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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

#111

Post by qingcharles »

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…

Yikes, I spent 15 years living in one of the Top 10 and my summers in another one. I probably agree, though. The rot was showing in most of those by the late 80s and they went very swiftly downhill after that.

To counter those depressing places, these towns and villages seem lovely:

https://www.thetimes.com/best-places-to-live/location-guide/...

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

#112

Post by harvey9 »

PlunderBunny wrote: post #39
iterance wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just acceptability. Jokes written even just five or ten years ago often fail to land on modern audiences. That taste in humor changes is neither morally positive nor negative. It's easy to look for deeper meaning in the notion that what once was funny now isn't, but often, there isn't a deeper meaning to find. Life is different now; so too must humor change.

When I re-watch comedy like ‘The Young Ones’ or many other funny series from the 80s or 90s, I don’t find it funny any more. It’s not that the jokes weren’t good and that I didn’t find it funny at the time, it’s just that humour changes. In that case, it’s nothing to do with the jokes becoming ‘unacceptable’.

I find Yes Minister funny now, and I'm too young to have watched when it first aired.

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

#113

Post by globular-toast »

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…

People in crap towns drive expensive cars too. The inequality between a crap place and a nice place is now enough that people can afford a ghastly Lamborghini SUV thing before they can afford to move out of a crap town.

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

#114

Post by [deleted] »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #66
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…

[flagged]

[deleted]

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

#115

Post by acatnamedjoe »

rikroots wrote: post #109

> "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 lis…

I was curious - what was the angle on Hythe in the book?

These days Hythe seems like a posh seaside town with a Waitrose, a nice canalside park, a cute steam railway, lots of boutiquey shops and cafes, etc.

I know a lot of places in the area (e.g. Folkestone, Margate, Whitstable) have all been heavily "gentrified" in the last few years, but I sort of assumed Hythe was always this way? Is that not the case?

And even allowing for a bit of gentrification, it seems wild in 2025 to select it for a "crap towns" award ahead of somewhere like Dover or New Romney.

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

#116

Post by dave333 »

The Connections series by James Burke from around the same time posited that politics is irrelevant and progress is mostly due to science. The consumer society of today is much better than when Crap Towns was written although improvement is not uniform. But even the least improved towns are better now than they were due to all the regional, national, and international improvements in services.

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

#117

Post by quantumgarbage »

jolux wrote: post #98
quantumgarbage wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Switzerland and Afghanistan have an almost equal Gini coefficient. My point is: the Gini coefficient might indicate what your country's income distribution looks like, it however does not tell anything about actual life conditions.

Sure but that’s a bit silly. Switzerland’s GDP is something like 50x that of Afghanistan. UK GDP in 2025 is much higher than in 2003, too. Of course not 5000%

Again, gini coefficients or GDP growth measures are, at best, proxies to understand the conditions the bottom decile of your country lives in.

Looking at housing costs, life expectancy, food insecurity or poverty rates do a much better job at capturing this.

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

#118

Post by darkwater »

jl6 wrote: post #87
JimDabell wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The Gini coefficient of the UK is about the same now as it was then: https://equalitytrust.org.uk/how-has-inequality-changed/ What has actually changed? A whole bunch of other economic malaise, but also perceptions, amplified to your personal taste by social media.

Oh, lies, damned lies and statistics. One could also say that the Gini coefficient rose, reached its peak ~2006 and now is going down...

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

#119

Post by vanviegen »

karlgkk wrote: post #81
svat wrote: post #15

Loved the fact that this post didn't go where I expected it to (or at least, didn't remain there). That a book like this probably wouldn't be published today, or would be less popular today, is a point that has been made many times by many people, about many different books, TV shows, jokes, etc. But the author actually moves on from there; the observation is that even in his own opinion , the same joke isn't funny t…

Often when someone, especially a comedian, complains about “political correctness”, what they actually mean is: nobody is laughing at the same joke I told 20 years ago Sensibilities change. The sense of what is and isn’t punching down changes. Even the appetite for punching down changes. People who whine about “PC” always pretend like it’s the death of comedy or speech or whatever, and yet… there are younger people b…

> Sensibilities change. The sense of what is and isn’t punching down changes. Even the appetite for punching down changes.

Yes, and the way it changes tells us something about our society, which I believe this article is trying to address.

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

#120

Post by a_dabbler »

arrowsmith wrote: post #83
rhubarbtree wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re looking at the wrong numbers. Wealth, not income. Wealth inequality is through the roof. Poverty is through the roof. More people using food banks than ever. More people on zero hours and low paid contracts. If you think the problem with the UK is that rich people are leaving, then you have no idea about the reality of living in the UK. Visiting some of the towns in this book would be a starting point.

> Poverty is through the roof. More people using food banks than ever. More people on zero hours and low paid contracts. Is that supposed to prove me wrong? I said that everybody is getting poorer. > Wealth inequality is through the roof. Wealth inequality, while high, is still roughly where it was in 2007. (Source: https://equalitytrust.org.uk/scale-economic-inequality-uk/ ) > If you think the problem with the UK is…

"Wealth inequality, while high, is still roughly where it was in 2007"

This is not whats represented in the source you cited?

In the graph titled "Top 10% and Bottom 50% Wealth Shares in The UK 1900-2020" you can clearly see the wealth owned by the top 10% increased from 54.4% in 2007 to 57% in 2020 and likely even higher now 5 years later.

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