slacks on, not corduroys.
Just come around here - there're loads of Chinese moving into Cambourne West. Most from Hong Kong, I believe. I've chatted to a fair few of them, and they're all lovely. Although some seem a little shellshocked at life over here...
Snipped as the convo was getting a bit unwieldy.
Are you near all the new housebuilding going on ex Cambridge environs ? Anecdotally it seems like a staggering amount of building going on, more than anywhere else in England probably.
Yep. I can hear some of the diggers going crunch-crunch-crunch now, from my study. They're building not far off. Cambourne currently has 4,250 houses.
We have at least three major developments being built: *) Cambourne West (2,350 houses) *) Waterbeach New Town (6,500 houses) *) Northstowe (11,000 houses)
As well as this, it is expected that the old Bourn airfield site, immediately to the east of Cambourne, will be built upon - perhaps 3,500 homes. And there is talk of houses (perhaps 10,000) on the area immediately to the north, over the dual carriageway. And the (Lib Dem) council wants to squeeze 250 extra homes on land that was zoned to be used by business. That's the only scheme I'm against.
There's also the new developments at St Neots: *) Wintrigham (2,800 houses) *) Monksfield - just being started (1,020 houses)
The latter is hilariously named - it is eight miles away from us, and we already have a 'Monkfield' school, a 'Monkfield' doctor's surgery, a 'Monkfield' pub, etc, etc. Calling the new development 'Monksfield' is going to cause all sorts of hilarity...
I note what looks like a roughly 100 m2 currently cgi 4 bed detached is going for £570k... will people be able to afford that sort of price ?
One of the toilets should probably be storage. Lord knows why developers these days seem to think a small 4 bed needs 3 bogs.
Building Regs require a WC and basin room on the ground floor for impaired mobility users, and the en-suite for the master bedroom is de rigeur.
I do wonder how many people @Pulpstar thinks are going to be living in such a property - 1 bathroom shared between 3 bedrooms, in the morning?
2 bathrooms
1 ensuite for 1 bedroom 1 bathroom for the other three
That doesn't sound very generous to me.
Is it an absolute act of faith that a master bedroom, no matter how poxy requires an en-suite these days rather than say a walk in wardrobe ?
I need an en suite, as the cat prefers to drink out of the sink than using her water fountain, or her other water fountain.
That whole thread is interesting. I’d not touch new builds for the price they want. I’m currently looking at houses in Auld Reekie and you can get the stereotypical 30s bungalows for £500k and quite fine 50s 4 bedders for £450k in some very nice areas if you’re willing to put up with some mental decor for the three weeks it’ll take to get the Ps&Ds in. The new builds right next to them were going for £550k with no garden, horrible layouts and the laundry list of snagging.
The actual property is a joke but it could be ok buying a newbuild based on location. Good for commuting (Cambridge/London), schools, amenities; and in theory there is a 10 year warranty. I guess that is the thought process. The one thing that concerns me about a lot of new build estates is that there is no shop and miles to get to one - for some reason this is impossible to make happen.
How do we rescue these towns? I'm not sure you can
They were built for the industrial revolution, now that has gone and is never returning. AI will destroy the few jobs left
Probably the best thing that could happen is that they are all levelled, and returned to grass, and farms and woods. Depopulate the north, it's not worth saving
The problem since 2010 has been compounded. Decades of local Labour corruption and underfunding by (mainly) central Government has been joined by the decline of the rural market town, like Evesham, and Leominster. I can't remember who let them down. Probably the EU...
I was in Leominster last year and it seemed fine. Can't say the same for Hereford, it was in a right old state
Evesham has been weirdly crap for quite a long time
We have fucked the country with mass immigration on a spectacularly thoughtless scale, and from all the wrong places. That's really all there is to it. There is no point in lying to ourselves any more. The election of a sectarian MP campaigning on aggressively Muslim issues simply underlines this
And this is unfuckable. Roll on the AI Apocalypse
Leominster fair enough, but yeah Hereford is on its arse. Bromyard, Upton, Great Malvern (the Link is OK) Ledbury, I'd argue Newent. And not many Muslims in Ledbury or Newent.
I also went to Bromyard and Ledbury and they were fine, Upton I don't even know, I have heard sad things about Malvern which pains me. Newent lol
And yet Shrewsbury thrives, Ross does pretty well, Ludlow is recovering fast, it's a strange mix, in a beautiful corner of the world
Mass immigration is, of course, not Britain's only problem, but it is at the root of SO many of our problems - from the new violence in our politics to the terrible pressure on our welfare state to the horrors of Birtish housing, built and unbuilt
It is a catastrophic failure, and a reckoning is coming, Tho it will happen in mainland Europe first: they are ahead of the curve
I lived in Cradley, a central point between Great Malvern, Ledbury and Bromyard, so I have seen the market town decline for myself, you commented on your visit to Hereford as to what a s***hole Hightown was. You notice decline in familiar places.
I deliberately missed out Ross, because, and I don't know why, Ross is banging. Although there did seem to be a few darker hued people in Ross, perhaps it's just more cosmopolitan.
What saddens me about this is that the same story could surely be written of two dozen British towns, at least. And I don't think they will ever get better, in my lifetime, unless AI performs a miracle (because Labour or the Tories certainly won't)
Two dozen? At least.
It’s a great national tragedy, and seems just a permanent and permanently-accepted feature of British life. Like corruption in Italy, gun laws in the US, and the schoolgirl knicker fetish in Japan.
The same can be said of a hundred lost little cities in America, esp but not always in the rustbelt, and multiple communities in the Mezzogiorno
Desperate places with no obvious remedy
However at least in America there is that sense of freedom, if you live in Shit-hole Indiana, just get in your car and drive south and west. And Italy has the sun which helps - tho it can still be fucking grim even in the sun, in parts of Sicily and Calabria etc
In rundown UK you have a unique combo of shit weather, hopeless economics, and a sense of being trapped. And lots of ugly red brick new builds making it EVEN WORSE
Britain needs a population of about 25-30m, with 10m in London (which still functions well). Pull down every ugly town and turn them into forests
How do we rescue these towns? I'm not sure you can
They were built for the industrial revolution, now that has gone and is never returning. AI will destroy the few jobs left
Probably the best thing that could happen is that they are all levelled, and returned to grass, and farms and woods. Depopulate the north, it's not worth saving
The problem since 2010 has been compounded. Decades of local Labour corruption and underfunding by (mainly) central Government has been joined by the decline of the rural market town, like Evesham, and Leominster. I can't remember who let them down. Probably the EU...
I was in Leominster last year and it seemed fine. Can't say the same for Hereford, it was in a right old state
Evesham has been weirdly crap for quite a long time
We have fucked the country with mass immigration on a spectacularly thoughtless scale, and from all the wrong places. That's really all there is to it. There is no point in lying to ourselves any more. The election of a sectarian MP campaigning on aggressively Muslim issues simply underlines this
And this is unfuckable. Roll on the AI Apocalypse
Leominster fair enough, but yeah Hereford is on its arse. Bromyard, Upton, Great Malvern (the Link is OK) Ledbury, I'd argue Newent. And not many Muslims in Ledbury or Newent.
I also went to Bromyard and Ledbury and they were fine, Upton I don't even know, I have heard sad things about Malvern which pains me. Newent lol
And yet Shrewsbury thrives, Ross does pretty well, Ludlow is recovering fast, it's a strange mix, in a beautiful corner of the world
Mass immigration is, of course, not Britain's only problem, but it is at the root of SO many of our problems - from the new violence in our politics to the terrible pressure on our welfare state to the horrors of Birtish housing, built and unbuilt
It is a catastrophic failure, and a reckoning is coming, Tho it will happen in mainland Europe first: they are ahead of the curve
Leon, me old China, you are sounding a bit unhinged and borderline unpleasant with all this banging on about immigration and country going to the dogs and whatnot.
X just told me to search for one of Yasmin A-B's Graun articles (apparently entitled "If I'd Known this Country was so White I'd never have come", according to X) and you are coming over a bit Yasmin A-B but from the opposite direction.
How do we rescue these towns? I'm not sure you can
They were built for the industrial revolution, now that has gone and is never returning. AI will destroy the few jobs left
Probably the best thing that could happen is that they are all levelled, and returned to grass, and farms and woods. Depopulate the north, it's not worth saving
The problem since 2010 has been compounded. Decades of local Labour corruption and underfunding by (mainly) central Government has been joined by the decline of the rural market town, like Evesham, and Leominster. I can't remember who let them down. Probably the EU...
I was in Leominster last year and it seemed fine. Can't say the same for Hereford, it was in a right old state
Evesham has been weirdly crap for quite a long time
We have fucked the country with mass immigration on a spectacularly thoughtless scale, and from all the wrong places. That's really all there is to it. There is no point in lying to ourselves any more. The election of a sectarian MP campaigning on aggressively Muslim issues simply underlines this
And this is unfuckable. Roll on the AI Apocalypse
Evesham is just an everyday case of shite town planning.
Major retail has been moved out to the edge - the massive retail parks round the southeast, the development at the northern bypass roundabout (called "The Vale" or some wank like that), the Tesco past the station. This isn't ideal but you can survive it if you make the town centre a pleasant place to be. That really hasn't happened - the town centre is still a car-dominated hole, the market has been run down, the pleasant old buildings have queuing traffic beside them.
I sometimes wonder whether district council planning staff should be given a "Ladybird First Book of Town Planning" to stop them making all these incredibly avoidable mistakes. But tbh towns probably need to decide whether they're going to go all in on @BartholomewRoberts style car-centric design or for a more European plan which restricts car use. The halfway house like Evesham doesn't work for anyone.
"He has kept a receipt of every single Big Mac he’s eaten every day since that first one, and he’s retained each of the burgers’ containers..."
What a moron
He eats his favourite food every day. Don't knock it. And iirc American celebrity investor Warren Buffett eats McDonalds every day too. Donald Trump mixes McDonalds with KFC and is the picture of health, at least compared to his opponent. They've made it past the biblical three score years and ten.
Given that your view on food is that 'I don't like it when it takes longer to make than to eat'* forgive me for ignoring you, on this particular topic.
What saddens me about this is that the same story could surely be written of two dozen British towns, at least. And I don't think they will ever get better, in my lifetime, unless AI performs a miracle (because Labour or the Tories certainly won't)
Two dozen? At least.
It’s a great national tragedy, and seems just a permanent and permanently-accepted feature of British life. Like corruption in Italy, gun laws in the US, and the schoolgirl knicker fetish in Japan.
The same can be said of a hundred lost little cities in America, esp but not always in the rustbelt, and multiple communities in the Mezzogiorno
Desperate places with no obvious remedy
However at least in America there is that sense of freedom, if you live in Shit-hole Indiana, just get in your car and drive south and west. And Italy has the sun which helps - tho it can still be fucking grim even in the sun, in parts of Sicily and Calabria etc
In rundown UK you have a unique combo of shit weather, hopeless economics, and a sense of being trapped. And lots of ugly red brick new builds making it EVEN WORSE
Britain needs a population of about 25-30m, with 10m in London (which still functions well). Pull down every ugly town and turn them into forests
Where are you going to send the other 30m or so ?
Australia and Canada can take in about 10m each, NZ 5m. (Joking).
How do we rescue these towns? I'm not sure you can
They were built for the industrial revolution, now that has gone and is never returning. AI will destroy the few jobs left
Probably the best thing that could happen is that they are all levelled, and returned to grass, and farms and woods. Depopulate the north, it's not worth saving
The problem since 2010 has been compounded. Decades of local Labour corruption and underfunding by (mainly) central Government has been joined by the decline of the rural market town, like Evesham, and Leominster. I can't remember who let them down. Probably the EU...
I was in Leominster last year and it seemed fine. Can't say the same for Hereford, it was in a right old state
Evesham has been weirdly crap for quite a long time
We have fucked the country with mass immigration on a spectacularly thoughtless scale, and from all the wrong places. That's really all there is to it. There is no point in lying to ourselves any more. The election of a sectarian MP campaigning on aggressively Muslim issues simply underlines this
And this is unfuckable. Roll on the AI Apocalypse
Leominster fair enough, but yeah Hereford is on its arse. Bromyard, Upton, Great Malvern (the Link is OK) Ledbury, I'd argue Newent. And not many Muslims in Ledbury or Newent.
I also went to Bromyard and Ledbury and they were fine, Upton I don't even know, I have heard sad things about Malvern which pains me. Newent lol
And yet Shrewsbury thrives, Ross does pretty well, Ludlow is recovering fast, it's a strange mix, in a beautiful corner of the world
Mass immigration is, of course, not Britain's only problem, but it is at the root of SO many of our problems - from the new violence in our politics to the terrible pressure on our welfare state to the horrors of Birtish housing, built and unbuilt
It is a catastrophic failure, and a reckoning is coming, Tho it will happen in mainland Europe first: they are ahead of the curve
Leon, me old China, you are sounding a bit unhinged and borderline unpleasant with all this banging on about immigration and country going to the dogs and whatnot.
X just told me to search for one of Yasmin A-B's Graun articles (apparently entitled "If I'd Known this Country was so White I'd never have come", according to X) and you are coming over a bit Yasmin A-B but from the opposite direction.
We just elected a sectarian MP in a British city in a by election tinged with Islamist violence and riven with anti-Semitism (and "tinged" is being polite)
It's not a cheery moment for the British multiculty model, is it? What do you want me to do, pretend everything is great in our richly diverse nation?
How do we rescue these towns? I'm not sure you can
They were built for the industrial revolution, now that has gone and is never returning. AI will destroy the few jobs left
Probably the best thing that could happen is that they are all levelled, and returned to grass, and farms and woods. Depopulate the north, it's not worth saving
The problem since 2010 has been compounded. Decades of local Labour corruption and underfunding by (mainly) central Government has been joined by the decline of the rural market town, like Evesham, and Leominster. I can't remember who let them down. Probably the EU...
I was in Leominster last year and it seemed fine. Can't say the same for Hereford, it was in a right old state
Evesham has been weirdly crap for quite a long time
We have fucked the country with mass immigration on a spectacularly thoughtless scale, and from all the wrong places. That's really all there is to it. There is no point in lying to ourselves any more. The election of a sectarian MP campaigning on aggressively Muslim issues simply underlines this
And this is unfuckable. Roll on the AI Apocalypse
Leominster fair enough, but yeah Hereford is on its arse. Bromyard, Upton, Great Malvern (the Link is OK) Ledbury, I'd argue Newent. And not many Muslims in Ledbury or Newent.
I've not been to Hereford since the more recent comments from Leon about it being on its arse, and I was surprised at the time because my memory of it from about a decade ago was as somewhere quietly going up in the world with new shops and restaurants as well as the same old marches charm. It also still had many of the independent shops I remembered from my childhood there. Is it really now that bad?
There are still plenty of towns in that area that seem to be at least as bustling and at ease as their equivalents in most of the rest of Europe. Ross is OK, Monmouth, Abergavenny, Crickhowell, Hay all doing fine and the latter two borderline chic these days. I don't sense the same desolation in the market towns as I do in the commuter belt deserts.
How do we rescue these towns? I'm not sure you can
They were built for the industrial revolution, now that has gone and is never returning. AI will destroy the few jobs left
Probably the best thing that could happen is that they are all levelled, and returned to grass, and farms and woods. Depopulate the north, it's not worth saving
The problem since 2010 has been compounded. Decades of local Labour corruption and underfunding by (mainly) central Government has been joined by the decline of the rural market town, like Evesham, and Leominster. I can't remember who let them down. Probably the EU...
Market Towns that have turned dormitory town are my second least favourite place to visit for work. I can predict the exact chains on the high street before I arrive and I can feel my soul being sucked out as I pass the town boundary.
I wouldn't mind one or two chains on our high street. The only place I can buy a shirt is Age UK.
How do we rescue these towns? I'm not sure you can
They were built for the industrial revolution, now that has gone and is never returning. AI will destroy the few jobs left
Probably the best thing that could happen is that they are all levelled, and returned to grass, and farms and woods. Depopulate the north, it's not worth saving
The problem since 2010 has been compounded. Decades of local Labour corruption and underfunding by (mainly) central Government has been joined by the decline of the rural market town, like Evesham, and Leominster. I can't remember who let them down. Probably the EU...
I was in Leominster last year and it seemed fine. Can't say the same for Hereford, it was in a right old state
Evesham has been weirdly crap for quite a long time
We have fucked the country with mass immigration on a spectacularly thoughtless scale, and from all the wrong places. That's really all there is to it. There is no point in lying to ourselves any more. The election of a sectarian MP campaigning on aggressively Muslim issues simply underlines this
And this is unfuckable. Roll on the AI Apocalypse
Leominster fair enough, but yeah Hereford is on its arse. Bromyard, Upton, Great Malvern (the Link is OK) Ledbury, I'd argue Newent. And not many Muslims in Ledbury or Newent.
I also went to Bromyard and Ledbury and they were fine, Upton I don't even know, I have heard sad things about Malvern which pains me. Newent lol
And yet Shrewsbury thrives, Ross does pretty well, Ludlow is recovering fast, it's a strange mix, in a beautiful corner of the world
Mass immigration is, of course, not Britain's only problem, but it is at the root of SO many of our problems - from the new violence in our politics to the terrible pressure on our welfare state to the horrors of Birtish housing, built and unbuilt
It is a catastrophic failure, and a reckoning is coming, Tho it will happen in mainland Europe first: they are ahead of the curve
Leon, me old China, you are sounding a bit unhinged and borderline unpleasant with all this banging on about immigration and country going to the dogs and whatnot.
X just told me to search for one of Yasmin A-B's Graun articles (apparently entitled "If I'd Known this Country was so White I'd never have come", according to X) and you are coming over a bit Yasmin A-B but from the opposite direction.
We just elected a sectarian MP in a British city in a by election tinged with Islamist violence and riven with anti-Semitism (and "tinged" is being polite)
It's not a cheery moment for the British multiculty model, is it? What do you want me to do, pretend everything is great in our richly diverse nation?
We do have a richly diverse nation. There are some people who are arseholes. What can you do.
George Galloway I don't believe is a recent immigrant from Somalia, now, is he.
How do we rescue these towns? I'm not sure you can
They were built for the industrial revolution, now that has gone and is never returning. AI will destroy the few jobs left
Probably the best thing that could happen is that they are all levelled, and returned to grass, and farms and woods. Depopulate the north, it's not worth saving
The problem since 2010 has been compounded. Decades of local Labour corruption and underfunding by (mainly) central Government has been joined by the decline of the rural market town, like Evesham, and Leominster. I can't remember who let them down. Probably the EU...
I was in Leominster last year and it seemed fine. Can't say the same for Hereford, it was in a right old state
Evesham has been weirdly crap for quite a long time
We have fucked the country with mass immigration on a spectacularly thoughtless scale, and from all the wrong places. That's really all there is to it. There is no point in lying to ourselves any more. The election of a sectarian MP campaigning on aggressively Muslim issues simply underlines this
And this is unfuckable. Roll on the AI Apocalypse
Leominster fair enough, but yeah Hereford is on its arse. Bromyard, Upton, Great Malvern (the Link is OK) Ledbury, I'd argue Newent. And not many Muslims in Ledbury or Newent.
I also went to Bromyard and Ledbury and they were fine, Upton I don't even know, I have heard sad things about Malvern which pains me. Newent lol
And yet Shrewsbury thrives, Ross does pretty well, Ludlow is recovering fast, it's a strange mix, in a beautiful corner of the world
Mass immigration is, of course, not Britain's only problem, but it is at the root of SO many of our problems - from the new violence in our politics to the terrible pressure on our welfare state to the horrors of Birtish housing, built and unbuilt
It is a catastrophic failure, and a reckoning is coming, Tho it will happen in mainland Europe first: they are ahead of the curve
Leon, me old China, you are sounding a bit unhinged and borderline unpleasant with all this banging on about immigration and country going to the dogs and whatnot.
X just told me to search for one of Yasmin A-B's Graun articles (apparently entitled "If I'd Known this Country was so White I'd never have come", according to X) and you are coming over a bit Yasmin A-B but from the opposite direction.
We just elected a sectarian MP in a British city in a by election tinged with Islamist violence and riven with anti-Semitism (and "tinged" is being polite)
It's not a cheery moment for the British multiculty model, is it? What do you want me to do, pretend everything is great in our richly diverse nation?
We do have a richly diverse nation. There are some people who are arseholes. What can you do.
George Galloway I don't believe is a recent immigrant from Somalia, now, is he.
What saddens me about this is that the same story could surely be written of two dozen British towns, at least. And I don't think they will ever get better, in my lifetime, unless AI performs a miracle (because Labour or the Tories certainly won't)
Two dozen? At least.
It’s a great national tragedy, and seems just a permanent and permanently-accepted feature of British life. Like corruption in Italy, gun laws in the US, and the schoolgirl knicker fetish in Japan.
The same can be said of a hundred lost little cities in America, esp but not always in the rustbelt, and multiple communities in the Mezzogiorno
Desperate places with no obvious remedy
However at least in America there is that sense of freedom, if you live in Shit-hole Indiana, just get in your car and drive south and west. And Italy has the sun which helps - tho it can still be fucking grim even in the sun, in parts of Sicily and Calabria etc
In rundown UK you have a unique combo of shit weather, hopeless economics, and a sense of being trapped. And lots of ugly red brick new builds making it EVEN WORSE
Britain needs a population of about 25-30m, with 10m in London (which still functions well). Pull down every ugly town and turn them into forests
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Thursday turned down Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's call for an emergency meeting this week to end a border blockade by Polish farmers that has plunged relations between the two allies into crisis.
I’ve never been to Rochdale, and doubt I ever will. In theory though, it’s nestled nicely into the Pennines and is well-situated to be a prosperous commuting suburb for both Manchester and Leeds.
I presume the housing stock is v poor, and the place has been de-invested to fuck. And brand “Rochdale” is about as bad as it gets.
How do we rescue these towns? I'm not sure you can
They were built for the industrial revolution, now that has gone and is never returning. AI will destroy the few jobs left
Probably the best thing that could happen is that they are all levelled, and returned to grass, and farms and woods. Depopulate the north, it's not worth saving
The problem since 2010 has been compounded. Decades of local Labour corruption and underfunding by (mainly) central Government has been joined by the decline of the rural market town, like Evesham, and Leominster. I can't remember who let them down. Probably the EU...
I was in Leominster last year and it seemed fine. Can't say the same for Hereford, it was in a right old state
Evesham has been weirdly crap for quite a long time
We have fucked the country with mass immigration on a spectacularly thoughtless scale, and from all the wrong places. That's really all there is to it. There is no point in lying to ourselves any more. The election of a sectarian MP campaigning on aggressively Muslim issues simply underlines this
And this is unfuckable. Roll on the AI Apocalypse
Leominster fair enough, but yeah Hereford is on its arse. Bromyard, Upton, Great Malvern (the Link is OK) Ledbury, I'd argue Newent. And not many Muslims in Ledbury or Newent.
I also went to Bromyard and Ledbury and they were fine, Upton I don't even know, I have heard sad things about Malvern which pains me. Newent lol
And yet Shrewsbury thrives, Ross does pretty well, Ludlow is recovering fast, it's a strange mix, in a beautiful corner of the world
Mass immigration is, of course, not Britain's only problem, but it is at the root of SO many of our problems - from the new violence in our politics to the terrible pressure on our welfare state to the horrors of Birtish housing, built and unbuilt
It is a catastrophic failure, and a reckoning is coming, Tho it will happen in mainland Europe first: they are ahead of the curve
Leon, me old China, you are sounding a bit unhinged and borderline unpleasant with all this banging on about immigration and country going to the dogs and whatnot.
X just told me to search for one of Yasmin A-B's Graun articles (apparently entitled "If I'd Known this Country was so White I'd never have come", according to X) and you are coming over a bit Yasmin A-B but from the opposite direction.
We just elected a sectarian MP in a British city in a by election tinged with Islamist violence and riven with anti-Semitism (and "tinged" is being polite)
It's not a cheery moment for the British multiculty model, is it? What do you want me to do, pretend everything is great in our richly diverse nation?
We do have a richly diverse nation. There are some people who are arseholes. What can you do.
George Galloway I don't believe is a recent immigrant from Somalia, now, is he.
How do we rescue these towns? I'm not sure you can
They were built for the industrial revolution, now that has gone and is never returning. AI will destroy the few jobs left
Probably the best thing that could happen is that they are all levelled, and returned to grass, and farms and woods. Depopulate the north, it's not worth saving
The problem since 2010 has been compounded. Decades of local Labour corruption and underfunding by (mainly) central Government has been joined by the decline of the rural market town, like Evesham, and Leominster. I can't remember who let them down. Probably the EU...
I was in Leominster last year and it seemed fine. Can't say the same for Hereford, it was in a right old state
Evesham has been weirdly crap for quite a long time
We have fucked the country with mass immigration on a spectacularly thoughtless scale, and from all the wrong places. That's really all there is to it. There is no point in lying to ourselves any more. The election of a sectarian MP campaigning on aggressively Muslim issues simply underlines this
And this is unfuckable. Roll on the AI Apocalypse
Evesham is just an everyday case of shite town planning.
Major retail has been moved out to the edge - the massive retail parks round the southeast, the development at the northern bypass roundabout. This isn't ideal but you can survive it if you make the town centre a pleasant place to be. That really hasn't happened - the town centre is still a car-dominated hole, the market has been run down, the pleasant old buildings have queuing traffic beside them.
I sometimes wonder whether district council planning staff should be given a "Ladybird First Book of Town Planning" to stop them making all these incredibly avoidable mistakes. But tbh towns probably need to decide whether they're going to go all in on @BartholomewRoberts style car-centric design or for a more European plan which restricts car use. The halfway house like Evesham doesn't work for anyone.
It's perfectly possible to have cars at the middle of a town. And make it inviting. You just need to look at French towns, for example.
How do we rescue these towns? I'm not sure you can
They were built for the industrial revolution, now that has gone and is never returning. AI will destroy the few jobs left
Probably the best thing that could happen is that they are all levelled, and returned to grass, and farms and woods. Depopulate the north, it's not worth saving
The problem since 2010 has been compounded. Decades of local Labour corruption and underfunding by (mainly) central Government has been joined by the decline of the rural market town, like Evesham, and Leominster. I can't remember who let them down. Probably the EU...
I was in Leominster last year and it seemed fine. Can't say the same for Hereford, it was in a right old state
Evesham has been weirdly crap for quite a long time
We have fucked the country with mass immigration on a spectacularly thoughtless scale, and from all the wrong places. That's really all there is to it. There is no point in lying to ourselves any more. The election of a sectarian MP campaigning on aggressively Muslim issues simply underlines this
And this is unfuckable. Roll on the AI Apocalypse
Leominster fair enough, but yeah Hereford is on its arse. Bromyard, Upton, Great Malvern (the Link is OK) Ledbury, I'd argue Newent. And not many Muslims in Ledbury or Newent.
I also went to Bromyard and Ledbury and they were fine, Upton I don't even know, I have heard sad things about Malvern which pains me. Newent lol
And yet Shrewsbury thrives, Ross does pretty well, Ludlow is recovering fast, it's a strange mix, in a beautiful corner of the world
Mass immigration is, of course, not Britain's only problem, but it is at the root of SO many of our problems - from the new violence in our politics to the terrible pressure on our welfare state to the horrors of Birtish housing, built and unbuilt
It is a catastrophic failure, and a reckoning is coming, Tho it will happen in mainland Europe first: they are ahead of the curve
Leon, me old China, you are sounding a bit unhinged and borderline unpleasant with all this banging on about immigration and country going to the dogs and whatnot.
X just told me to search for one of Yasmin A-B's Graun articles (apparently entitled "If I'd Known this Country was so White I'd never have come", according to X) and you are coming over a bit Yasmin A-B but from the opposite direction.
We just elected a sectarian MP in a British city in a by election tinged with Islamist violence and riven with anti-Semitism (and "tinged" is being polite)
It's not a cheery moment for the British multiculty model, is it? What do you want me to do, pretend everything is great in our richly diverse nation?
*just*? The Galloway won on a similar platform in 2005 and again in 2012. I think you are over-egging the pudding somewhat. We also did all the hand wringing when the BNP started to pick up council seats in around 2009. Are these trends or unrelated events. I say the latter.
Am on the (overground) train. Ticket inspector (guard?) came through. Opposite me is a young (18-25 I'd say), IC3 male, sort of not quite an afro, smartly enough dressed, backpack on the seat next to him. He showed his ticket and then the guard asked him for his railcard.
So far so good.
Then he asked for my ticket, which I showed him (on my phone, @Anabobazina don't panic) and....HE DID NOT ASK ME FOR MY RAILCARD.
(And without doxxing myself, and for reference, I am not a young IC3 male.)
Do you even qualify for a railcard?
P.S. I used to have a 'SOUTH EAST RAILCARD' – on my phone, praise be, so I never forgot it.
You'll be reassured to hear that I have a "Two Together" railcard on my phone. I show this to the guard alongside the two paper tickets.
How do we rescue these towns? I'm not sure you can
They were built for the industrial revolution, now that has gone and is never returning. AI will destroy the few jobs left
Probably the best thing that could happen is that they are all levelled, and returned to grass, and farms and woods. Depopulate the north, it's not worth saving
The problem since 2010 has been compounded. Decades of local Labour corruption and underfunding by (mainly) central Government has been joined by the decline of the rural market town, like Evesham, and Leominster. I can't remember who let them down. Probably the EU...
I was in Leominster last year and it seemed fine. Can't say the same for Hereford, it was in a right old state
Evesham has been weirdly crap for quite a long time
We have fucked the country with mass immigration on a spectacularly thoughtless scale, and from all the wrong places. That's really all there is to it. There is no point in lying to ourselves any more. The election of a sectarian MP campaigning on aggressively Muslim issues simply underlines this
And this is unfuckable. Roll on the AI Apocalypse
Leominster fair enough, but yeah Hereford is on its arse. Bromyard, Upton, Great Malvern (the Link is OK) Ledbury, I'd argue Newent. And not many Muslims in Ledbury or Newent.
I also went to Bromyard and Ledbury and they were fine, Upton I don't even know, I have heard sad things about Malvern which pains me. Newent lol
And yet Shrewsbury thrives, Ross does pretty well, Ludlow is recovering fast, it's a strange mix, in a beautiful corner of the world
Mass immigration is, of course, not Britain's only problem, but it is at the root of SO many of our problems - from the new violence in our politics to the terrible pressure on our welfare state to the horrors of Birtish housing, built and unbuilt
It is a catastrophic failure, and a reckoning is coming, Tho it will happen in mainland Europe first: they are ahead of the curve
Leon, me old China, you are sounding a bit unhinged and borderline unpleasant with all this banging on about immigration and country going to the dogs and whatnot.
X just told me to search for one of Yasmin A-B's Graun articles (apparently entitled "If I'd Known this Country was so White I'd never have come", according to X) and you are coming over a bit Yasmin A-B but from the opposite direction.
We just elected a sectarian MP in a British city in a by election tinged with Islamist violence and riven with anti-Semitism (and "tinged" is being polite)
It's not a cheery moment for the British multiculty model, is it? What do you want me to do, pretend everything is great in our richly diverse nation?
We do have a richly diverse nation. There are some people who are arseholes. What can you do.
George Galloway I don't believe is a recent immigrant from Somalia, now, is he.
"He has kept a receipt of every single Big Mac he’s eaten every day since that first one, and he’s retained each of the burgers’ containers..."
What a moron
He eats his favourite food every day. Don't knock it. And iirc American celebrity investor Warren Buffett eats McDonalds every day too. Donald Trump mixes McDonalds with KFC and is the picture of health, at least compared to his opponent. They've made it past the biblical three score years and ten.
I agree. Apologies if I've mis-remembered but isn't your diet similarly narrow?
I've never eaten at a McDonalds which, for some, makes me stranger than this dude.
How do we rescue these towns? I'm not sure you can
They were built for the industrial revolution, now that has gone and is never returning. AI will destroy the few jobs left
Probably the best thing that could happen is that they are all levelled, and returned to grass, and farms and woods. Depopulate the north, it's not worth saving
The problem since 2010 has been compounded. Decades of local Labour corruption and underfunding by (mainly) central Government has been joined by the decline of the rural market town, like Evesham, and Leominster. I can't remember who let them down. Probably the EU...
I was in Leominster last year and it seemed fine. Can't say the same for Hereford, it was in a right old state
Evesham has been weirdly crap for quite a long time
We have fucked the country with mass immigration on a spectacularly thoughtless scale, and from all the wrong places. That's really all there is to it. There is no point in lying to ourselves any more. The election of a sectarian MP campaigning on aggressively Muslim issues simply underlines this
And this is unfuckable. Roll on the AI Apocalypse
Leominster fair enough, but yeah Hereford is on its arse. Bromyard, Upton, Great Malvern (the Link is OK) Ledbury, I'd argue Newent. And not many Muslims in Ledbury or Newent.
I've not been to Hereford since the more recent comments from Leon about it being on its arse, and I was surprised at the time because my memory of it from about a decade ago was as somewhere quietly going up in the world with new shops and restaurants as well as the same old marches charm. It also still had many of the independent shops I remembered from my childhood there. Is it really now that bad?
There are still plenty of towns in that area that seem to be at least as bustling and at ease as their equivalents in most of the rest of Europe. Ross is OK, Monmouth, Abergavenny, Crickhowell, Hay all doing fine and the latter two borderline chic these days. I don't sense the same desolation in the market towns as I do in the commuter belt deserts.
I went to Hereford in 2021 and it was looking good, recovering from Covid much better than most places, busy pubs and all the shops reopening
Fuck knows what happened between 2021 and 2023 but something happened. Last summer it was looking terrible. 50% or more of the shops in High Town are shuttered. Drunken zombies lie on the benches. It could have been an historic town in West Virginia hit by Fentanyl, and it was so deathly quiet.
Deeply sad
However the basic bones of a handsome English cathedral city are still there. It has lots of lovely period buildings, the cathedral, the medieval churches, the river and the parks, the town planners did their worst but it was nowhere near as bad as some towns which got ruined. Hereford was not ruined, either by bombs or bloody architects, just bruised
If recent examples of "learning the lessons of the last byelection" are anything to go by, Tory strategy for the next few weeks is I suspect going to be heavy on pushing the fear of Islamist violence, using Galloway's victory as a lightning rod. Galloway will doubtless happily play along in his role as the pantomime villain, as they share a common enemy.
I'm not sure it will hurt Labour too much though. Galloway offers them a helpful distance from the problem. But there is definitely danger for them if they get caught in a pincer movement between the islamophobes and the antisemites. Most people in Britain are neither. I think their best bet is to play the sensible grown up party, looking to calm tensions and condemning the rabble rousers on left and right. If they succeed it could pay dividends but if they fail they could end up alienating both sides of the argument. Tricky.
We have fucked the country with mass immigration ...
Just like the Jews fucked up Germany in the 1930s.
Germany in the 30s was a lot nicer than Newent, Waterlooville or Rochdale
Apart from the mass unemployment, hunger, paramilitary violence, invading neighbouring countries, concentration camps, attacks on Jews, suspension of democracy and the spread of a violent totalitarian ideology, yes you are absolutely right.
How do we rescue these towns? I'm not sure you can
They were built for the industrial revolution, now that has gone and is never returning. AI will destroy the few jobs left
Probably the best thing that could happen is that they are all levelled, and returned to grass, and farms and woods. Depopulate the north, it's not worth saving
The problem since 2010 has been compounded. Decades of local Labour corruption and underfunding by (mainly) central Government has been joined by the decline of the rural market town, like Evesham, and Leominster. I can't remember who let them down. Probably the EU...
I was in Leominster last year and it seemed fine. Can't say the same for Hereford, it was in a right old state
Evesham has been weirdly crap for quite a long time
We have fucked the country with mass immigration on a spectacularly thoughtless scale, and from all the wrong places. That's really all there is to it. There is no point in lying to ourselves any more. The election of a sectarian MP campaigning on aggressively Muslim issues simply underlines this
And this is unfuckable. Roll on the AI Apocalypse
Evesham is just an everyday case of shite town planning.
Major retail has been moved out to the edge - the massive retail parks round the southeast, the development at the northern bypass roundabout. This isn't ideal but you can survive it if you make the town centre a pleasant place to be. That really hasn't happened - the town centre is still a car-dominated hole, the market has been run down, the pleasant old buildings have queuing traffic beside them.
I sometimes wonder whether district council planning staff should be given a "Ladybird First Book of Town Planning" to stop them making all these incredibly avoidable mistakes. But tbh towns probably need to decide whether they're going to go all in on @BartholomewRoberts style car-centric design or for a more European plan which restricts car use. The halfway house like Evesham doesn't work for anyone.
It's perfectly possible to have cars at the middle of a town. And make it inviting. You just need to look at French towns, for example.
And I like the carefully crafted antique tarmac to ensure that everyone slows down. Helped considerably by those "outlines for buildings which used to be there before the Germans/RAF/USAF/town planners destroyed them" with nice lumpy blocks of doleritic intrusion.
We have fucked the country with mass immigration ...
Just like the Jews fucked up Germany in the 1930s.
Germany in the 30s was a lot nicer than Newent, Waterlooville or Rochdale
Apart from the mass unemployment, hunger, paramilitary violence, invading neighbouring countries, concentration camps, attacks on Jews, suspension of democracy and the spread of a violent totalitarian ideology, yes you are absolutely right.
Well done Rochdale. You paint a dismal picture but I'm sure it's deserved. My only brush with the town was when I was asked to do an LP sleeve for a long forgotten band called MUD.
Their record company had the bright idea of photographing them in front of a satanic mill as the workers came pouring out in flat caps gesticulating and shouting abuse. Sort of Lowryesque with a vintage Rolls in the foreground.....unfortunately the workers didn't come out on bicycles or on foot and they weren't angry so it was back to London empty handed
If recent examples of "learning the lessons of the last byelection" are anything to go by, Tory strategy for the next few weeks is I suspect going to be heavy on pushing the fear of Islamist violence, using Galloway's victory as a lightning rod. Galloway will doubtless happily play along in his role as the pantomime villain, as they share a common enemy.
I'm not sure it will hurt Labour too much though. Galloway offers them a helpful distance from the problem. But there is definitely danger for them if they get caught in a pincer movement between the islamophobes and the antisemites. Most people in Britain are neither. I think their best bet is to play the sensible grown up party, looking to calm tensions and condemning the rabble rousers on left and right. If they succeed it could pay dividends but if they fail they could end up alienating both sides of the argument. Tricky.
Keir Starmer is boring enough to pull that off. In some ways Galloway is a free left-wing punch bag that doesn’t hurt people inside his tent. He can carry on pointing out that the Tories seem to have a lot of weird racists in their ranks while dunking on Galloway for baiting Jewish people.
Cyril Smith, Simon Danczuk and now George Galloway. I am not really convinced that the honourable members for Rochdale have done much to enhance the gaiety of the nation.
Well done Rochdale. You paint a dismal picture but I'm sure it's deserved. My only brush with the town was when I was asked to do an LP sleeve for a long forgotten band called MUD.
Their record company had the bright idea of photographing them in front of a satanic mill as the workers came pouring out in flat caps gesticulating and shouting abuse. Sort of Lowryesque with a vintage Rolls in the foreground.....unfortunately the workers didn't come out on bicycles or on foot and they weren't angry so it was back to London empty handed
How do we rescue these towns? I'm not sure you can
They were built for the industrial revolution, now that has gone and is never returning. AI will destroy the few jobs left
Probably the best thing that could happen is that they are all levelled, and returned to grass, and farms and woods. Depopulate the north, it's not worth saving
The problem since 2010 has been compounded. Decades of local Labour corruption and underfunding by (mainly) central Government has been joined by the decline of the rural market town, like Evesham, and Leominster. I can't remember who let them down. Probably the EU...
I was in Leominster last year and it seemed fine. Can't say the same for Hereford, it was in a right old state
Evesham has been weirdly crap for quite a long time
We have fucked the country with mass immigration on a spectacularly thoughtless scale, and from all the wrong places. That's really all there is to it. There is no point in lying to ourselves any more. The election of a sectarian MP campaigning on aggressively Muslim issues simply underlines this
And this is unfuckable. Roll on the AI Apocalypse
Leominster fair enough, but yeah Hereford is on its arse. Bromyard, Upton, Great Malvern (the Link is OK) Ledbury, I'd argue Newent. And not many Muslims in Ledbury or Newent.
I've not been to Hereford since the more recent comments from Leon about it being on its arse, and I was surprised at the time because my memory of it from about a decade ago was as somewhere quietly going up in the world with new shops and restaurants as well as the same old marches charm. It also still had many of the independent shops I remembered from my childhood there. Is it really now that bad?
There are still plenty of towns in that area that seem to be at least as bustling and at ease as their equivalents in most of the rest of Europe. Ross is OK, Monmouth, Abergavenny, Crickhowell, Hay all doing fine and the latter two borderline chic these days. I don't sense the same desolation in the market towns as I do in the commuter belt deserts.
I went to Hereford in 2021 and it was looking good, recovering from Covid much better than most places, busy pubs and all the shops reopening
Fuck knows what happened between 2021 and 2023 but something happened. Last summer it was looking terrible. 50% or more of the shops in High Town are shuttered. Drunken zombies lie on the benches. It could have been an historic town in West Virginia hit by Fentanyl, and it was so deathly quiet.
Deeply sad
However the basic bones of a handsome English cathedral city are still there. It has lots of lovely period buildings, the cathedral, the medieval churches, the river and the parks, the town planners did their worst but it was nowhere near as bad as some towns which got ruined. Hereford was not ruined, either by bombs or bloody architects, just bruised
So there are grounds for optimism
There was a period in the early to mid 90s after the recession when the place filled up with crusties and drunk or drugged up homeless youngsters, and high town was looking pretty desolate. I wonder if there's something about it that is more vulnerable to economic downturns and the visible poverty they bring. That all cleared up again once the late 90s boom got going.
If the old world of shopping has gone, then we need to start adjusting, which means knocking down shops and old shopping centres.
May I humbly suggest that the cure to Wellington Way Shopping Centre is to knock it down flat and turn it either into a car park or a field. You could make a nice field out of it and it would give you somewhere nice to walk your dog
Or you can build some nice houses.
Chain retail is dead, and for several reasons: 1. So many people are broke. Less discretionary spending means if you can buy it cheaper online, you will 2. So many shops are owned by absentee investment companies who charge mega rents for buildings that haven't seen investment for decades 3. Business rates and parking charges sky high as bankrupt councils try to stay solvent 4. Energy bills explosion
Stockton council have bought up much of the high street and bulldozed the 1970s mall to convert it into a riverside park. What retail can work is bespoke local shops selling things you can't find easily online or don't want to just order on a screen. Yes, I say that owning such a shop, but its also a model successfully pursued in all kinds of communities.
Rochdale has a 1970s mall (half empty), a 1980s mall (closed and for sale), a brand new mall (full of chain stores) and a high street devoid of anything bar charity shops and vape/drugs shops.
How do we rescue these towns? I'm not sure you can
They were built for the industrial revolution, now that has gone and is never returning. AI will destroy the few jobs left
Probably the best thing that could happen is that they are all levelled, and returned to grass, and farms and woods. Depopulate the north, it's not worth saving
The problem since 2010 has been compounded. Decades of local Labour corruption and underfunding by (mainly) central Government has been joined by the decline of the rural market town, like Evesham, and Leominster. I can't remember who let them down. Probably the EU...
I was in Leominster last year and it seemed fine. Can't say the same for Hereford, it was in a right old state
Evesham has been weirdly crap for quite a long time
We have fucked the country with mass immigration on a spectacularly thoughtless scale, and from all the wrong places. That's really all there is to it. There is no point in lying to ourselves any more. The election of a sectarian MP campaigning on aggressively Muslim issues simply underlines this
And this is unfuckable. Roll on the AI Apocalypse
Leominster fair enough, but yeah Hereford is on its arse. Bromyard, Upton, Great Malvern (the Link is OK) Ledbury, I'd argue Newent. And not many Muslims in Ledbury or Newent.
I also went to Bromyard and Ledbury and they were fine, Upton I don't even know, I have heard sad things about Malvern which pains me. Newent lol
And yet Shrewsbury thrives, Ross does pretty well, Ludlow is recovering fast, it's a strange mix, in a beautiful corner of the world
Mass immigration is, of course, not Britain's only problem, but it is at the root of SO many of our problems - from the new violence in our politics to the terrible pressure on our welfare state to the horrors of Birtish housing, built and unbuilt
It is a catastrophic failure, and a reckoning is coming, Tho it will happen in mainland Europe first: they are ahead of the curve
Leon, me old China, you are sounding a bit unhinged and borderline unpleasant with all this banging on about immigration and country going to the dogs and whatnot.
X just told me to search for one of Yasmin A-B's Graun articles (apparently entitled "If I'd Known this Country was so White I'd never have come", according to X) and you are coming over a bit Yasmin A-B but from the opposite direction.
We just elected a sectarian MP in a British city in a by election tinged with Islamist violence and riven with anti-Semitism (and "tinged" is being polite)
It's not a cheery moment for the British multiculty model, is it? What do you want me to do, pretend everything is great in our richly diverse nation?
We do have a richly diverse nation. There are some people who are arseholes. What can you do.
George Galloway I don't believe is a recent immigrant from Somalia, now, is he.
He is from Dundee though.
An escapee from the Broons?
That’s Glasgow. Dundee is Dennis the Menace.
I was thinking of the Sunday Post - same publishers as Mr Menace. But yes, they're more weegie in content. And of course Mr G has spent most of his actual parliamentary career as MP for Kelvinside/Hillhead, defenestrating Mr Jenkins R. (does make me wonder about the university, but he was of course the official Slab candidate in those days).
How do we rescue these towns? I'm not sure you can
They were built for the industrial revolution, now that has gone and is never returning. AI will destroy the few jobs left
Probably the best thing that could happen is that they are all levelled, and returned to grass, and farms and woods. Depopulate the north, it's not worth saving
The problem since 2010 has been compounded. Decades of local Labour corruption and underfunding by (mainly) central Government has been joined by the decline of the rural market town, like Evesham, and Leominster. I can't remember who let them down. Probably the EU...
I was in Leominster last year and it seemed fine. Can't say the same for Hereford, it was in a right old state
Evesham has been weirdly crap for quite a long time
We have fucked the country with mass immigration on a spectacularly thoughtless scale, and from all the wrong places. That's really all there is to it. There is no point in lying to ourselves any more. The election of a sectarian MP campaigning on aggressively Muslim issues simply underlines this
And this is unfuckable. Roll on the AI Apocalypse
Leominster fair enough, but yeah Hereford is on its arse. Bromyard, Upton, Great Malvern (the Link is OK) Ledbury, I'd argue Newent. And not many Muslims in Ledbury or Newent.
I also went to Bromyard and Ledbury and they were fine, Upton I don't even know, I have heard sad things about Malvern which pains me. Newent lol
And yet Shrewsbury thrives, Ross does pretty well, Ludlow is recovering fast, it's a strange mix, in a beautiful corner of the world
Mass immigration is, of course, not Britain's only problem, but it is at the root of SO many of our problems - from the new violence in our politics to the terrible pressure on our welfare state to the horrors of Birtish housing, built and unbuilt
It is a catastrophic failure, and a reckoning is coming, Tho it will happen in mainland Europe first: they are ahead of the curve
Leon, me old China, you are sounding a bit unhinged and borderline unpleasant with all this banging on about immigration and country going to the dogs and whatnot.
X just told me to search for one of Yasmin A-B's Graun articles (apparently entitled "If I'd Known this Country was so White I'd never have come", according to X) and you are coming over a bit Yasmin A-B but from the opposite direction.
We just elected a sectarian MP in a British city in a by election tinged with Islamist violence and riven with anti-Semitism (and "tinged" is being polite)
It's not a cheery moment for the British multiculty model, is it? What do you want me to do, pretend everything is great in our richly diverse nation?
We do have a richly diverse nation. There are some people who are arseholes. What can you do.
George Galloway I don't believe is a recent immigrant from Somalia, now, is he.
He is from Dundee though.
An escapee from the Broons?
That’s Glasgow. Dundee is Dennis the Menace.
The Broons are certainly not from Glasgow! They live in the fictional town of Auchenshogle. They appear in the Dundee-published Sunday Post. And the youngest child is called "the bairn", which is more of an east coast thing. In Glasgow she'd probably be called the wean.
I know Rochdale reasonably well. Strapline: at least we're not Oldham.
The Northwest is full of struggling post-industrial towns, but there are a handful which are doing ok-ish. Stockport. Bury. Warrington. Preston, at a push. I'd struggle to think of any more.
We have fucked the country with mass immigration ...
Just like the Jews fucked up Germany in the 1930s.
Germany in the 30s was a lot nicer than Newent, Waterlooville or Rochdale
Apart from the mass unemployment, hunger, paramilitary violence, invading neighbouring countries, concentration camps, attacks on Jews, suspension of democracy and the spread of a violent totalitarian ideology, yes you are absolutely right.
How do we rescue these towns? I'm not sure you can
They were built for the industrial revolution, now that has gone and is never returning. AI will destroy the few jobs left
Probably the best thing that could happen is that they are all levelled, and returned to grass, and farms and woods. Depopulate the north, it's not worth saving
The problem since 2010 has been compounded. Decades of local Labour corruption and underfunding by (mainly) central Government has been joined by the decline of the rural market town, like Evesham, and Leominster. I can't remember who let them down. Probably the EU...
I was in Leominster last year and it seemed fine. Can't say the same for Hereford, it was in a right old state
Evesham has been weirdly crap for quite a long time
We have fucked the country with mass immigration on a spectacularly thoughtless scale, and from all the wrong places. That's really all there is to it. There is no point in lying to ourselves any more. The election of a sectarian MP campaigning on aggressively Muslim issues simply underlines this
And this is unfuckable. Roll on the AI Apocalypse
Evesham is just an everyday case of shite town planning.
Major retail has been moved out to the edge - the massive retail parks round the southeast, the development at the northern bypass roundabout. This isn't ideal but you can survive it if you make the town centre a pleasant place to be. That really hasn't happened - the town centre is still a car-dominated hole, the market has been run down, the pleasant old buildings have queuing traffic beside them.
I sometimes wonder whether district council planning staff should be given a "Ladybird First Book of Town Planning" to stop them making all these incredibly avoidable mistakes. But tbh towns probably need to decide whether they're going to go all in on @BartholomewRoberts style car-centric design or for a more European plan which restricts car use. The halfway house like Evesham doesn't work for anyone.
It's perfectly possible to have cars at the middle of a town. And make it inviting. You just need to look at French towns, for example.
And I like the carefully crafted antique tarmac to ensure that everyone slows down. Helped considerably by those "outlines for buildings which used to be there before the Germans/RAF/USAF/town planners destroyed them" with nice lumpy blocks of doleritic intrusion.
Not sure what you can do about military history.
Well, at least it doesn't have the "Fuck Off" vibe you get from much of modern "planning".
EDIT : what about this dump - https://maps.app.goo.gl/duKVH1fBeFoGfK926 2nd EDIT: For those that missed it, big underground carpark in the French style, in the first link
How do we rescue these towns? I'm not sure you can
They were built for the industrial revolution, now that has gone and is never returning. AI will destroy the few jobs left
Probably the best thing that could happen is that they are all levelled, and returned to grass, and farms and woods. Depopulate the north, it's not worth saving
The problem since 2010 has been compounded. Decades of local Labour corruption and underfunding by (mainly) central Government has been joined by the decline of the rural market town, like Evesham, and Leominster. I can't remember who let them down. Probably the EU...
I was in Leominster last year and it seemed fine. Can't say the same for Hereford, it was in a right old state
Evesham has been weirdly crap for quite a long time
We have fucked the country with mass immigration on a spectacularly thoughtless scale, and from all the wrong places. That's really all there is to it. There is no point in lying to ourselves any more. The election of a sectarian MP campaigning on aggressively Muslim issues simply underlines this
And this is unfuckable. Roll on the AI Apocalypse
Leominster fair enough, but yeah Hereford is on its arse. Bromyard, Upton, Great Malvern (the Link is OK) Ledbury, I'd argue Newent. And not many Muslims in Ledbury or Newent.
I've not been to Hereford since the more recent comments from Leon about it being on its arse, and I was surprised at the time because my memory of it from about a decade ago was as somewhere quietly going up in the world with new shops and restaurants as well as the same old marches charm. It also still had many of the independent shops I remembered from my childhood there. Is it really now that bad?
There are still plenty of towns in that area that seem to be at least as bustling and at ease as their equivalents in most of the rest of Europe. Ross is OK, Monmouth, Abergavenny, Crickhowell, Hay all doing fine and the latter two borderline chic these days. I don't sense the same desolation in the market towns as I do in the commuter belt deserts.
I went to Hereford in 2021 and it was looking good, recovering from Covid much better than most places, busy pubs and all the shops reopening
Fuck knows what happened between 2021 and 2023 but something happened. Last summer it was looking terrible. 50% or more of the shops in High Town are shuttered. Drunken zombies lie on the benches. It could have been an historic town in West Virginia hit by Fentanyl, and it was so deathly quiet.
Deeply sad
However the basic bones of a handsome English cathedral city are still there. It has lots of lovely period buildings, the cathedral, the medieval churches, the river and the parks, the town planners did their worst but it was nowhere near as bad as some towns which got ruined. Hereford was not ruined, either by bombs or bloody architects, just bruised
So there are grounds for optimism
There was a period in the early to mid 90s after the recession when the place filled up with crusties and drunk or drugged up homeless youngsters, and high town was looking pretty desolate. I wonder if there's something about it that is more vulnerable to economic downturns and the visible poverty they bring. That all cleared up again once the late 90s boom got going.
I spoke to a lot of people during my Welsh Marches roadtrip, and heard various theories
One - from a wine merchant in Shrewsbury with an outlet in Hereford - was pretty basic. To his way of thinking, Hereford pedestrianised too much, so people can't park in the centre. Shrewsbury didn't. During Covid people got used to either not going to the shops, or if they did they got lazy and drove. You can still drive into Shrewsbury....
Also Herefordshire is simply very poor. One of the poorest countes in England. No industry, no big urban centres with service sectors, just farming and shopping. And it is remote by British standards: the end of the line before the Welsh mountains
All of which makes it lovely and unspoiled, but it also means there is not much money sloshing around - at all. That might explain why it is vulnerable to economic cycles? It is like a family always near the breadline
How do we rescue these towns? I'm not sure you can
They were built for the industrial revolution, now that has gone and is never returning. AI will destroy the few jobs left
Probably the best thing that could happen is that they are all levelled, and returned to grass, and farms and woods. Depopulate the north, it's not worth saving
The problem since 2010 has been compounded. Decades of local Labour corruption and underfunding by (mainly) central Government has been joined by the decline of the rural market town, like Evesham, and Leominster. I can't remember who let them down. Probably the EU...
I was in Leominster last year and it seemed fine. Can't say the same for Hereford, it was in a right old state
Evesham has been weirdly crap for quite a long time
We have fucked the country with mass immigration on a spectacularly thoughtless scale, and from all the wrong places. That's really all there is to it. There is no point in lying to ourselves any more. The election of a sectarian MP campaigning on aggressively Muslim issues simply underlines this
And this is unfuckable. Roll on the AI Apocalypse
Evesham is just an everyday case of shite town planning.
Major retail has been moved out to the edge - the massive retail parks round the southeast, the development at the northern bypass roundabout. This isn't ideal but you can survive it if you make the town centre a pleasant place to be. That really hasn't happened - the town centre is still a car-dominated hole, the market has been run down, the pleasant old buildings have queuing traffic beside them.
I sometimes wonder whether district council planning staff should be given a "Ladybird First Book of Town Planning" to stop them making all these incredibly avoidable mistakes. But tbh towns probably need to decide whether they're going to go all in on @BartholomewRoberts style car-centric design or for a more European plan which restricts car use. The halfway house like Evesham doesn't work for anyone.
It's perfectly possible to have cars at the middle of a town. And make it inviting. You just need to look at French towns, for example.
And I like the carefully crafted antique tarmac to ensure that everyone slows down. Helped considerably by those "outlines for buildings which used to be there before the Germans/RAF/USAF/town planners destroyed them" with nice lumpy blocks of doleritic intrusion.
Not sure what you can do about military history.
Well, at least it doesn't have the "Fuck Off" vibe you get from much of modern "planning".
Oh, I think the outlines are great! We have them in one or two places in Edinburgh.
How do we rescue these towns? I'm not sure you can
They were built for the industrial revolution, now that has gone and is never returning. AI will destroy the few jobs left
Probably the best thing that could happen is that they are all levelled, and returned to grass, and farms and woods. Depopulate the north, it's not worth saving
The problem since 2010 has been compounded. Decades of local Labour corruption and underfunding by (mainly) central Government has been joined by the decline of the rural market town, like Evesham, and Leominster. I can't remember who let them down. Probably the EU...
I was in Leominster last year and it seemed fine. Can't say the same for Hereford, it was in a right old state
Evesham has been weirdly crap for quite a long time
We have fucked the country with mass immigration on a spectacularly thoughtless scale, and from all the wrong places. That's really all there is to it. There is no point in lying to ourselves any more. The election of a sectarian MP campaigning on aggressively Muslim issues simply underlines this
And this is unfuckable. Roll on the AI Apocalypse
Leominster fair enough, but yeah Hereford is on its arse. Bromyard, Upton, Great Malvern (the Link is OK) Ledbury, I'd argue Newent. And not many Muslims in Ledbury or Newent.
I also went to Bromyard and Ledbury and they were fine, Upton I don't even know, I have heard sad things about Malvern which pains me. Newent lol
And yet Shrewsbury thrives, Ross does pretty well, Ludlow is recovering fast, it's a strange mix, in a beautiful corner of the world
Mass immigration is, of course, not Britain's only problem, but it is at the root of SO many of our problems - from the new violence in our politics to the terrible pressure on our welfare state to the horrors of Birtish housing, built and unbuilt
It is a catastrophic failure, and a reckoning is coming, Tho it will happen in mainland Europe first: they are ahead of the curve
Leon, me old China, you are sounding a bit unhinged and borderline unpleasant with all this banging on about immigration and country going to the dogs and whatnot.
X just told me to search for one of Yasmin A-B's Graun articles (apparently entitled "If I'd Known this Country was so White I'd never have come", according to X) and you are coming over a bit Yasmin A-B but from the opposite direction.
We just elected a sectarian MP in a British city in a by election tinged with Islamist violence and riven with anti-Semitism (and "tinged" is being polite)
It's not a cheery moment for the British multiculty model, is it? What do you want me to do, pretend everything is great in our richly diverse nation?
We do have a richly diverse nation. There are some people who are arseholes. What can you do.
George Galloway I don't believe is a recent immigrant from Somalia, now, is he.
He is from Dundee though.
An escapee from the Broons?
That’s Glasgow. Dundee is Dennis the Menace.
Auchenshoogle is more Dundee than it is the Clyde Rivera, if the accent is to be believed...
If the old world of shopping has gone, then we need to start adjusting, which means knocking down shops and old shopping centres.
May I humbly suggest that the cure to Wellington Way Shopping Centre is to knock it down flat and turn it either into a car park or a field. You could make a nice field out of it and it would give you somewhere nice to walk your dog
Or you can build some nice houses.
Chain retail is dead, and for several reasons: 1. So many people are broke. Less discretionary spending means if you can buy it cheaper online, you will 2. So many shops are owned by absentee investment companies who charge mega rents for buildings that haven't seen investment for decades 3. Business rates and parking charges sky high as bankrupt councils try to stay solvent 4. Energy bills explosion
Stockton council have bought up much of the high street and bulldozed the 1970s mall to convert it into a riverside park. What retail can work is bespoke local shops selling things you can't find easily online or don't want to just order on a screen. Yes, I say that owning such a shop, but its also a model successfully pursued in all kinds of communities.
Rochdale has a 1970s mall (half empty), a 1980s mall (closed and for sale), a brand new mall (full of chain stores) and a high street devoid of anything bar charity shops and vape/drugs shops.
I live in a town with a lot of retirees. One positive thing about pensioners, particularly wealthy ones, is that they tend to support local coffeeshops, etc. There have been lots of new businesses etc opening, and even new shops being created. There is quite a lot of ingenuity, ie people creating record shops, maker space etc. I attribute all this largely to people in their 50s onwards, pensioners and those who have taken early retirement. On the other hand though the 'high street' in the town centre everywhere is going badly downhill.
Let's at least give George a chance with Rochdale. Perhaps he will at some point take a break from hat-modelling and 'shifting the tectonic plates' and get them a Primark.
(thanks, RP, really good piece)
Agreed re RP - less confident re Mr G.
Will be interesting to see how London HQ and Slab relationship develops, as the central control will be even tighter. It's not as if most of the candidates have a track record as MPs, so haven't been through the mill yet.
Well let's see where he directs that oratorical fire of his in his first speech to the House. That will tell us a lot.
"Whilst you neoliberal lackies and imperialist popinjays sit in Westminster on your well-cushioned two cheeks of the same zionist posteriors, there is a town not so far from here, but it may as well be the other side of Neptune for all you Davos placemen seem to care, that is crying out, men women and children alike, for a better deal. For years they have been ignored, their voices not heard, their aspirations stunted, their values disparged, their personal hygiene brought into question. No longer. That stops right here and right now. They have sent me and my fedora to this place to demand, DEMAND, that better deal. And we can start with a Primark."
Significant dip for the Conservatives, Reform continue their rise.
Eyeballing this there is an interesting inflection point. Up to June/July last year Labour and the Conservatives were largely anti-correlated, in other words one would go up and the other go down in synch. From then on The conservative vote is much more strongly anti-correlated with Reform. This suggests there are far fewer Con-Lab switchers now. I'd theorise that's because most people on that spectrum have made up their minds already. Now there is churn within the right.
Although Ref voters say they wouldn't vote Conservative this does suggest there is swingback to be had there. There is not an equivalent strong coupling between Labour and either of the other centre-left UK wide parties except in November and December last year when they both rose at its expense (why?). Otherwise they have essentially stood still since last summer.
I would also theorise, based purely on eyeballing, that Reform has taken some NOTA votes from the Lib Dems during its 2024 surge.
I know Rochdale reasonably well. Strapline: at least we're not Oldham.
The Northwest is full of struggling post-industrial towns, but there are a handful which are doing ok-ish. Stockport. Bury. Warrington. Preston, at a push. I'd struggle to think of any more.
I feel the same way. Canada is bonkers and you can't get in. Australia too far. USA obvious drawbacks. It's one thing escaping this shithole yourself but taking the family with you when your children are all over 18 is another thing.
Family, friends and familiarity keep one rooted here. I console myself with as much travelling as I can. Thank God for skiing - a winter here with no escape would do for me I think.
How do we rescue these towns? I'm not sure you can
They were built for the industrial revolution, now that has gone and is never returning. AI will destroy the few jobs left
Probably the best thing that could happen is that they are all levelled, and returned to grass, and farms and woods. Depopulate the north, it's not worth saving
The problem since 2010 has been compounded. Decades of local Labour corruption and underfunding by (mainly) central Government has been joined by the decline of the rural market town, like Evesham, and Leominster. I can't remember who let them down. Probably the EU...
I was in Leominster last year and it seemed fine. Can't say the same for Hereford, it was in a right old state
Evesham has been weirdly crap for quite a long time
We have fucked the country with mass immigration on a spectacularly thoughtless scale, and from all the wrong places. That's really all there is to it. There is no point in lying to ourselves any more. The election of a sectarian MP campaigning on aggressively Muslim issues simply underlines this
And this is unfuckable. Roll on the AI Apocalypse
Leominster fair enough, but yeah Hereford is on its arse. Bromyard, Upton, Great Malvern (the Link is OK) Ledbury, I'd argue Newent. And not many Muslims in Ledbury or Newent.
I've not been to Hereford since the more recent comments from Leon about it being on its arse, and I was surprised at the time because my memory of it from about a decade ago was as somewhere quietly going up in the world with new shops and restaurants as well as the same old marches charm. It also still had many of the independent shops I remembered from my childhood there. Is it really now that bad?
There are still plenty of towns in that area that seem to be at least as bustling and at ease as their equivalents in most of the rest of Europe. Ross is OK, Monmouth, Abergavenny, Crickhowell, Hay all doing fine and the latter two borderline chic these days. I don't sense the same desolation in the market towns as I do in the commuter belt deserts.
I went to Hereford in 2021 and it was looking good, recovering from Covid much better than most places, busy pubs and all the shops reopening
Fuck knows what happened between 2021 and 2023 but something happened. Last summer it was looking terrible. 50% or more of the shops in High Town are shuttered. Drunken zombies lie on the benches. It could have been an historic town in West Virginia hit by Fentanyl, and it was so deathly quiet.
Deeply sad
However the basic bones of a handsome English cathedral city are still there. It has lots of lovely period buildings, the cathedral, the medieval churches, the river and the parks, the town planners did their worst but it was nowhere near as bad as some towns which got ruined. Hereford was not ruined, either by bombs or bloody architects, just bruised
So there are grounds for optimism
There was a period in the early to mid 90s after the recession when the place filled up with crusties and drunk or drugged up homeless youngsters, and high town was looking pretty desolate. I wonder if there's something about it that is more vulnerable to economic downturns and the visible poverty they bring. That all cleared up again once the late 90s boom got going.
I spoke to a lot of people during my Welsh Marches roadtrip, and heard various theories
One - from a wine merchant in Shrewsbury with an outlet in Hereford - was pretty basic. To his way of thinking, Hereford pedestrianised too much, so people can't park in the centre. Shrewsbury didn't. During Covid people got used to either not going to the shops, or if they did they got lazy and drove. You can still drive into Shrewsbury....
Also Herefordshire is simply very poor. One of the poorest countes in England. No industry, no big urban centres with service sectors, just farming and shopping. And it is remote by British standards: the end of the line before the Welsh mountains
All of which makes it lovely and unspoiled, but it also means there is not much money sloshing around - at all. That might explain why it is vulnerable to economic cycles? It is like a family always near the breadline
Hurricanes hardly ever happen though, it does have that.
PM to give a statement outside Downing Street at 5.40
Not sure but it looks like something to do with extremism
Isn't this the sort of needy, attention-seeking stunt he pulled after the Uxbridge by-election when he announced an end to the "war on motorists"?
It will be something they've cooked up during the day in an attempt to capitalise on Labour's Galloway-related difficulties. It will be lame and pathetic.
Let's at least give George a chance with Rochdale. Perhaps he will at some point take a break from hat-modelling and 'shifting the tectonic plates' and get them a Primark.
(thanks, RP, really good piece)
Agreed re RP - less confident re Mr G.
Will be interesting to see how London HQ and Slab relationship develops, as the central control will be even tighter. It's not as if most of the candidates have a track record as MPs, so haven't been through the mill yet.
Well let's see where he directs that oratorical fire of his in his first speech to the House. That will tell us a lot.
"Whilst you neoliberal lackies and imperialist popinjays sit in Westminster on your well-cushioned two cheeks of the same zionist posteriors, there is a town not so far from here, but it may as well be the other side of Neptune for all you Davos placemen seem to care, that is crying out, men women and children alike, for a better deal. For years they have been ignored, their voices not heard, their aspirations stunted, their values disparged, their personal hygiene brought into question. No longer. That stops right here and right now. They have sent me and my fedora to this place to demand, DEMAND, that better deal. And we can start with a Primark."
Galloway's rightful place is with the RSC. You could imagine him treading the boards at Stratford or the National Theatre.
Cyril Smith, Simon Danczuk and now George Galloway. I am not really convinced that the honourable members for Rochdale have done much to enhance the gaiety of the nation.
Though to be fair you've omitted Tony Lloyd, whose death caused the by-election. Tony was a thoroughly normal, thoroughly decent chap in all respects.
If the old world of shopping has gone, then we need to start adjusting, which means knocking down shops and old shopping centres.
May I humbly suggest that the cure to Wellington Way Shopping Centre is to knock it down flat and turn it either into a car park or a field. You could make a nice field out of it and it would give you somewhere nice to walk your dog
Or you can build some nice houses.
Town centers need to reinvent themselves, again.
They thrived, at first, because it was convenient to have all your shopping in one place, and you could get the bus there, do all your shopping and return home.
Then - as families became multi-car - out of center shopping centers (with parking!) thrived. Now you could go, park, and do all your shopping.
Now... most shopping takes place on-line.
I'm trying to think of the last time I went to a shop, with the exception of when I go to a grocery store to buy light, easily perishable things. I buy all my clothes on-line. I buy batteries, cat food, and other consumables on-line. Why would I visit a store?
The only shopping centers that are surviving are those that realised that you need to be an experience first: Westfield with their Kidzania and 100 food options. And that's it.
Town centers need to follow London's lead: they need to become entertainment and residential. Out go most stores, and in come apartments, restaurants, bars and gyms.
And we need councils to facilitate and encourage this.
Sadly, too often, they allow high streets to become charity stores and vape shops.
I feel the same way. Canada is bonkers and you can't get in. Australia too far. USA obvious drawbacks. It's one thing escaping this shithole yourself but taking the family with you when your children are all over 18 is another thing.
Family, friends and familiarity keep one rooted here. I console myself with as much travelling as I can. Thank God for skiing - a winter here with no escape would do for me I think.
Your wife is a New Zealander, no?
OK, it’s a long way from anywhere, and the pubs are bad (TM Anabobazina), but the living is pretty easy.
I know Rochdale reasonably well. Strapline: at least we're not Oldham.
The Northwest is full of struggling post-industrial towns, but there are a handful which are doing ok-ish. Stockport. Bury. Warrington. Preston, at a push. I'd struggle to think of any more.
Doesn't it depress you, all the rubbish towns?
The country is broken. I keep pointing this out. Massive structural issues in the economy which go back decades and transcend the Lab/Con duopoly. The towns are rubbish because we had this stupid idea of bulldozing so much of what made them unique to build ugly anonymous concrete things. With the old jobs gone and no investment in anything.
Rochdale should be one of the places that wins. Beautiful Pennines setting combined with proximity to Manchester and good transport links. Industrial heritage, a proud local (Lancastrian) culture. But instead its got a gutted town centre and congested roads that make it hard to get anywhere, with crumbling relics of factories and victorian warehouses.
PM to give a statement outside Downing Street at 5.40
No sure but it looks like something to do with extremism
If he's not calling an election I don't want to hear his annoying voice.
Polling is only getting worse for him and many Tories may want to flirt with Reform just for sake of destroying the government, so it would increasingly make sense to go now.
But he's not going to, signing his own death warrant unless absolutely necessary is too difficult.
I feel the same way. Canada is bonkers and you can't get in. Australia too far. USA obvious drawbacks. It's one thing escaping this shithole yourself but taking the family with you when your children are all over 18 is another thing.
Family, friends and familiarity keep one rooted here. I console myself with as much travelling as I can. Thank God for skiing - a winter here with no escape would do for me I think.
Canada is too cold. Australia yes, so remote, though I do have close family there and some friends, around Sydney, and Australia has that sunny optimism almost entirely missing in Europe and the USA... it is an option for me....
I want all my friends to move to Phnom Penh with me, but oddly they are not so keen
Piquantly, I just had exactly this discussion with a Brit friend based in New Orleans (who was out in Bangkok). He used to love America but he can't stand the USA now, he hears gunfire most nights, he sees crime everywhere, he says it is always menacing, and the politiics is poisonous and racially toxic, plus the drugs and homeless stuff - he is desperate to move away from the USA - but he says he can't go to Britain coz it is too grey and depressing
So where will he go? He does not know, everywhere has massive issues
I have kind of adopted your attitude for now. I shall be a nomad, just move around a lot, keep my little flat in London as a base, but keep moving too, see how the world pans out, it's gonna be a bouncy few years with the AI revolution. Keep options open
Cyril Smith, Simon Danczuk and now George Galloway. I am not really convinced that the honourable members for Rochdale have done much to enhance the gaiety of the nation.
Though to be fair you've omitted Tony Lloyd, whose death caused the by-election. Tony was a thoroughly normal, thoroughly decent chap in all respects.
Taken from them too soon, clearly, after a period of normality.
I feel the same way. Canada is bonkers and you can't get in. Australia too far. USA obvious drawbacks. It's one thing escaping this shithole yourself but taking the family with you when your children are all over 18 is another thing.
Family, friends and familiarity keep one rooted here. I console myself with as much travelling as I can. Thank God for skiing - a winter here with no escape would do for me I think.
Your wife is a New Zealander, no?
OK, it’s a long way from anywhere, and the pubs are bad (TM Anabobazina), but the living is pretty easy.
No unfortunately not. I think your wife is non-British, like the three or four other PBers who are living abroad? Turns out to be a massive advantage!
I feel the same way. Canada is bonkers and you can't get in. Australia too far. USA obvious drawbacks. It's one thing escaping this shithole yourself but taking the family with you when your children are all over 18 is another thing.
Family, friends and familiarity keep one rooted here. I console myself with as much travelling as I can. Thank God for skiing - a winter here with no escape would do for me I think.
Canada is too cold. Australia yes, so remote, though I do have close family there and some friends, around Sydney, and Australia has that sunny optimism almost entirely missing in Europe and the USA... it is an option for me....
I want all my friends to move to Phnom Penh with me, but oddly they are not so keen
Piquantly, I just had exactly this discussion with a Brit friend based in New Orleans (who was out in Bangkok). He used to love America but he can't stand the USA now, he hears gunfire most nights, he sees crime everywhere, he says it is always menacing, and the politiics is poisonous and racially toxic, plus the drugs and homeless stuff - he is desperate to move away from the USA - but he says he can't go to Britain coz it is too grey and depressing
So where will he go? He does not know, everywhere has massive issues
I have kind of adopted your attitude for now. I shall be a nomad, just move around a lot, keep my little flat in London as a base, but keep moving too, see how the world pans out, it's gonna be a bouncy few years with the AI revolution. Keep options open
New Orleans is and has long been one of the most violent places in the US.
Let's at least give George a chance with Rochdale. Perhaps he will at some point take a break from hat-modelling and 'shifting the tectonic plates' and get them a Primark.
(thanks, RP, really good piece)
Agreed re RP - less confident re Mr G.
Will be interesting to see how London HQ and Slab relationship develops, as the central control will be even tighter. It's not as if most of the candidates have a track record as MPs, so haven't been through the mill yet.
Well let's see where he directs that oratorical fire of his in his first speech to the House. That will tell us a lot.
"Whilst you neoliberal lackies and imperialist popinjays sit in Westminster on your well-cushioned two cheeks of the same zionist posteriors, there is a town not so far from here, but it may as well be the other side of Neptune for all you Davos placemen seem to care, that is crying out, men women and children alike, for a better deal. For years they have been ignored, their voices not heard, their aspirations stunted, their values disparged, their personal hygiene brought into question. No longer. That stops right here and right now. They have sent me and my fedora to this place to demand, DEMAND, that better deal. And we can start with a Primark."
Galloway's rightful place is with the RSC. You could imagine him treading the boards at Stratford or the National Theatre.
Things Sunak could announce to "protect our democratic processes": 1. Reduce the franchise by increasing the minimum voting age to 65 2. An additional £3bn injection of public money into GB News 3. People who wear hats to be excluded from the House of Commons
I feel the same way. Canada is bonkers and you can't get in. Australia too far. USA obvious drawbacks. It's one thing escaping this shithole yourself but taking the family with you when your children are all over 18 is another thing.
Family, friends and familiarity keep one rooted here. I console myself with as much travelling as I can. Thank God for skiing - a winter here with no escape would do for me I think.
Canada is too cold. Australia yes, so remote, though I do have close family there and some friends, around Sydney, and Australia has that sunny optimism almost entirely missing in Europe and the USA... it is an option for me....
I want all my friends to move to Phnom Penh with me, but oddly they are not so keen
Piquantly, I just had exactly this discussion with a Brit friend based in New Orleans (who was out in Bangkok). He used to love America but he can't stand the USA now, he hears gunfire most nights, he sees crime everywhere, he says it is always menacing, and the politiics is poisonous and racially toxic, plus the drugs and homeless stuff - he is desperate to move away from the USA - but he says he can't go to Britain coz it is too grey and depressing
So where will he go? He does not know, everywhere has massive issues
I have kind of adopted your attitude for now. I shall be a nomad, just move around a lot, keep my little flat in London as a base, but keep moving too, see how the world pans out, it's gonna be a bouncy few years with the AI revolution. Keep options open
I'm happy with cold as long as it is by way of defined seasons and proper cold.
The Okanagan in Canada, for example, has a wonderful climate - skiing in winter very hot in summer. And it's gorgeous.
If the old world of shopping has gone, then we need to start adjusting, which means knocking down shops and old shopping centres.
May I humbly suggest that the cure to Wellington Way Shopping Centre is to knock it down flat and turn it either into a car park or a field. You could make a nice field out of it and it would give you somewhere nice to walk your dog
Or you can build some nice houses.
Town centers need to reinvent themselves, again.
They thrived, at first, because it was convenient to have all your shopping in one place, and you could get the bus there, do all your shopping and return home.
Then - as families became multi-car - out of center shopping centers (with parking!) thrived. Now you could go, park, and do all your shopping.
Now... most shopping takes place on-line.
I'm trying to think of the last time I went to a shop, with the exception of when I go to a grocery store to buy light, easily perishable things. I buy all my clothes on-line. I buy batteries, cat food, and other consumables on-line. Why would I visit a store?
The only shopping centers that are surviving are those that realised that you need to be an experience first: Westfield with their Kidzania and 100 food options. And that's it.
Town centers need to follow London's lead: they need to become entertainment and residential. Out go most stores, and in come apartments, restaurants, bars and gyms.
And we need councils to facilitate and encourage this.
Sadly, too often, they allow high streets to become charity stores and vape shops.
Restaurants, bars and gyms require well paying jobs so folk can keep them in business. That isn't easy outside London.
I feel the same way. Canada is bonkers and you can't get in. Australia too far. USA obvious drawbacks. It's one thing escaping this shithole yourself but taking the family with you when your children are all over 18 is another thing.
Family, friends and familiarity keep one rooted here. I console myself with as much travelling as I can. Thank God for skiing - a winter here with no escape would do for me I think.
Canada is too cold. Australia yes, so remote, though I do have close family there and some friends, around Sydney, and Australia has that sunny optimism almost entirely missing in Europe and the USA... it is an option for me....
I want all my friends to move to Phnom Penh with me, but oddly they are not so keen
Piquantly, I just had exactly this discussion with a Brit friend based in New Orleans (who was out in Bangkok). He used to love America but he can't stand the USA now, he hears gunfire most nights, he sees crime everywhere, he says it is always menacing, and the politiics is poisonous and racially toxic, plus the drugs and homeless stuff - he is desperate to move away from the USA - but he says he can't go to Britain coz it is too grey and depressing
So where will he go? He does not know, everywhere has massive issues
I have kind of adopted your attitude for now. I shall be a nomad, just move around a lot, keep my little flat in London as a base, but keep moving too, see how the world pans out, it's gonna be a bouncy few years with the AI revolution. Keep options open
New Orleans is and has long been one of the most violent places in the US.
Has your friend considered Costa Rica?
Dunno, but weirdly I am meant to be there, briefly, in about 10 days
I feel the same way. Canada is bonkers and you can't get in. Australia too far. USA obvious drawbacks. It's one thing escaping this shithole yourself but taking the family with you when your children are all over 18 is another thing.
Family, friends and familiarity keep one rooted here. I console myself with as much travelling as I can. Thank God for skiing - a winter here with no escape would do for me I think.
Canada is too cold. Australia yes, so remote, though I do have close family there and some friends, around Sydney, and Australia has that sunny optimism almost entirely missing in Europe and the USA... it is an option for me....
I want all my friends to move to Phnom Penh with me, but oddly they are not so keen
Piquantly, I just had exactly this discussion with a Brit friend based in New Orleans (who was out in Bangkok). He used to love America but he can't stand the USA now, he hears gunfire most nights, he sees crime everywhere, he says it is always menacing, and the politiics is poisonous and racially toxic, plus the drugs and homeless stuff - he is desperate to move away from the USA - but he says he can't go to Britain coz it is too grey and depressing
So where will he go? He does not know, everywhere has massive issues
I have kind of adopted your attitude for now. I shall be a nomad, just move around a lot, keep my little flat in London as a base, but keep moving too, see how the world pans out, it's gonna be a bouncy few years with the AI revolution. Keep options open
New Orleans is and has long been one of the most violent places in the US.
Has your friend considered Costa Rica?
Dunno, but weirdly I am meant to be there, briefly, in about 10 days
I was going to Costa Rica later this year but in the end chose Panama. Should be exciting.
Comments
Don't like the sound/name of it but there you are.
And yet Shrewsbury thrives, Ross does pretty well, Ludlow is recovering fast, it's a strange mix, in a beautiful corner of the world
Mass immigration is, of course, not Britain's only problem, but it is at the root of SO many of our problems - from the new violence in our politics to the terrible pressure on our welfare state to the horrors of Birtish housing, built and unbuilt
It is a catastrophic failure, and a reckoning is coming, Tho it will happen in mainland Europe first: they are ahead of the curve
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12947513/Welcome-zombie-apocalypse-town-Despairing-locals-claim-thriving-high-street-derelict-slew-closures-new-retail-park-opening-nearby-drove-shoppers-away.html
It's in Waterlooville, a town north of Portsmouth
https://maps.app.goo.gl/2CVKrYZqFx2q44Km6
If the old world of shopping has gone, then we need to start adjusting, which means knocking down shops and old shopping centres.
May I humbly suggest that the cure to Wellington Way Shopping Centre is to knock it down flat and turn it either into a car park or a field. You could make a nice field out of it and it would give you somewhere nice to walk your dog
Or you can build some nice houses.
I have a pair of smart fawn-coloured slacks on, not corduroys.
The one thing that concerns me about a lot of new build estates is that there is no shop and miles to get to one - for some reason this is impossible to make happen.
I deliberately missed out Ross, because, and I don't know why, Ross is banging. Although there did seem to be a few darker hued people in Ross, perhaps it's just more cosmopolitan.
X just told me to search for one of Yasmin A-B's Graun articles (apparently entitled "If I'd Known this Country was so White I'd never have come", according to X) and you are coming over a bit Yasmin A-B but from the opposite direction.
Major retail has been moved out to the edge - the massive retail parks round the southeast, the development at the northern bypass roundabout (called "The Vale" or some wank like that), the Tesco past the station. This isn't ideal but you can survive it if you make the town centre a pleasant place to be. That really hasn't happened - the town centre is still a car-dominated hole, the market has been run down, the pleasant old buildings have queuing traffic beside them.
I sometimes wonder whether district council planning staff should be given a "Ladybird First Book of Town Planning" to stop them making all these incredibly avoidable mistakes. But tbh towns probably need to decide whether they're going to go all in on @BartholomewRoberts style car-centric design or for a more European plan which restricts car use. The halfway house like Evesham doesn't work for anyone.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/by-election-results-live-rochdale-tory-labour-latest-news-george-galloway-azhar-ali-d5lqr0k37
(*I think that was you. If not, apologies)
It's not a cheery moment for the British multiculty model, is it? What do you want me to do, pretend everything is great in our richly diverse nation?
There are still plenty of towns in that area that seem to be at least as bustling and at ease as their equivalents in most of the rest of Europe. Ross is OK, Monmouth, Abergavenny, Crickhowell, Hay all doing fine and the latter two borderline chic these days. I don't sense the same desolation in the market towns as I do in the commuter belt deserts.
(Or maybe from some dodgy bloke in Spoons?)
Russia is apparently enforcing a naval blockade on Ukraine, and any ship heading to/from a Ukrainian port is considered a legitimate target.
George Galloway I don't believe is a recent immigrant from Somalia, now, is he.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Thursday turned down Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's call for an emergency meeting this week to end a border blockade by Polish farmers that has plunged relations between the two allies into crisis.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/7rSR1MocaUCgQWt36
Then turn around....
Significant dip for the Conservatives, Reform continue their rise.
I've never eaten at a McDonalds which, for some, makes me stranger than this dude.
Fuck knows what happened between 2021 and 2023 but something happened. Last summer it was looking terrible. 50% or more of the shops in High Town are shuttered. Drunken zombies lie on the benches. It could have been an historic town in West Virginia hit by Fentanyl, and it was so deathly quiet.
Deeply sad
However the basic bones of a handsome English cathedral city are still there. It has lots of lovely period buildings, the cathedral, the medieval churches, the river and the parks, the town planners did their worst but it was nowhere near as bad as some towns which got ruined. Hereford was not ruined, either by bombs or bloody architects, just bruised
So there are grounds for optimism
I'm not sure it will hurt Labour too much though. Galloway offers them a helpful distance from the problem. But there is definitely danger for them if they get caught in a pincer movement between the islamophobes and the antisemites. Most people in Britain are neither. I think their best bet is to play the sensible grown up party, looking to calm tensions and condemning the rabble rousers on left and right. If they succeed it could pay dividends but if they fail they could end up alienating both sides of the argument. Tricky.
Their record company had the bright idea of photographing them in front of a satanic mill as the workers came pouring out in flat caps gesticulating and shouting abuse. Sort of Lowryesque with a vintage Rolls in the foreground.....unfortunately the workers didn't come out on bicycles or on foot and they weren't angry so it was back to London empty handed
1. So many people are broke. Less discretionary spending means if you can buy it cheaper online, you will
2. So many shops are owned by absentee investment companies who charge mega rents for buildings that haven't seen investment for decades
3. Business rates and parking charges sky high as bankrupt councils try to stay solvent
4. Energy bills explosion
Stockton council have bought up much of the high street and bulldozed the 1970s mall to convert it into a riverside park. What retail can work is bespoke local shops selling things you can't find easily online or don't want to just order on a screen. Yes, I say that owning such a shop, but its also a model successfully pursued in all kinds of communities.
Rochdale has a 1970s mall (half empty), a 1980s mall (closed and for sale), a brand new mall (full of chain stores) and a high street devoid of anything bar charity shops and vape/drugs shops.
Not sure but it looks like something to do with extremism
The Northwest is full of struggling post-industrial towns, but there are a handful which are doing ok-ish. Stockport. Bury. Warrington. Preston, at a push.
I'd struggle to think of any more.
Well, at least it doesn't have the "Fuck Off" vibe you get from much of modern "planning".
EDIT : what about this dump - https://maps.app.goo.gl/duKVH1fBeFoGfK926
2nd EDIT: For those that missed it, big underground carpark in the French style, in the first link
One - from a wine merchant in Shrewsbury with an outlet in Hereford - was pretty basic. To his way of thinking, Hereford pedestrianised too much, so people can't park in the centre. Shrewsbury didn't. During Covid people got used to either not going to the shops, or if they did they got lazy and drove. You can still drive into Shrewsbury....
Also Herefordshire is simply very poor. One of the poorest countes in England. No industry, no big urban centres with service sectors, just farming and shopping. And it is remote by British standards: the end of the line before the Welsh mountains
All of which makes it lovely and unspoiled, but it also means there is not much money sloshing around - at all. That might explain why it is vulnerable to economic cycles? It is like a family always near the breadline
EVERYWHERE IS SHIT APART FROM CAMBODIA
"Whilst you neoliberal lackies and imperialist popinjays sit in Westminster on your well-cushioned two cheeks of the same zionist posteriors, there is a town not so far from here, but it may as well be the other side of Neptune for all you Davos placemen seem to care, that is crying out, men women and children alike, for a better deal. For years they have been ignored, their voices not heard, their aspirations stunted, their values disparged, their personal hygiene brought into question. No longer. That stops right here and right now. They have sent me and my fedora to this place to demand, DEMAND, that better deal. And we can start with a Primark."
Although Ref voters say they wouldn't vote Conservative this does suggest there is swingback to be had there. There is not an equivalent strong coupling between Labour and either of the other centre-left UK wide parties except in November and December last year when they both rose at its expense (why?). Otherwise they have essentially stood still since last summer.
I would also theorise, based purely on eyeballing, that Reform has taken some NOTA votes from the Lib Dems during its 2024 surge.
Family, friends and familiarity keep one rooted here. I console myself with as much travelling as I can. Thank God for skiing - a winter here with no escape would do for me I think.
SPREADSHEET SAYS WE'RE IN WITH A CHANCE LADS!
It will be something they've cooked up during the day in an attempt to capitalise on Labour's Galloway-related difficulties. It will be lame and pathetic.
My uncle fled to Waterlooville - from Gosport - in search of middle class prosperity. But that was in about 1961.
They thrived, at first, because it was convenient to have all your shopping in one place, and you could get the bus there, do all your shopping and return home.
Then - as families became multi-car - out of center shopping centers (with parking!) thrived. Now you could go, park, and do all your shopping.
Now... most shopping takes place on-line.
I'm trying to think of the last time I went to a shop, with the exception of when I go to a grocery store to buy light, easily perishable things. I buy all my clothes on-line. I buy batteries, cat food, and other consumables on-line. Why would I visit a store?
The only shopping centers that are surviving are those that realised that you need to be an experience first: Westfield with their Kidzania and 100 food options. And that's it.
Town centers need to follow London's lead: they need to become entertainment and residential. Out go most stores, and in come apartments, restaurants, bars and gyms.
And we need councils to facilitate and encourage this.
Sadly, too often, they allow high streets to become charity stores and vape shops.
OK, it’s a long way from anywhere, and the pubs are bad (TM Anabobazina), but the living is pretty easy.
Rochdale should be one of the places that wins. Beautiful Pennines setting combined with proximity to Manchester and good transport links. Industrial heritage, a proud local (Lancastrian) culture. But instead its got a gutted town centre and congested roads that make it hard to get anywhere, with crumbling relics of factories and victorian warehouses.
But he's not going to, signing his own death warrant unless absolutely necessary is too difficult.
I want all my friends to move to Phnom Penh with me, but oddly they are not so keen
Piquantly, I just had exactly this discussion with a Brit friend based in New Orleans (who was out in Bangkok). He used to love America but he can't stand the USA now, he hears gunfire most nights, he sees crime everywhere, he says it is always menacing, and the politiics is poisonous and racially toxic, plus the drugs and homeless stuff - he is desperate to move away from the USA - but he says he can't go to Britain coz it is too grey and depressing
So where will he go? He does not know, everywhere has massive issues
I have kind of adopted your attitude for now. I shall be a nomad, just move around a lot, keep my little flat in London as a base, but keep moving too, see how the world pans out, it's gonna be a bouncy few years with the AI revolution. Keep options open
Has your friend considered Costa Rica?
1. Reduce the franchise by increasing the minimum voting age to 65
2. An additional £3bn injection of public money into GB News
3. People who wear hats to be excluded from the House of Commons
The Okanagan in Canada, for example, has a wonderful climate - skiing in winter very hot in summer. And it's gorgeous.
Hrm.
That isn't easy outside London.
And, frankly, it's about time