I wrote a book called "Crap Towns". It seemed funny at the time
193 comments
·April 26, 2025jdietrich
JimDabell
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 corner from the lows of the 80s.
Since then, we’ve had the global financial crisis, local councils being bankrupted, and a huge rise in homelessness and inequality. The rich have more and the poor have less.
If you published that book today, the contents might be the same, but the story it tells would be quite different.
jll29
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).
jl6
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.
acatnamedjoe
I think the argument is less that inequality has increased overall, and more that the country is increasingly stratified by geography - with greater concentrations of wealth in the South East relative to the rest of the country.
This is especially true in formerly undesirable areas of London (e.g. Hackney, #10 on the 2003 list) and towns within commuting distance of London (e.g. Hythe, #3).
Presumably this is due to the gradual shift to a London-centric services economy as well as the increasingly ludicrous price of houses in Central London.
gnfargbl
What has actually changed is that thirty years ago, the ratio between house prices and average earnings was about 4. By twenty years ago it had doubled and, most importantly, it has been at that level ever since with no real sign of dropping [1].
This is a structural change. We now have at least one, and perhaps two, generations of people who can't really alter their economic situation through hard work. That's the classic recipe for populism to thrive.
[1] https://www.schroders.com/en-gb/uk/individual/insights/what-...
teamonkey
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 families will be larger than the whole UK GDP.”
Etc.
quantumgarbage
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.
graemep
The share of the middle 40% has fallen sharply according to the bottom chart on that page.
The bottom 50% is unchanged in aggregate , but there will be groups within in that have done a lot worse.
I would also guess (I cannot find numbers) that the proportion of income that is spent on essentials has risen.
darkwater
Oh, lies, damned lies and statistics. One could also say that the Gini coefficient rose, reached its peak ~2006 and now is going down...
JimDabell
Look at the graphs as a whole, not just individual points. Compare the 90s to the 10s.
incangold
“About the same” is not “the same”, and there are tipping points. The gini coefficient has still seen a decent bump.
But anyway, gini is a coarse measure. Look at the chart below that, showing income percentages going steadily upwards for the top 10 and 1%.
Most worryingly, look at the decline of the middle 40%. A healthy middle class keeps countries stable. You need a good chunk of society who feel like the system works for them.
And it’s not just perceptions, it’s fundamental stuff. A teacher could afford a house in the 90s; they can’t now. For all the boomers bang on about mobile phones and flat screen TVs, in the end those are luxuries compared to clean, secure accommodation. The days of getting a mortgage on one income, or having access to nice council housing are gone.
card_zero
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?
tomaytotomato
> in some places they have been replaced by artisan bakeries and pop-up boutiques, while in others they have been replaced by charity shops or nothing at all.
Charity shops, vape shops (used for money laundering), Turkish Barbers (used for money laundering), Automated Laundrettes (used for money laundering), Car Washes (used for money laundering), Phone shops (used for money laundering), Kebab shops (used for money laundering)
TheOtherHobbes
Banks and privatised utilities (used for money laundering.) Politicians (used for money laundering.)
This is the UK's entire economy now - extracting the wealth of the people who work in the UK and moving it to foreign owners.
London looks rich because some of the money sticks to the sides while it's passing through, but it's still being siphoned from the provinces through the City and out - to tax havens, foreign mafias, foreign aristocrats, and giant foreign corporations.
It's important the population isn't allowed to understand that the UK is a colonised country. So there's a huge media machine making sure the peasants blame "immigrants" for small-scale criminality, and poor people for being feckless and unproductive. It's useful to make sure everyone keeps fighting about racism/immigration and gender issues to keep them from looking at structural economics and the destruction of democracy.
switch007
Too real for a Saturday morning. Sigh
switch007
We really do excel at money laundering. Go UK !
parpfish
Well put.
A few decades of compounding inequality transforms what used to be good natured ribbing amongst chums into bullying.
arrowsmith
What compounding inequality? The UK's Gini coefficient has been trending downwards since the global financial crisis.
14 years of Conservative government made this country more equal, not less, because they flattened the income distribution by making everybody poorer.
The big pattern among rich people in the UK nowadays is not that they're getting richer, it's that they're leaving.
rhubarbtree
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.
PaulRobinson
Go get an airbnb in a poor suburb for a few weeks and live there, talk to people, and ask them if they think they're more or less equal with other Britons in the last 15 years. Show them your Gini coefficient and see what they think of it. Ask them if they feel the income distribution has been flattened in a way that favours them.
The rich people living here for the last 40 years all leaving does not bother most people. In fact, it's cause for celebration. They're leeches who don't pay tax on their piles of cash held in off-shore accounts - they just drive up the price of everything, particularly property. Meanwhile there are plenty of people trying to get here from the US to replace them who understand the purpose of capital is to put it to work and create jobs, not stare at it on a screen.
Your kind of thinking is not unusual within centre right politics, but it's also why nationalist populism is a credible threat. Farage is currently favourite with most bookmakers to be next PM because of the kind of defence of Tory policy you're making. Please think on that.
null
chgs
The major change to income levels has been the massive increase in minimum wage. This removes the incentive to work hard and get skills because they aren’t valued, especially outside of London.
The other major change is the continual divergence of wealth.
If you are a 20 year old living near London you can get a crap paying junior job and live rent free for 5 years with parents while you save a 100k deposit (which using things like LISAs).
By the time you’re in your early 30s you have a decent paying job, have met a partner with a similar income, and can buy a house and repeat the cycle.
If you don’t you get the same job but have to pay rent to someone else’s parents, and you never get that deposit, so you’re trapped in the rent cycle.
nickdothutton
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.
tarkin2
> We all know that we're teetering on the brink of a populist wave, but no-one in a position of power seems willing or able to do anything about it.
This, I believe, is because the problem is psychological more than political: social division and alienation.
Of course, an increase in economic prosperity will lessen populism.
But if people continue to be alienated then they will be drawn to populists offering collective causes against perceived wrongdoers.
The large majority of online activities increase social alienation and social division.
Local, apolitical activities that breed cohension rather than division will decrease the psychological benefits that populism offers the alienated. I see no other solution.
Neil44
That seems an extremely cynical take to me, I don't think that's true at all. It divides people into monoliths and makes assumptions then uses those assumptions to restrict and hold back.
zmgsabst
I’d argue that your last paragraph has the cause-and-effect reversed:
We’re entering into a populist phase because the managerial class is incapable of addressing the problems experienced by most people — so they’re going to try dismantling the current elite systems and rebuilding them. To say that the problem is elites inability to suppress populism is to miss that the elites own chronic failures is what caused the populist surge.
Similar to populist waves circa 1900, where aristocratic systems were replaced with managerialism via populist revolts. Now, managerialism has failed so we’re again seeing the stirrings of change. At a broad scale, communism, fascism, and progressivism were all different technocratic managerial solutions to the problems and excesses of the late 1800s and early 1900s.
I think it’ll be interesting to see what comes next.
ffsm8
The only issue is that - in the past - weapons had to be wielded by people. The same working people that revolted.
There is very strong evidence that this will not be the case by the time this wave you have imagined gets really rolling.
I hope it does not happen for decades yet, because frankly: I cannot see the working class (of which I am part of) win that conflict.
graemep
Change does not have to be violent, let alone be a violent internal conflict.
I think between the rise of China, America's reaction to it, and the general shift in economic power to Asia from the west, and the lack of trust in government in the west, things will change.
zmgsabst
Currently, weapons and logistics are not automated to that extent; I don’t think it’s meaningful to guess about decades from now, given the current flux.
I’d argue that your perspective means that the time to revolt is now (ie, next few years) — while the technical and social systems are in mutual flux and before a new regime solidifies. A regime that might be more autocratic totalitarian in nature (as you suggest will be the case).
People will reasonably come to different conclusions.
pinoy420
[dead]
throwaway519
A popular protestantism is not a bandwagon the current political circus troupe will fit on.
svat
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 today — in fact, the equivalent thing being done today just looks “grubby”.
So it's something deeper than the usual “political correctness” debate: the question really is, what is it about the world today that trumps the hallowed British traditions of celebrating failure, of moaning, of affectionate self-mockery? Why isn't the joke funny any more, or why doesn't the mocking seem affectionate?
(He points at the malaise that exists today—it was only funny when there was some hope—but I'm not sure that's the only answer…)
karlgkk
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 building great careers!
And yes, there is a real worrying erosion of free speech - but 98% these people could keep saying exactly what they’ve been saying - they’re just not getting the laughs they think they’re entitled to.
vanviegen
> 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.
tempaway4738438
Read the article, its much more interesting and reflective that that
Terr_
The same phenomenon exists when people talk about the movie Blazing Saddles.
It's transgressive content worked because it was satirizing "wholesome" Wild West shows, holding up a funhouse mirror to their less-obvious absurdities and racist aspects. It was so successful, its targets don't exist anymore.
null
tempaeay4747274
This is a good question..it just occurred to me that perhaps its because its so much easier for the people who would be the target of the joke to answer back now?
Social media gives the possibility of instant reply, whereas if you publish a book in 2003 called 'crap towns' how can the so-called chavs answer back? Publish their own book? Write to the local paper?
So its a side effect of how we can all hear each other better now (for better or for worse)
amiga386
> 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 google. https://www.ilivehere.co.uk/top-10-worst-places-to-live-in-e...
lodovic
Now that's an interesting trend. It's no longer feasible to have an independent web site, because nobody will visit it because you don't have the page rank. Journalists that do find your site copy your data and may add a link (that noone vists). Their pagerank is much higher, so they get all search engine links and all the ads, for your content.
debesyla
We have this situation in lithuanian web for a two decades now.
Once the big news networks (DELFI.lt, 15min.lt, lrytas.lt, alfa.lt and few others) bought out the largest blogs and connected them to their own domains, there isn't much of an independent web left. Owners of the websites back then gladly sold out (and I would have done it too), because it seemed like a great idea to sell your work back in the 2008-ish for real profit, an unique chance (imagine monetising your content when you have only 3 mil. theoretical consumers! There isn't much lithuanian speakers) and especially during the economic crisis.
Then the other blogs were attached to the networks by the generous offers of "let us publish and we will give backlinks, maybe" + "we will just copy it because we know that you won't bother taking us to court, it's too small of a country, you know".
So now whatever you google, you get mostly these results: 7 big network sites and subsites, 2 auto-translated AI slop generated by someone in other side of the planet, 0.9 of business pages and 0.1 something actually personal.
No wonder that almost all content creators moved to social networks by the 2015-ish. They still are there.
I wonder what will change this. A web apocalypse? Mass demand of in-person, non-online "content"? I wonder...
qingcharles
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/...
lifestyleguru
> 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 washed off.
PS. How could they miss Bedford in the ranking?!
harvey9
The social housing stock is run by corporate landlords with UK offices. It's still poorly maintained anyway.
anovikov
Not sure how living in Spain is expensive compared to UK. Cheaper living, lower taxes.
lifestyleguru
"Expat's cost of living" is different from "native's cost of living".
thebruce87m
Edit: seems not
mvdtnz
That author on Slough,
> Ricky Gervais encapsulated its brutalist new town grim with ‘The Office’ before giving up and writing lame punching-down anti-woke “gags” for the educationally subnormal
That's a very strange reading on Gervais' post-The Office career. After The Office he did things like Extras, a sitcom about extras on TV and film sets, Derek, an emotional series about a well-meaning care worker who thinks it's more important to be kind than popular, and After Life, a series about a man who loses his wife young and how he deals with grief.
arrowsmith
He also did The Invention of Lying, which, 16 years since I watched it in the cinema, is still the answer I give without hesitation to "what's the worst movie you've ever seen?"
HideousKojima
For me that has to be High Life. Pitched to me as "Robert Pattinson has to to take care of a baby in space", in reality it was basically a side plot to "serial killers and rapists are stuck on a spaceship together" and all that implies.
abraae
Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn't fit for humans now,
There isn't grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!
John Betjeman (1906 - 1984)
Apocryphon
There’s also his standup career of being extra atheist as if the world has never seen a famous lapsed Christian Brit
labrador
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
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.
acatnamedjoe
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.
mattrad
Crap Towns called Hythe "...quite possibly the most spirit-crushingly tedious town in Kent." and "...the place that makes nearby Folkestone look like Las Vegas."
As someone who grew up in Hythe in the 80s and 90s I'd point out that the Rotunda was a far cry from Vegas.
https://www.warrenpress.net/FolkestoneThenNow/The_Demolition...
acatnamedjoe
> quite possibly the most spirit-crushingly tedious town in Kent.
This is an extremely high bar to hit in a county that also contains Ashford.
rikroots
I worked at Portex back in the 80s. After a shift at that factory it was a pleasure to get home, slip on the shell suit and spend the evening drinking and discussing minor, mindless vandalism opportunities. I moved away in the end (to a squat in London) because I knew, deep down, there had to be something better for me out there.
graemep
That sounds to me as a product of something I see a lot of in society in general. Governments think hoi polloi are stupid, and they are clever, and therefore solutions imposed from above are superior to local solutions.
Centigonal
If you're about to write a diatrabe about the harms of political correctness or scold the writer on inventing a victimhood complex for themselves, please read the ending of the OP:
> Much as I’d like to, I can’t just blame the puritans if my old jokes don’t work any more. Nor can I claim that the Crap Towns books were an unqualified success
[...]
> before closing, I should admit that there is a more straightforward answer to the question of whether you can still get away with doing something like Crap Towns.
> That answer is: yes. 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- and, honestly, when I look at it, I hate it. Partly because I feel like they’re ripping off my project, but mainly because when I read the comments on there about incels and chavs and carbuncles and brutalism it all just seems grubby. Maybe even cruel.
> I could argue that I don’t like this website because their approach and criteria are different to mine - and I hope there would be some truth in that. But I also know that I now also just react against the whole thing. It’s been done. It’s grown stale. It doesn’t fit - especially since so much has changed around it. In short, the world has moved on. And maybe that’s not such a bad thing?
SamJordison
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 the hardening of inequalities and etc.) Interesting! Perhaps it was more possible to share jokes in 2003 than it is now? (The concept that jokes either punch up or punch down seems an indication of that... Feels quite recent to me. And What if the intention isn't to hit anyone, really, just to make each other laugh?)
Anyway, to respond to a couple of other things on here. I'm not really a comedian. Sorry! I do work in the publishing industry, so while I can't prove my ideas about publishers being nervous, I would hope I have a reasonable insight and instinct.
urbandw311er
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.
fallous
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 experiences continue to amuse for centuries or millennia.
Understandably the humor of the inexperienced 20-something will differ from that of the 40+ year-old. The simple and absolute world that we believe to see and understand in our younger years tends to vanish from our grasp as we become older and attain the wisdom of experience. Perhaps the author's belief that "it has been done already" reflects some of that wisdom, and just maybe those of a certain age at the time of the publishing of "Crap Towns" felt exactly the same way about his book. It seems, after all, that every generation believes that it is the first to do or discover a thing without considering that humans have been doing human things for an awfully long time and that the observation "there is nothing new under the sun" has some merit.
urbandw311er
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.
ggm
The road to Wigan Pier (1937) would be a humourless response. His main issue is the lack of acceptance of current satirical humour, "modern life is rubbish" being 22 years old.
I think he's wrong to say you couldn't publish it now. I think he is right it would be misunderstood and misinterpreted.
Bill Bryson and Paul Thoroux wrote extensively of how shit English towns can be in winter after 4pm when the shops are shut and the pub isn't open.
thomassmith65
The author writes well. Within a few paragraphs the reader entirely forgets that "I couldn't publish Crap Towns today" is a hypothetical.
urbandw311er
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.
MathMonkeyMan
Yeah I kept reading for the part where the author addresses the thesis, but that's not what it's about.
dandellion
Is it about keeping you reading for long enough to show you a pop-up for his newsletter?
hkt
Just disable JavaScript and get on with your life
firefoxd
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 on the people, rather then the town itself.
This idea is thoroughly explored in Alain de Botton's "Status Anxiety"
stuaxo
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.
globular-toast
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.
Yossarrian22
The problem is those towns weren’t crap within living memory when the books were written. Now anyone who remembers otherwise is close to dead
jhbadger
Some of them maybe have gentrified (not to ignore that this in itself isn't 100% a good thing). Others are if anything worse than when he wrote the book.
ChrisMarshallNY
I remember a Web site, in the early oughts, called “sheppeyscum.com”. That URL now redirects to one that makes Sheppey look good.
The original one did not.
It was all about insulting the Isle of Sheppey (Western UK). I think an ex-Shep wrote it.
Looks like all traces are gone. I understand that death threats were involved.
ctxc
Crazy stuff, you got me curious
https://web.archive.org/web/20040411225059/http://www.sheppe...
> The island was shat from the arse of the Norse god Fuctup whilst he was suffering a bout of diarrhoea as a side effect of his recent withdrawal from scag. And that's true, as true as I'm sitting here. > A large number of policefolk who work on Sheppey are "Specials", which by a startling coincidence is also an affectionate term used to describe people with learning disabilities. > Christian based cults aside, the main religious practices on the island usually resemble primitive tribal type worship. Drug induced trances are a common tool for reaching the spirits beyond. These trances are often extended to include ritual drug induced self sacrifice- a deeply sacred activity known commonly to the natives as "Overdose".
You go to the "culture" section and there's just a single word, "NO." xD
cjrp
If it’s the Sheppey I’m thinking of, it’s in Kent (SE England)
ChrisMarshallNY
You are correct.
Got my right and left mixed up.
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 to the same broad spectrum of bland mediocrity.
Today, I think it's clear who would be being laughed at by whom. The fates of places have so radically diverged that we no longer have a sense of collective identity. All of the places listed in Crap Towns are now unrecognisable, for better or worse. Those familiar shops are now gone; in some places they have been replaced by artisan bakeries and pop-up boutiques, while in others they have been replaced by charity shops or nothing at all. Half the leisure centres have shut and we all know which half.
The upper middle class might have become more humourless and puritanical, but I think that's a subconscious self-defence mechanism, a manifestation of noblesse oblige without real obligation. The working class are too angry to laugh and certainly aren't willing to be laughed at. We all know that we're teetering on the brink of a populist wave, but no-one in a position of power seems willing or able to do anything about it.