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

samj.substack.com

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

#171

Post by nickdothutton »

chgs wrote: post #138
teamonkey wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gini coefficient usually only measures income inequality. Wealth inequality is hard to measure for various reasons but… https://equalitytrust.org.uk/scale-economic-inequality-uk/ “for the UK as a whole, the WID found that the top 0.1% had share of total wealth double between 1984 and 2013, reaching 9%.” “If the wealth of the super rich continues to grow at the rate it has been, by 2035, the wealth of the richest 200…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_... Very little change in U.K. over 20 years

I the numbers maybe not, but in the public perception? In society?

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

#172

Post by mschuster91 »

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.

> Thinking about your home as a financial investment, rather than a...home.

Sadly, the way all Western economies have devolved over the last decades, real estate equity is the only form of wealth that at least some part of the 99% has for retirement.

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

#173

Post by taurath »

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]

The amount of people having sex has dropped quite a bit in the last decade.

People get into sex work for money - they can’t afford rent.

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

#174

Post by nickdothutton »

parpfish wrote: post #50
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…

Well put. A few decades of compounding inequality transforms what used to be good natured ribbing amongst chums into bullying.

The chief economist of the resolution foundation spoke about this quite eloquently. The divide began in the 80 with the “new industries” (finance, pharma, technology, telecoms), it’s just that it is less visible during good times. When the tide retreats it uncovers the ugly rocks and the unevenness of the underlying strata.

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

#175

Post by urbandw311er »

SamJordison wrote: post #167

Author here. Noticed a lot of traffic from this post - so thanks. Thanks especially for all these thoughtful comments. Just dropping in to say I appreciate the attention - and am grateful that most posters here don't seem to mind that I'm unable to draw hard conclusions in my original article. I also like the posts here that point towards the fact that atomisation maybe has had something to do with things (as well as…

Hi Sam

Thanks for writing the piece in the first place – I thought it was a wonderfully self-reflective and mature look back at the book, why you created it, and how times have changed.

As a mid 40something in the UK, formerly a creative writer, I have experienced exactly the same shifting attitudes as yourself. The primary reasons, as many have said, are probably the fact that people are more polarised in their thinking and less versed in nuance, but also that the whole of the UK has become a bit crap really, so the joke’s a bit too on the nail.

For what it’s worth, I thought the original idea for the book was pretty funny, and I still do even now! Keep doing what you do – create things from the heart, you can’t predict the future and you can’t cover for everyone’s reactions.

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

#176

Post by urbandw311er »

magic_hamster wrote: post #129

The sense of self importance and overanalysis in this writeup on a silly book called "Crap Towns" is almost as hilarious as the book itself. I still think the idea of the book is funny. There's a certain art to taking something bad and hilariously describing its terribleness. For some reason this has always made me laugh, but honestly not everyone gets it, and this has always been the case. This kind of book can only…

It’s probably very important to the author, though, in the sense that it shaped their life and clearly became briefly very famous. So I don’t think it’s particularly fair to snipe at them for writing a reflective blog post about that. It’s not like you have to read it.

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

#177

Post by urbandw311er »

fallous wrote: post #68

If, as a humorist, you are concerned about whether you can publish your humorous book you can be certain that you live in a cursed timeline. Additionally if you think there are two kinds of jokes: those that were once funny and those that were never funny, then I suggest that your jokes were at best lazy. The human condition is pretty constant throughout the ages and those jokes that are aimed at such universal exper…

This is, unfortunately, the world that we live in right now. There are stand-up comedians who privately admit it’s almost impossible to do their jobs any more because of the faux outrage.

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

#178

Post by jll29 »

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…

Good point re: facts versus story.

One problem may be that the UK is very London-centric in a way that is markably different from France being Paris-centric.

Just my perception (and I know London much better than Paris) is that in France, if you are not in Paris you are seen as "living in the 'province'", but politicians still fight for farmers there etc. In contrast, in the UK, on the surface there is the appearance that yes, London is the capital and more important, but that people are trying to do initiatives like moving part of the BBC to Glasgow and Manchester - to decentralize a bit.

Yet the wealth concentrated in Greater London and its commutable satellites - as contrasted with the rest of the country - is many orders of magnitude bigger, also due to the financial industry there.

If you live in Knightsbridge and commute to your trader job in Canary Wharf you will never see how derelict Portsmouth or Blackpool really are (the only time I went to Portsmouth, I recall some people sitting in the street with nothing to do).

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

#179

Post by urbandw311er »

thomassmith65 wrote: post #6

The author writes well. Within a few paragraphs the reader entirely forgets that "I couldn't publish Crap Towns today" is a hypothetical.

I thought that too, it it quite hard to uncover the logical argument there. Appears to be sourced from conversations with journalists. I ended up just trusting that it was true in order to engage with the rest of the piece.

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

#180

Post by jll29 »

quantumgarbage wrote: post #95
jl6 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Quality of life encompasses many factors, e.g.

  Switzerland has 98 days of maternity leave, 
  Afghanistan has 90(+15) days of maternity leave
  (Wikipedia even puts it at #1 worldwide with two years,
  but that may be incorrect?).

  In Switzerland, women have been able to vote since 1971.
  In Afghanistan, women have been able to vote since 1919
  (but interrupted during the *previous* Taliban regime).
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