Comments by "Derek Mills" (@derekmills1080) on "76% say Britain is Becoming a Worse Place to Live." video.

  1. Apart from time away at university in the 60s, I have lived in my home town of Bolton all my life. Peter, your observation(s) mirror mine. As a postwar child I have seen one of the largest cotton manufacturing towns in the world reduced to a derelict town, with a town centre devoid of any ‘destination’ shops and sparse industry on the periphery. Early in January the king came to celebrate the 150th anniversary of our handsome (but in most ways, useless) town hall. Passing through Victoria Square (the ‘town hall square’), I chatted to one or two transient bystanders and none of us could work out which way his Rolls had come to avoid travelling through utter grot. On the map, the town centre is the hub of several roads (mostly historically derived from mediaeval tracks) acting as spokes connecting to the surrounding villages and townships. Tattiness - often marketed as ‘improvements’ - abounds. New stone pavements, where nobody ever walks, inbetween potholed paths of cheap tarmac; sickeningly cheapjack wooden telegraph poles by the hundred to supply ‘6g’ whatever that is - I haven’t met anyone who wanted this junk in our urban environment; a relatively new bus station (‘interchange’ is the trendy word that now disguises this otherwise awful dump) that nobody wanted, but cost millions*; vast sums spent on new ‘social’ housing and other types in the town centre meant to ‘improve’ the economy (whatever that means) and so-on and infinitum. I travel around the Northwest on public transport and assure readers that all the old industrial towns are slipping into the mire. * Details of the expense of ‘Bolton Interchange’ are on the internet. Sit down before you read and remember that no intelligent person wanted it.
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  2. Search: ‘Bolton Council - Bolton interchange open for business’. Dated: 5 Sept 2017
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