Your Town - Has It got better or worse in the last 3 years

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Anonymous

I have lived in Ilford all of my life, although I was born in Whitechapel, & I have seen many changes to my home town some good, some bad.

However the current state of the town is depressing. I cant afford to move at the moment so don't have much choice in where I live.

We must have the most dullest Town Centre in East London, full of cheap women clothes shops, pound shops & mobile phone stores. We don't even have a music shop in Ilford. We had a Virign Megastores Express up until summer 2003, but it was closed down & reopend as another f*cking Clinton Cards

WHSmiths & Woolworths have a very minimul selection of products, escpecially the entertainement section.

The amount of gangs & thugs that have filled that town centre is 10 times more than it was at the beginning of the 21st century.

There seems to be a murder or stabbing nearly every week & the litter is appaling.

I know that there have been other towns in London have been like this for ages but the speed of the decline is shock

has anyone else experienced the same decline in a once fairly good town or have they had the opposite effect where the town has gone form bad to good
nwtv2003
Posts: 700
Joined: Tue 20 Jan, 2004 22.20
Location: Granadaland

Ooooooh Warrington, where can I start?

Well in the last 4 years I have to say that it is getting worse for many reasons. One (Which is TVDragon's favourite I believe) is because they have a load of tall green useless skittles placed at Market Gate, which do nothing, the thing which annoys people is that they cost a load in taxes to keep up with matinence! It's supposed to represent some arts thing, which about 99.9% of people in Warrington couldn't care less about. Because of the skittles they spent thousands probably millions replacing the paving slabs on the main street with a different colour of grey. It appears on some leaflet for WTC with a picture of scallies on it, honestly!

Bridge Street in the last few years has become a place where peak time is now officially at 1.00am, due to the increasing amount of bars, though cool as they may sound they are becoming a nusance. The only good thing they've added on Bridge Street in the past few years is a Subway. They've recently pulled down an old 1970's block which was an Argos and a Crazy Georges, it's currently being re-built and it's going to be replaced with another bar!

They also don't keep up with the Normal Town Centre matinence and they've let it go, making the Market ten times worse than it already was, the multi-story car parks stink of piss which won't disappear.

It was announced last week that they were going to open a big new Debenhams in place of the current Bus Station, which is due to be open in 2006. The only reason why they're doing this is because more and more people are going to Manchester or The Trafford Centre and frankly I don't blame them. But I don't blame the Council to knock down the bus station as that is another hell hole.

Plus we've had some shops go too, in 2003 Dixons closed, Virgin Megastore closed, but we have more wonderful shops like Clintons AGAIN! and a Calendar Club which lasted for about 2 months. But there are truly dire shops, they're going to open a Starbucks some time soon, I wonder how well that will go down with the locals? Plus we also have a HMV which is tiny, I mean really tiny, compare it to the one's in Manchester, it is small. But it used to be in another location in Golden Square (Shopping Centre) when it is even smaller, but they moved into the old Mothercare store and gave the old HMV to Waterstones (Owned by the same company)

It's okay if you want the odd thing, but if you want to blow a shit load of money then I usually go into Manchester, as it is far better there.

We also have our fair troubles with the local council. The other week we recieved a letter saying that they were going to put them up for several reasons, one of them was due to an increase in Police Officers, so we thought fine, no problem, that's OK. But they were increasing the Council Tax and in return we got nothing new, which really annoyed my parents. Another problem we had was with the binmen, we've lived at our house for almost 12 years now and we've never had a problem with the Wheelie bins until last year when the bin men didn't collect them at all some weeks, my dad phoned the council and they responded and said 'That there were obstructions' and there were none! So this means every Wednesday Night we have to put the bin out which is a nusance as we had no problems previously.

Anyway I've rambled on too much...
Anonymous

Oh the council tax bit I forgot about that...

The London Borough of Redbridge is currently Tory run (it was previously a hung council but because of IDS all areas of Redbridge expect Ilford South where I live became Tory).

Spending on useful projects such as a new Mobile Library, something to do with guide dogs & the elderly (sorry this is vague but this was about a year ago now) which almost came to a yes desicion for them to go ahead got scrubbed out by the tory council.

Instead it is TOWER BLOCKS for Ilford as they were about the only town in East London that didn't bother with them in the 60's/70's & 80's.

Anywhere the is a bit of dirt land that could be turned into a green area or be made of to some use Another Tower block is given the go ahead. One has already been built behind the Haverlock Pub near Mcdonalds, one has been started on right next door to it, some more have been built near Newbury Park tube station & they are going to build one on the Pioneer Market area, I know it needs doing up but this takes the p*ss.
TVDragon
Posts: 93
Joined: Fri 15 Aug, 2003 18.05
Location: local

nwtv2003 wrote:Ooooooh Warrington, where can I start?

.......

Anyway I've rambled on too much...
I think you need to get out of there, to be honest -- seems like it's all doing your head in.

Like Swansea though, it's just being flattened and started again. Some towns you just have to admit defeat. In both these cases it's recognised that there are better alternatives close-ish by.

Warrington has too many: card shops, asdas, KFCs and scallies. And pastie shops, but that's ok.

At least they're tearing down that ugly 13-storey car park. And you know you love the skittles really.
nwtv2003
Posts: 700
Joined: Tue 20 Jan, 2004 22.20
Location: Granadaland

TVDragon wrote:Warrington has too many: card shops, asdas, KFCs and scallies. And pastie shops, but that's ok.

At least they're tearing down that ugly 13-storey car park. And you know you love the skittles really.
You're right about the Card Shops, Scallies and pastie shops. But KFC's!?!? There are only two of them! McDonalds is the worst, there are 6 of them! For a town, thats too much and plus I am sick to death of it now. Asda, there are only three of them, but they're not too bad, at least they're cheap.

They're hopefully pulling down the 'Sky Park' sometime later this year, but there are problems already as they're having to use some green land as a temporary car park. (Not before the end of time) Though it's the Market which they need to pull down as it is a shithole literally, it is dirty and awful, so is their Multi-Story Car park. Golden Square isn't too bad, it does need something doing to it, but nothing as stupid as what they're doing later this year.

Skittles? Love? You have to be kidding :roll:
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rob
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Location: Overton, Hampshire
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Well, my town centre's got better in the last 3 years with the launch of our new shopping centre Festival Place. It's better than what Basingstoke used to look like!
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