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I wrote a book called “Crap Towns”. It seemed funny at the time

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Re: I wrote a book called “Crap Towns”. It seemed funny at the time

#101

Post by stuaxo »

firefoxd wrote: post #33

One thing that has been accentuated over the past few decades is the idea that you are responsible for your success. When you were poor, lacked means, or didn't have a good job, it was because the god of fortune didn't smile on you. Only the fortunate experienced success. Now only losers are broke and live in crap towns, and winners drive expensive cars. With this idea in mind, calling it crap towns becomes an attack…

As Thatchers children we've all internalised some of those ideas to an extent, even those who vehemently are against here.

Individualism, atomisation and other Randian bullshit.

Re: I wrote a book called “Crap Towns”. It seemed funny at the time

#102

Post by stuaxo »

Kon-Peki wrote: post #45
Tourniquet wrote: post #17

My home town featured (33rd!). We considered it vindication!

Vindication like what Ohioans would have felt when Charles Dickens visited America and said that St. Louis was a nice enough place, but “not likely ever to vie, in point of elegance or beauty, with Cincinnati”?

Lots of people in the UK grow up in crap towns, and having a book validate that feeling can be good.

Re: I wrote a book called “Crap Towns”. It seemed funny at the time

#103

Post by pinoy420 »

jdietrich wrote: post #46

Twenty years ago, I think there was still a sense that we were collectively laughing with each other about the dullness of small towns. We all had the same shops - Woolworths, Dixons, Our Price, BHS. We all had a leisure centre that looked like everyone else's leisure centre. Some towns were better off than others, some towns had parts that you were better off avoiding after dark, but the majority of towns belonged t…

[dead]

Re: I wrote a book called “Crap Towns”. It seemed funny at the time

#104

Post by stuaxo »

casey2 wrote: post #22
protocolture wrote: post #3

Be harder to identify the non crap towns tbh.

It's exactly this kind of structuralism induced fatalism that makes more towns than ought shit. If you know a town is shit, it's your moral obligation to tell them so that their kids and smart residents move out. Post 2000s progressive seem to think that Towns, religions and culture can form opinions. They are trying to be "empathetic" and so get tricked by scammers who personally benefit from these horrible situatio…

This reads like the old amanfrommars comments on theregister back in the day.

Re: I wrote a book called “Crap Towns”. It seemed funny at the time

#105

Post by harvey9 »

lifestyleguru wrote: post #65
amiga386 wrote: post #18

> There’s a website (I won’t link to it) that has kept on running a survey of the worst places in the UK for years and years I will, it's ChavTowns. https://web.archive.org/web/20061013053524/http://www.chavto... Still running as https://www.ilivehere.co.uk/ Also the owner is giving up on it as of the start of this year -- mainly because nobody visits the site; churnalists just freeboot it and they rank higher on goo…

> organisations who despite their name, do not give a flying ** about their social housing stock > and run-down decaying towns in the whole country You cannot simultaneously have landlords living in Spain and well maintained local housing. Both are expensive. Pick only one. There exists a sweet spot when people are desperate enough to live in a place and pay every rent for any housing, but the sugar coating has washe…

The social housing stock is run by corporate landlords with UK offices. It's still poorly maintained anyway.

Re: I wrote a book called “Crap Towns”. It seemed funny at the time

#106

Post by stuaxo »

jimnotgym wrote: post #30
relaxing wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d be pretty upset if the value of my home was harmed because someone decided to make it common knowledge that the town I lived in was crap.

That is a very British take. Constant worry about the value of something you don't want to sell. Thinking about your home as a financial investment, rather than a...home.

Unfortunately it's become embedded in the system with the houses themselves becoming vastly over inflated.

Re: I wrote a book called “Crap Towns”. It seemed funny at the time

#107

Post by card_zero »

JimDabell wrote: post #69
jdietrich wrote: post #46

Twenty years ago, I think there was still a sense that we were collectively laughing with each other about the dullness of small towns. We all had the same shops - Woolworths, Dixons, Our Price, BHS. We all had a leisure centre that looked like everyone else's leisure centre. Some towns were better off than others, some towns had parts that you were better off avoiding after dark, but the majority of towns belonged t…

This is what I was going to say. Back then, a book like this would have been perceived as the UK making fun of itself. Now it’s perceived as being cruel to those less fortunate. I think it’s worth putting into context that the economy was doing great in the era this book was first published and huge progress was being made with things like homelessness, inequality, and poverty. It felt like the country had turned a c…

Not sure about homelessness rising versus the 90s. Possibly the rate is similar to 1998. I looked at ourworldindata, but their graph only goes back to 2010. Wikipedia has wildly different figures from the charities Shelter and Crisis because they're counting different things. It then gives government figures: just over 100,000 in 1998, 135,000 in 2003, 40,000 in 2009 and 2010 (so ourworldindata gives a chart that begins with this low), and "record levels, with 104,510 people" in 2023, though that's less than 135,000 so the way in which this is a record is not specified.

In summary, it goes up and down a lot, is counted in different ways, was (counted to be) far lower in 2010 (two years after the financial crisis?), but pretty much the same as now in 1998, although the kind of people who have an interest in saying "homelessness has hit record levels" are saying that homelessness has hit record levels.

This makes me nostalgic for 1991 when the Big Issue was first published, and there were songs like Gypsy Woman by Crystal Waters and Walking Down Madison by Kirsty MacColl.

Edit: was your "80s" a typo for "90s" perhaps?

Re: I wrote a book called “Crap Towns”. It seemed funny at the time

#108

Post by harvey9 »

hkt wrote: post #56
labrador wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I concluded Noah's Arc was bollocks when I was 8 so I don't know why he goes on about it at his age

There's good money in it, I expect. Plus, there's no harm in making a career (or a joke) out of being vaguely anti-nonsense.

Charlie Hebdo's publishers might disagree.

Re: I wrote a book called “Crap Towns”. It seemed funny at the time

#109

Post by rikroots »

> "I mean: incredibly, governments and local councils didn’t read my work and decide to mend their ways. The UK did not get better. Instead we got more than a decade of Tory austerity, Brexit, and all the accompanying neglect and bad feeling."

This bit made me laugh.

I read the original book when it came out and it was funny and - in some ways - true. I was born and bought up in the town ranked #4 in the original list (Hythe), but when I read it I was living in Hackney (#10 on the list). So I could shove the book in the faces of my friends and colleagues and say: look at me! I've moved up in the world!

The reason I laughed is because around the time of publication (2003?) I was working in the Government's Social Exclusion Unit. Prior to that I had spent time in the Neighbourhood Renewal Unit; later on I'd go on to work for the Lyons Inquiry. Part of my work included meeting people, and one thing I took away from those meetings would be how incredibly proud people could be about their neighbourhoods and towns: however deeply sunk into poverty the area was, they still cherished the place. The other thing I learned was, more often than not, those people often had good ideas about how to fix some of the issues - local solutions for local problems. All they needed was a little help and support from authorities to get those solutions off the ground.

So when the author claims that "governments" didn't read the book - some of us did. We enjoyed it, and we tried to do things to help people make their towns just a little bit less crap. Sadly it wasn't enough, but if people don't try then nothing will ever get fixed.

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