Come, friendly bombs . . .
Henry Hobhouse
CRAP TOWNS: THE 50 WORST PLACES TO LIVE IN THE UK edited by Sam Jordison and Dan Kieran Boxtree, £10, pp. 156, ISBN 0752215825 This inelegantly titled book has already achieved a certain fame because John Prescott's Hull has been voted the worst place (no. 1 — the crappiest) in the UK. This voting has an uncertain authenticity, having been conducted on the Internet. Like a telephone poll, the internet encourages people to vote early and to vote often. Crap was most often a noun, meaning gallows, slang in the 18th century. The adjective crap and crap's other meanings are not subjects for this review. These are towns to be avoided.
We are presented with three key measurements: unemployment rate; proportion of crimes of violence, and the percentage of pupils scoring more than five GCSE at Grades A-D. There is non-statistical letterpress, plus, in most cases, some effort to mitigate the awfulness by specifying redeeming factors, e. g. churches or streets. Little in the last century is treated as positive. The Left should be pleased to note a link between unemployment and crime. Excluding London, there is an average correlation between violent crime and unemployment so that in the relevant age group (to exclude the very young and pensioners) the amplitude of unemployment and of violent crime, if reported, are nearly equal. But in some places, Didcot for example, violent crime is greater, proportionately, than the number unemployed. Figures for London (no. 17) are frankly unbelievable. 'London' is here 7 million people, of whom, presumably, about 4 million plus are economically active. Of these, 7 per cent are unemployed. But there are said to be violent crimes equal to 9 per cent of the whole population. Can one believe that there are 630,000 violent crimes in London? And, what is 'London'? Separately listed are Islington (no. 16), St John's Wood (no. 14), Crouch End (no.13) and Hackney (no. 10). If lefty sociologists can be pleased to connect unemployment with violent crime, the Right can note that most crappy towns are solidly Labour as is Hull. Many towns like Hull suffer from local councils that squander thousands of pounds per inhabitant. Hull, with the lowest GCSE successrate in the country, has probably nearly the highest debt/income ratio. Half the voting population of Hull must be on benefit of one sort or another, and welfare-dependency has, of course, been expanded by New Labour. Dependency on welfare is the curse of social democracy and is probably responsible for much of the nastiness of crap towns, even of some crime. The connection between idleness and drugs is not explored. Nor is there much revealed association between good educational standards and a lack of crappiness. Both Winchester (no. 5) and Oxford (no. 31) figure. Oxford has a high success rate at GCSE (98 per cent) exceeded by Ascot at 100 per cent. But Ascot (no. 21), for all its cleverness at age 16, and with low unemployment, has about 1 per cent violent crimes. One shakes one's head. Nor are Tories exculpated. St Albans (no. 50) is noted for having a 99 per cent success rate at GCSE, but 53 solid years of Tory rule. The town gains its crap-status for the unbearable smugness of its middle-class inhabitants.
Never mentioned is the loss of civic leadership. All who earned a good living in cities like Liverpool (no. 6) would move to cleaner, leafier suburbs, then to 'real country' — in Liverpool's case to Cheshire or North Wales. Railways made commuting easy long before cars. In London shortrange commuting started long before railways, often by river, and further-out opportunities followed the rails. More continentals slept (and sleep) in cities at night and enjoy more art, music, ballet and opera. In contrast to urban Continentals, better off Britons who toil in cities abandon their work places after dark and trundle off to slumber in pastoral peace. Though commuters neither did nor do become convincingly countrified, they bought or built country houses if there was enough money and a gentrified rurality was sought, and still is. Many British cities are as empty at night — of those who are its natural civic leaders — as was the City of London before the Barbican. No wonder that there are crap towns, if most who can, avoid them after dark.
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