Ormiston - I'm recording that as a vote for Stoke. They are doing well, currently joint tenth in the table, but need more venom and vitriol from you and others to lift them into the play-offs. A bit of coaching for all on this thread - don't hold back; put the boot in hard and you'll be in with a chance of toppling Middlesbrough as title contenders. Tonbridge and Tunbridge Wells voters take note: there are no red-card offences in this game, though I'll have to consider showing a few yellows for weak and wimpy condemnation.
like people saying brighton, reverse snobbery at its finest.
Brighton is dirty. It's not a sh1thole by any means, it's just filthy. I love going down there, had some fantastic nights out. It certainly doesn't qualify in the same bracket as Redhill, Coventry or Croydon. But it's physically quite dirty.
Jimmy - your excellent observation began as a vote for Brighton, then you almost talked your way out of it. You must get in harder, lad! As the adjudicator of this league, I should be completely impartial - but I have to say I am personally sick to death of Brighton's vast population of flip-flopping, surfing-wannabees traipsing around in bedraggled shorts and blathering on about holistic crystals. Your vote counts, Jimmy! It has been duly recorded, and Brighton are climbing the table.
Can i nominate Tonbridge? Apart from the school it's a grotty place
That's a great shout....if Tunbridge Wells is a bottle of ketchup, Tonbridge is the crust around the top
I'm sure you know Lindsay Anderson's film, titled 'If...' If not, do watch it - it's one of the most joyously subversive classics from the 60s, with Malcolm McDowell eventually machine-gunning the whole school on Speech Day: the bishop, the mayor, and finally the headmaster. The scriptwriter of this film was educated at Tonbridge School.
Can i nominate Tonbridge? Apart from the school it's a grotty place
Seconded. Not a nice place. Although does have SOS nightclub, which despite being chav haven can also provide quite good entertainment on a night out!!
I've literally never seen SOS "busy" in my life. That and the fact that people tend to get stabbed and beaten with baseball bats round there I tend to steer clear.
Never been there, but someone once told me that if God was giving the earth an enema, he'd stick the tube in Retford.
Something up with your hearing. Retford is a pleasant Market town. Must have said Deptford?
Croydon gets my vote. Runner up Luton.
Funnily enough, I'm from Deptford. Also, I am getting a bit Mutt.
However, the bloke definitely said Retford. I guess he thought it to be a shit hole.
Not knocking Deptford - was born only a few miles from there myself. but I've got to defend Retford in this company! Here's what Bill Bryson said about it in "Notes from a Small Island":
'Retford, I am pleased to report, is a delightful and charming place even under the sort of oppressive grey clouds that make far more celebrated towns seem dreary and tired. Its centrepiece is an exceptionally large and handsome market square lined with a picturesque jumble of noble Georgian buildings. Beside the main church stood a weighty black cannon with a plaque saying 'Captured at Sevastopol 1855', which I thought was a remarkable piece of initiative on the part of the locals - it's not every day, after all, that you find a Nottinghamshire market town storming a Crimean redoubt and bringing home booty - and the shops seemed prosperous and well ordered.'
Never been there, but someone once told me that if God was giving the earth an enema, he'd stick the tube in Retford.
Something up with your hearing. Retford is a pleasant Market town. Must have said Deptford?
Croydon gets my vote. Runner up Luton.
Funnily enough, I'm from Deptford. Also, I am getting a bit Mutt.
However, the bloke definitely said Retford. I guess he thought it to be a shit hole.
Not knocking Deptford - was born only a few miles from there myself. but I've got to defend Retford in this company! Here's what Bill Bryson said about it in "Notes from a Small Island":
'Retford, I am pleased to report, is a delightful and charming place even under the sort of oppressive grey clouds that make far more celebrated towns seem dreary and tired. Its centrepiece is an exceptionally large and handsome market square lined with a picturesque jumble of noble Georgian buildings. Beside the main church stood a weighty black cannon with a plaque saying 'Captured at Sevastopol 1855', which I thought was a remarkable piece of initiative on the part of the locals - it's not every day, after all, that you find a Nottinghamshire market town storming a Crimean redoubt and bringing home booty - and the shops seemed prosperous and well ordered.'
Croydon, on the other hand....
You know the Yanks though, Bryan - anything over 100 years old and they're creaming their pants.
Going back to my original comment, it was made to me about 30 years ago, and I remember it because that was the first time that I'd ever heard the "enema" line. Like I said, I've never been to Retford, and I don't know what the bloke in question had to compare it against.
What I would say is that even the places mentioned in this thread as being crappy (and I agree with so many of them), just didn't seem so bad all those years ago.
Can i nominate Tonbridge? Apart from the school it's a grotty place
That's a great shout....if Tunbridge Wells is a bottle of ketchup, Tonbridge is the crust around the top
I'm sure you know Lindsay Anderson's film, titled 'If...' If not, do watch it - it's one of the most joyously subversive classics from the 60s, with Malcolm McDowell eventually machine-gunning the whole school on Speech Day: the bishop, the mayor, and finally the headmaster. The scriptwriter of this film was educated at Tonbridge School.
At last I agree with something you've said Viewfinder!
Never been there, but someone once told me that if God was giving the earth an enema, he'd stick the tube in Retford.
Something up with your hearing. Retford is a pleasant Market town. Must have said Deptford?
Croydon gets my vote. Runner up Luton.
Funnily enough, I'm from Deptford. Also, I am getting a bit Mutt.
However, the bloke definitely said Retford. I guess he thought it to be a shit hole.
Not knocking Deptford - was born only a few miles from there myself. but I've got to defend Retford in this company! Here's what Bill Bryson said about it in "Notes from a Small Island":
'Retford, I am pleased to report, is a delightful and charming place even under the sort of oppressive grey clouds that make far more celebrated towns seem dreary and tired. Its centrepiece is an exceptionally large and handsome market square lined with a picturesque jumble of noble Georgian buildings. Beside the main church stood a weighty black cannon with a plaque saying 'Captured at Sevastopol 1855', which I thought was a remarkable piece of initiative on the part of the locals - it's not every day, after all, that you find a Nottinghamshire market town storming a Crimean redoubt and bringing home booty - and the shops seemed prosperous and well ordered.'
Croydon, on the other hand....
Croydon doesn't need any help from you. Talking about Notts, Retford is casually dysfunctional. Have you ever been to Worksop?
A think-tank headed by Ian Duncan Smith has found that some of Britain's coastal towns are in a "cycle of poverty". See here for Rhyl, Blackpool, Clacton - and our old favourites Margate and Great Yarmouth: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23549534
Surprised at so much dislike for Bexleyheath.....its not that bad surely?
Try spending some time in somewhere like South Norwood and you will soon change your mind about how terrible it is.
I'm surprised about all the vitriol for Bexleyheath, too - I imagined it was just harmless suburbia. The one time I was there on a Saturday night, the main drag was packed with shrieking totty in microskirts and 6-inch stilettos: Kayleigh and Chardonnay out on the pull.
I like going back to Bexleyheath for a bevvy, or Greenwich - would rather live back in either than Sunbury tbh
I like the way some of us happily give our own town a real good kicking. Reminds me of the time Spike Milligan was on 'Room 101' - he sent his own house through the trap-door.
I had the misfortune to visit Clacton a year or two back and I have to say on this occasion IDC has a point. It was so depressing I hated to go there as a kid in the 70's and how bad must a seaside town be for a kid to think that. Going back it's now even worse than it was then. Full of wannabe geezers looking for trouble or at the least a tear up with the Eastern Europeans hanging around outside the copious betting shops, run down office licences\Spar shop and shops selling depressing tourist tat that should have been skipped in 1982.
...and then there's Newport in South Wales...good lord almighty.
I had the misfortune to visit Clacton a year or two back and I have to say on this occasion IDC has a point. It was so depressing I hated to go there as a kid in the 70's and how bad must a seaside town be for a kid to think that. Going back it's now even worse than it was then. Full of wannabe geezers looking for trouble or at the least a tear up with the Eastern Europeans hanging around outside the copious betting shops, run down office licences\Spar shop and shops selling depressing tourist tat that should have been skipped in 1982.
...and then there's Newport in South Wales...good lord almighty.
This is excellent stuff, BA. When I was about eight years old, in the early 1960s, my parents took me and my sister from our home in comfortable suburban Purley for a week's holiday in Felixstowe. Felixstowe is along the coast from Clacton, nearer to London. We stayed in a camping coach, which was a converted railway carriage parked in a siding. We were there at Easter, and it turned out to be the coldest Easter of the century - the east wind whipping off the North Sea - and the only heating in the camping coach was a tiny paraffin heater. We almost froze to death, and there was nothing - absolutely nothing - to do in Felixstowe. I couldn't understand the point of the holiday.
I went to Newport for half a day not so long ago just to see what it was like. I walked along Commercial Street from the station towards the docks, and everything looked very run-down and seedy, which I really didn't mind. I walked through the open door of a pub on a street corner, and the juke-box was blaring and the television was roaring at about six hundred decibels. But there was no-one in the pub, and no-one behind the bar. Not a soul. I waited for a few minutes, then walked out again. I have no idea what it meant.
Originally from Ashford (Kent) and hate going back coz it surely is a s*** hole! But Brentwood is right up there in the 'pointless' category, as is Leighton Buzzard and anywhere remotely linked to Luton/Aylesbury/Watford. They all have no real purpose to exist to be fair! I so love living in Norwich. It's a beautiful place and even I feel intelligent living amongst the Norfolk folk (f*****g worst drivers in the world though! Read your Highway Code to help you understand what your indicators are for and what to do at a roundabout!).
Originally from Ashford (Kent) and hate going back coz it surely is a s*** hole! But Brentwood is right up there in the 'pointless' category, as is Leighton Buzzard and anywhere remotely linked to Luton/Aylesbury/Watford. They all have no real purpose to exist to be fair! I so love living in Norwich. It's a beautiful place and even I feel intelligent living amongst the Norfolk folk (f*****g worst drivers in the world though! Read your Highway Code to help you understand what your indicators are for and what to do at a roundabout!).
Norfolk drivers are a disaster, but I do like it round there.
Bexleyheath and I live there. A trip down the broadway is an experience I always look forward to.
What absolute drivel.
Bexleyheath is a standard suburban town, largely consisting of nicer than average semi-detached housing and populated by commuters and young families. It has a reasonable High St and shopping centre that attracts decent visitor figures and a number of top high st names. It also has very low crime and poverty figures, and walk around the Broadway and the predominent language you were hear is English, certainly in comparison to other similar suburban areas.
If people genuinely think Bexleyheath is one of the worst towns to live in, then they really haven't travelled much around the UK.
Comments
Croydon gets my vote. Runner up Luton.
However, the bloke definitely said Retford. I guess he thought it to be a shit hole.
'Retford, I am pleased to report, is a delightful and charming place even under the sort of oppressive grey clouds that make far more celebrated towns seem dreary and tired. Its centrepiece is an exceptionally large and handsome market square lined with a picturesque jumble of noble Georgian buildings. Beside the main church stood a weighty black cannon with a plaque saying 'Captured at Sevastopol 1855', which I thought was a remarkable piece of initiative on the part of the locals - it's not every day, after all, that you find a Nottinghamshire market town storming a Crimean redoubt and bringing home booty - and the shops seemed prosperous and well ordered.'
Croydon, on the other hand....
Going back to my original comment, it was made to me about 30 years ago, and I remember it because that was the first time that I'd ever heard the "enema" line. Like I said, I've never been to Retford, and I don't know what the bloke in question had to compare it against.
What I would say is that even the places mentioned in this thread as being crappy (and I agree with so many of them), just didn't seem so bad all those years ago.
1. Dover (it is an utter dive apart from the port and the cliff views its very poor.
2. Gillingham (one place I never feel safe at night)
3. Slade Green (moving from there the best thing I've ever done.)
4. Chatham (chavham)
5. Bexleyheath (particularly on a Friday/Saturday night when its full of teenage wannabe gangsters)
Try spending some time in somewhere like South Norwood and you will soon change your mind about how terrible it is.
...and then there's Newport in South Wales...good lord almighty.
I went to Newport for half a day not so long ago just to see what it was like. I walked along Commercial Street from the station towards the docks, and everything looked very run-down and seedy, which I really didn't mind. I walked through the open door of a pub on a street corner, and the juke-box was blaring and the television was roaring at about six hundred decibels. But there was no-one in the pub, and no-one behind the bar. Not a soul. I waited for a few minutes, then walked out again. I have no idea what it meant.
Bexleyheath is a standard suburban town, largely consisting of nicer than average semi-detached housing and populated by commuters and young families. It has a reasonable High St and shopping centre that attracts decent visitor figures and a number of top high st names. It also has very low crime and poverty figures, and walk around the Broadway and the predominent language you were hear is English, certainly in comparison to other similar suburban areas.
If people genuinely think Bexleyheath is one of the worst towns to live in, then they really haven't travelled much around the UK.