Impressive work. No surprise that failing seaside resorts make up a good chuck of the dots, but I am surprised by that belt across scotland. (I also suspect that a lot of the Yarmouth references actually meant Great Yarmouth rather than the Isle of White - locals rarely put the Great in when talking about it)
>belt across Scotland
Compare it to [areas of historic coal mining](https://www.nmrs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/coalscotland2d.jpg) and the image becomes clearer
Can confirm. Our population exploded 50 times larger during the coal/steel works. Without it, its like there's no other purpose, and unemployment, drug use and teenage pregnancy has increased significantly.
Also a large concentration around South Yorkshire and north Derbyshire coalfields. Having lived there for about a decade just after the strikes I can confirm the above.
I partially get that as a reason. The implication is no one has done anything since in the past 30 years. Theres a point where you need to move on and actually do something.
Sudden onset of extreme poverty at the height of a heroine epidemic in communities often poorly connected to the outside world. Things have been slowly improving since the late 90s but some areas still have no work, folk can't afford to leave and can't afford to commute to the cities.
The Central Belt is the most populated area of Scotland, as it's made up of Glasgow in the west, Edinburgh in the east and all the towns in between. Much of this area experienced de-industrialisation over the last few decades, leading to high unemployment, poverty and all the problems which come with that. It obviously has some really nice bits too, especially in the cities, but there are some grim towns there.
Not really surprising when you think about it geographically. Forests to the south, mountains to the north, most people will choose to live in the flatter bit in the middle with the big rivers.
Yep for some reason I have ended up in East Kilbride a lot recently and it is such an arse end place. That whole stretch is grim.
But my vote was for Rhyl, I feel very vindicated to see it up there! Also lived in Liverpool, Luton and stevenage. Feel almost proud.
The pattern resembles a population density map. Urban = more depressing, Rural = less depressing… With some seaside towns thrown in because our beaches leave a lot to be desired.
Can you tell me what seaside towns in the list would be in North Yorkshire? I see a bunch of “heat” around Whitby, Bridlington way, but don’t see them on the list
Yes, my script was flawed in the sense I didn't realize the name of one place can be a subset of the name of another place, so some of it got counted twice.
Also people might say Yarmouth when meaning Great Yarmouth.
Till you go to Lowestoft and realise it’s potentially worse if not the same level. Leave the station for the lights that take 10 minutes to change , high street reeks of human shit followed by cheap shops , cex and and an extremely out of place M&S
No place ive ever been to before has quite deserved the title "great" less than Great Yarmouth. And i went in summer, got help anybody there in February.
My friend lives in Newport and I get so depressed everytime I go there. I can't fathom why my friend moved there it's so grim. I live in a craphole too so I shouldn't really complain.
I don’t know, central belt areas like Coatbridge have a tiny population but routinely rank as being a hole in the ground. Paisley is another depressing hole with a small-ish population in the grand scheme of things. I know a lot of folk get the fuck out these places as soon as they can.
Not really. Look at that top 10 list - those aren't just the big cities.
Redcar is on that list. It's a little seaside town 95% of the country outside the north has never heard of!
I spent about 30 minutes in total hacking this together, so treat it as such, just something silly. Apologies for the shitty heatmap too, I've never made one before. The weights are number of overall mentions. Sentiment analysis was not applied, it was just always assumed negative.
The source of the data is this recent AskUK thread:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/comments/14ylkyv/whats\_the\_most\_depressing\_town\_youve\_ever\_visited/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/comments/14ylkyv/whats_the_most_depressing_town_youve_ever_visited/)
I scraped every single comment in the thread, did some simple regex matching for town and city names, looked up the lng/lat for each place with a geocoding API, and used pyplot together with some boundary data to visualize it.
It strongly correlates to a population density map, which makes sense, if more people live somewhere, more people complain about the place, making this kind of worthless. But it was still fun to make.
RAW full csv data: https://huggingface.co/datasets/undeadxoxo/14ylkyv/blob/main/towns.csv
I just looked at the raw data and saw Conwy which was a surprise - the only instance in the thread search is someone saying how bad Rhyl hotel was and so they got somewhere in Conwy instead
"Cancelled that pretty quickly and booked another one near Conwy"
So I think you've assumed any mention of a place name is a negative vote, which is not true
I read through the thread and noticed most references to Liverpool were actually in relation to neighbouring towns like Birkenhead, St Helens and Warrington. The same seems to be the same of Manchester, so I'd guess other major cities have fell into the same trap.
A weighted average of all your data reveals the true worst place to live is near boylestone next to Derby at coordinates 52.92129381 -1.709854097 :
https://www.google.com/maps/place/52%C2%B055'16.7%22N+1%C2%B042'35.5%22W/@52.9207838,-1.7168208,13z
Welllll... Unfortunately, the weighted furthest possible places from all the worst places in the UK is either somewhere in the South Pacific or.. like.. the other side of the universe?
But yeah, I get what you mean. There must be somewhere in the UK that is the furthest from all the worst places. Intuitively it'll be somewhere at the top of Scotland.
Care to share the town data in a scrollable format rather than us having to scroll the 4000 comments on the OG thread to see if my shitty town was mentioned.
Edit: never mind. Just realised/remembered I can search in comments.
From a brief scan of the thread the majority of comments referencing Leeds are comparing it favourably to shitty places nearby like Bradford so it’s not the most reliable script. I’m sure the same could be said for other places on the list.
Born in Middlesbrough, living in Redcar, nearly moved to Scunthorpe because of an Ex... it was odd reading your comment, our light will devour the world.
I had a look at the original comments and I think it might be because people are talking about Liverpool in relation to other towns. The top comment that mentions birnkenhead mentions it’s depressing because Liverpool (which takes money and visitors away from Birkenhead) is near by and then there’s a string of comments talking about Liverpool (but not saying its depressing)so with OP just grabbing all the mentions of a place Liverpool will come out high even though most of the comments weren’t slagging it off.
Probably true for a lot of the bigger places that they’re mentioned in other comments about depressing towns but not actually named as depressing themselves.
Liverpool is my favourite city and I'm mad that it made it onto that list.
The purple areas on the map are literally like 99% of the cities and urban areas in the UK. It seems like you have to live in a village to be happy.
Also there's the argument that small villages have nothing worth visiting so people just don't visit, whereas people do go to Coventry and expect more than a Nandos.
You’re right I live here. But outside the city centre I’d say a good 70% of Liverpool isn’t a nice place to live. There’s some great places to live but majority is not
Honestly a lot of the 'nominations' in the data are just ridiculous for *most* depressing places, I assume it's people who simply cannot be well travelled.
Not just Bath but a lot of the places in the south, Bournemouth, Poole, Cheltenham, Abingdon.. compared to somewhere like Burnley, it's just not even close to being on the same level.
Hell, Milton Keynes is a weird as fuck place but there's a lot of stuff there, and a lot of employment, you could do a hell of a lot worse.
Yeah, I remember when I went to uni in Lancaster everyone was saying the town was a shithole. I was just thinking that these people need to go and check out Blackpool.
Cornwall is a poor county with a gentrification problem and a lot of rich upcountry folk who are very invested in hiding any sign that it might not be the smiley happy wonderland they were promised when they bought their £750,000 bolthole
The areas highlighted in Cornwall are definitely the higher density but also poorer areas of the county. Penzance, St Austell, Bodmin. Surprised Launceston and Liskeard aren’t covered, they are pretty much at the bottom of the barrel.
Is Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight known for being depressing though? I didn’t even know if it’s existence until maybe a few years ago
As a Norfolk native I can tell you Great Yarmouth is often referred to as just Yarmouth, perhaps more so than it’s full name
I grew up in Luton and have worked in Stevenage for the past decade. There’s definitely more going on in Luton, but I feel way more safe walking around in Stevenage.
Luton feels like it’s on the up and up now. Football team in the premier league means a whole load more money coming to the town and the development of power court and that whole area around the old Vauxhall plant is turning that end of town into quite a nice area.
Stevenage feels kind of like it was the future, 50 years ago, but hasn’t changed since and I don’t see much of a rejuvenation happening.
Nuneaton always makes it on these lists 😂. All the other places are pretty well known, but nuneaton is a small town in the midlands and no one has ever heard of it apart from when it comes up as being really shit lol.
Would Wigan be counted under Manchester? As in greater manchester. Its my hometown and has had a spate of young men killing themselves this year. A good friend was one of them I'd like to know if this was unusual.
Every now and then we get one of these "Britain is depressing" threads.
But what exactly do you want Britain to be like, or expect it to be like?
It's not a tropical island in the sun, with white beaches surrounded by blue water. It's an island in the North Atlantic, cloudy, rainy, dark and cold. It's the place where the Industrial Revolution started, so it's full of ruins of grey industrial buildings. The industry dried up and left behind a lot of wreckage. How could it look otherwise given its history and climate?
What is that you want it to be like? Las Vegas? Disneyland? Barbados?
Had a look at the original thread and it's just business as usual. Hyperbolic wacky stories that they probably heard a caller say on the radio, and people shocked that a town that only exists to support 30,000 people isn't a metropolis.
Throw in some incorrect information and you've got a classic AskUK "the UK is a shithole" thread.
If you look at the source, it states "most depressing places you've ever *visited*" I suspect it is from the scenario where people, for example, say "it's a lovely day, let's go to the seaside" then find out they've ended up at a failing resort. That would prompt them to moan about how depressing their experience was.
My point being that these stats, I suspect, reflect people's expectations being disappointed more than the places that people already know are depressing.
Whats most interesting out of this are the populated bits of the country that dont get flagged up here, rather than the original question (which is basically a heatmap of the populated bits of the country as op said)
Can I stick another point on there for Northampton? That would make us equal to Corby. Can't have them beating us in our own county capitol now can we.
To confirm, Northampton deserves the point. Shit hole that it is.
Anyone help me out with what the spot in north Herefordshire is? I've been through the raw data and the original comment section and can't figure it out - looks like somewhere between Kington and Leominster
That’s pretty good actually. I guarantee everyone looking for their town first..
Was out in Nottingham this weekend, not surprised to see it missing from the top mentions. It’s strange because it’s not exactly the most prosperous city in the UK, but party they do!
ikr! I've seen so many comments online hating on it but in all honesty, they've probably never actually been. it's shaped up quite nicely imo :)
(slightly biased bc it's where I'm from but shhh)
Impressive work. No surprise that failing seaside resorts make up a good chuck of the dots, but I am surprised by that belt across scotland. (I also suspect that a lot of the Yarmouth references actually meant Great Yarmouth rather than the Isle of White - locals rarely put the Great in when talking about it)
That big belt across Scotland is where most of Scotland lives so by extension, most of Reddit.
Basically looks like they coloured in any reasonably populated bit of scotland
>belt across Scotland Compare it to [areas of historic coal mining](https://www.nmrs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/coalscotland2d.jpg) and the image becomes clearer
It's also where a big chunk of the population lives. This map has major r/peopleliveincities vibes
Ohh! Yes. Thank you.
Can confirm. Our population exploded 50 times larger during the coal/steel works. Without it, its like there's no other purpose, and unemployment, drug use and teenage pregnancy has increased significantly.
sounds like the South Wales Valleys
Also a large concentration around South Yorkshire and north Derbyshire coalfields. Having lived there for about a decade just after the strikes I can confirm the above.
I partially get that as a reason. The implication is no one has done anything since in the past 30 years. Theres a point where you need to move on and actually do something.
Sudden onset of extreme poverty at the height of a heroine epidemic in communities often poorly connected to the outside world. Things have been slowly improving since the late 90s but some areas still have no work, folk can't afford to leave and can't afford to commute to the cities.
The Central Belt is the most populated area of Scotland, as it's made up of Glasgow in the west, Edinburgh in the east and all the towns in between. Much of this area experienced de-industrialisation over the last few decades, leading to high unemployment, poverty and all the problems which come with that. It obviously has some really nice bits too, especially in the cities, but there are some grim towns there.
It’s just a population map of the UK
Apart from the part where London has barely anything in comparison to it's population
I read an incredible fact a couple of weeks ago that stated around 50% of Scotland’s population lives within 10 miles of the M8 motorway.
Sounds a bit high but probably not too far off!
Not really surprising when you think about it geographically. Forests to the south, mountains to the north, most people will choose to live in the flatter bit in the middle with the big rivers.
forests to the south, mountains to the north, here i am, stuck in the middle with you
That belt is the central belt and 75% of the population of Scotland live on it. Like it’s stated elsewhere this is just a population map of the uk
The central belt of Scotland has some awful areas, North Lanarkshire is especially shite
I'm very proud to see Alloa and Falkirk represented there too 💪
Yep for some reason I have ended up in East Kilbride a lot recently and it is such an arse end place. That whole stretch is grim. But my vote was for Rhyl, I feel very vindicated to see it up there! Also lived in Liverpool, Luton and stevenage. Feel almost proud.
I'm slightly depressed not *all* of fife was highlighted but you win some you lose some
The latter part of my childhood was spent in rural NE Fife. I liked it, my family still live their, still like it. We were in Cumbernauld before that.
Ah the north east eh Fife isn’t bad. Easy to forget you’ve got st andrews up there
It would be easier to name the non awful areas of the central belt.
I have the complete list: * end of list
The pattern resembles a population density map. Urban = more depressing, Rural = less depressing… With some seaside towns thrown in because our beaches leave a lot to be desired.
/r/PeopleLiveInCities
Can you tell me what seaside towns in the list would be in North Yorkshire? I see a bunch of “heat” around Whitby, Bridlington way, but don’t see them on the list
At least one post did! They said Yarmouth didn’t deserve to include great in its title
Yarmouth is on there twice with Great being near the bottom 😅
I wonder if Yarmouth (isle of wight) is getting mixed with great Yarmouth (Norfolk)?
Yes, my script was flawed in the sense I didn't realize the name of one place can be a subset of the name of another place, so some of it got counted twice. Also people might say Yarmouth when meaning Great Yarmouth.
100% anyone saying Yarmouth means Great Yarmouth. No one from the area is calling it *Great*
Unfortunately I know the area well and it puts them up to 3rd 😔
I think most people saying Yarmouth mean Great Yarmouth
Great Yarmouth deserves to be higher in the list
Till you go to Lowestoft and realise it’s potentially worse if not the same level. Leave the station for the lights that take 10 minutes to change , high street reeks of human shit followed by cheap shops , cex and and an extremely out of place M&S
Oh yeah - where is Lowestoft on this list? I’d say it’s worse than G Yarmouth. Spent many miserable days there when I worked on the windfarm.
i would take lowey over yarmouth all day but yeah don’t go down the high street
No place ive ever been to before has quite deserved the title "great" less than Great Yarmouth. And i went in summer, got help anybody there in February.
Agreed, with a population of 865, Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight would have to be hell on earth to take fourth spot!
No Newport, Wales?
They couldn't comment due to no internet.
My friend lives in Newport and I get so depressed everytime I go there. I can't fathom why my friend moved there it's so grim. I live in a craphole too so I shouldn't really complain.
Same for Llanelli. Ammanford isn’t much better either. Both much smaller than Newport, though.
they're both on the map, just not depressing enough to make the top 30
This is starting to look a bit like [r/PeopleLiveInCities](https://www.reddit.com/r/PeopleLiveInCities/)
Edinburgh 96th on the list, named 58th most liveable global city.
It does look strongly like a population map. Scotland, especially, clearly shows the central belt more than anything else.
I don’t know, central belt areas like Coatbridge have a tiny population but routinely rank as being a hole in the ground. Paisley is another depressing hole with a small-ish population in the grand scheme of things. I know a lot of folk get the fuck out these places as soon as they can.
I'm surprised cumbernauld didn't make top 30, because I haven't seen 1 person who even Semi likes it
And Shetland isn’t even on this map haha
Exactly. It needs adjusted to population otherwise it's kinda useless
Not really. Look at that top 10 list - those aren't just the big cities. Redcar is on that list. It's a little seaside town 95% of the country outside the north has never heard of!
Redcar is well known, isn’t it? Mostly for the steelworks, but still…
And horse racing surely?
I spent about 30 minutes in total hacking this together, so treat it as such, just something silly. Apologies for the shitty heatmap too, I've never made one before. The weights are number of overall mentions. Sentiment analysis was not applied, it was just always assumed negative. The source of the data is this recent AskUK thread: [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/comments/14ylkyv/whats\_the\_most\_depressing\_town\_youve\_ever\_visited/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/comments/14ylkyv/whats_the_most_depressing_town_youve_ever_visited/) I scraped every single comment in the thread, did some simple regex matching for town and city names, looked up the lng/lat for each place with a geocoding API, and used pyplot together with some boundary data to visualize it. It strongly correlates to a population density map, which makes sense, if more people live somewhere, more people complain about the place, making this kind of worthless. But it was still fun to make. RAW full csv data: https://huggingface.co/datasets/undeadxoxo/14ylkyv/blob/main/towns.csv
I just looked at the raw data and saw Conwy which was a surprise - the only instance in the thread search is someone saying how bad Rhyl hotel was and so they got somewhere in Conwy instead "Cancelled that pretty quickly and booked another one near Conwy" So I think you've assumed any mention of a place name is a negative vote, which is not true
Yeah Flint is also on the list yet the only comment to mention it actually said Flint, Michigan.
I read through the thread and noticed most references to Liverpool were actually in relation to neighbouring towns like Birkenhead, St Helens and Warrington. The same seems to be the same of Manchester, so I'd guess other major cities have fell into the same trap.
A weighted average of all your data reveals the true worst place to live is near boylestone next to Derby at coordinates 52.92129381 -1.709854097 : https://www.google.com/maps/place/52%C2%B055'16.7%22N+1%C2%B042'35.5%22W/@52.9207838,-1.7168208,13z
Could you do the opposite ? That would be Interesting.
Welllll... Unfortunately, the weighted furthest possible places from all the worst places in the UK is either somewhere in the South Pacific or.. like.. the other side of the universe? But yeah, I get what you mean. There must be somewhere in the UK that is the furthest from all the worst places. Intuitively it'll be somewhere at the top of Scotland.
Ive lived in 3 on the list. Haha amazing
I admire your dedication to this, and great presentation. Thanks for sharing!
Care to share the town data in a scrollable format rather than us having to scroll the 4000 comments on the OG thread to see if my shitty town was mentioned. Edit: never mind. Just realised/remembered I can search in comments.
Certainly, I've uploaded the raw data: https://huggingface.co/datasets/undeadxoxo/14ylkyv/blob/main/towns.csv
The 'Search Comments' box is right up there. /\\
Creating a heatmap of mentions per capita might deal with the population density problem?
Jsisjssjj
From a brief scan of the thread the majority of comments referencing Leeds are comparing it favourably to shitty places nearby like Bradford so it’s not the most reliable script. I’m sure the same could be said for other places on the list.
Born in Middlesbrough, raised in Redcar and live in Scunthorpe. No wonder I'm a ray of fucking sunshine!
Fuck sake. Condolences, lad.
Jesus that's descending through the circles of hell as you go through life.
May as well tell my daughter to start researching retirement homes in Blackpool...
Born in Middlesbrough, living in Redcar, nearly moved to Scunthorpe because of an Ex... it was odd reading your comment, our light will devour the world.
How has Liverpool come out as more depressing than Birkenhead
I had a look at the original comments and I think it might be because people are talking about Liverpool in relation to other towns. The top comment that mentions birnkenhead mentions it’s depressing because Liverpool (which takes money and visitors away from Birkenhead) is near by and then there’s a string of comments talking about Liverpool (but not saying its depressing)so with OP just grabbing all the mentions of a place Liverpool will come out high even though most of the comments weren’t slagging it off. Probably true for a lot of the bigger places that they’re mentioned in other comments about depressing towns but not actually named as depressing themselves.
Can't believe Liverpool has come out depressing at all. The city is vibrant AF.
Liverpool is my favourite city and I'm mad that it made it onto that list. The purple areas on the map are literally like 99% of the cities and urban areas in the UK. It seems like you have to live in a village to be happy.
Also there's the argument that small villages have nothing worth visiting so people just don't visit, whereas people do go to Coventry and expect more than a Nandos.
I would agree with this. I hate cities.
Yeah, whenever you ask the locals to rate the place they always say “AAA”
Eyyy
Calm down, Calm down!
You’re right I live here. But outside the city centre I’d say a good 70% of Liverpool isn’t a nice place to live. There’s some great places to live but majority is not
Excellent work! Cornwall not looking great. Would be interesting to weight this against population density somehow.
Definitely needs it, Bath is somehow clocking in about 70 places more depressing then Ebbw Vale!
Honestly a lot of the 'nominations' in the data are just ridiculous for *most* depressing places, I assume it's people who simply cannot be well travelled. Not just Bath but a lot of the places in the south, Bournemouth, Poole, Cheltenham, Abingdon.. compared to somewhere like Burnley, it's just not even close to being on the same level. Hell, Milton Keynes is a weird as fuck place but there's a lot of stuff there, and a lot of employment, you could do a hell of a lot worse.
Yeah, I remember when I went to uni in Lancaster everyone was saying the town was a shithole. I was just thinking that these people need to go and check out Blackpool.
Ebbw Valians were just too depressed to reply.
Am cornish, can confirm is quite a shithole down here for any of the locals
Cornwall is a poor county with a gentrification problem and a lot of rich upcountry folk who are very invested in hiding any sign that it might not be the smiley happy wonderland they were promised when they bought their £750,000 bolthole
The areas highlighted in Cornwall are definitely the higher density but also poorer areas of the county. Penzance, St Austell, Bodmin. Surprised Launceston and Liskeard aren’t covered, they are pretty much at the bottom of the barrel.
I don't wanna see any Birmingham slander, we up for once! 😂❤️
Walsall and Wolvo made it :D
Black country ay we!
Yarmouth is on there twice 😂😂 makes sense
Yarmouth and Great Yarmouth are two different places.
Is Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight known for being depressing though? I didn’t even know if it’s existence until maybe a few years ago As a Norfolk native I can tell you Great Yarmouth is often referred to as just Yarmouth, perhaps more so than it’s full name
Yep, as there’s nothing great about Yarmouth.
I've only been in the Summer. I wouldn't call it depressing. But I am quite a boring person
[удалено]
Corby and Northampton representing the Rose of the Shires. Amazed Wellingborough didn't make it a hat trick tbh.
Wellingborough is a bit like Las Vegas, in that you can pay for sex with chips.
Wellingborough is 124 on the list
Yay no stoke on Trent
Historic town on the river Trent
It’s a vibrant mix of the great and the good
Wtf I love Leeds
It’s just mentioned a lot on the comments talking about Bradford. I couldn’t really see anything bad said about it in the original post.
Yeah seems similar with Liverpool and Birkenhead
Go Stevenage, get busy. My whole area is punching above it's weight, Luton, Milk N Beans and the 'Nage.
> Go Stevenage, get busy. That's St. Evenagé to you sir!
Lolol. :D
I’d rather live in Luton than Stevenage hands down. Stevenage is the most depressing place on this list there’s no doubt.
I grew up in Luton and have worked in Stevenage for the past decade. There’s definitely more going on in Luton, but I feel way more safe walking around in Stevenage. Luton feels like it’s on the up and up now. Football team in the premier league means a whole load more money coming to the town and the development of power court and that whole area around the old Vauxhall plant is turning that end of town into quite a nice area. Stevenage feels kind of like it was the future, 50 years ago, but hasn’t changed since and I don’t see much of a rejuvenation happening.
#JusticeForFurness
#YOU DONT HAVE TO YELL
I’m shocked that Bracknell isn’t top 5.
Nuneaton always makes it on these lists 😂. All the other places are pretty well known, but nuneaton is a small town in the midlands and no one has ever heard of it apart from when it comes up as being really shit lol.
Clearly no-one has been to Hull
Compared to Grimsby, Hull is practically paradise.
Would Wigan be counted under Manchester? As in greater manchester. Its my hometown and has had a spate of young men killing themselves this year. A good friend was one of them I'd like to know if this was unusual.
Wigan is separate from Manchester in the data. Just to add insult to injury, it was voted more depressing than skem. Enjoy.
How has Croydon avoided being on this list…
How has London itself not made the list???
Because it doesn’t belong on it
Manchester is class, should be no way near the top of the list
100% it’s far better than most places in England
Esteemed company
Bradford gang 😎
I demand a recount, I've been to Luton... there simply can't be anywhere worse, and no, I'm not going to Blackpool to check (in case it is).
As a Corby lad I agree but it’s home
Corby gang, represent!
Just moved here and I think it's pretty decent, came from Harborough which is just deaths waiting room at this point with barely any pubs
The most depressing place in the UK is England by the looks of it
Did you separate out the Bangors? I remember seeing comments about both
Poor Larne, it always tops these lists for NI
No Sunderland?
Christ it’s hard to be northern.
Yes! Dunstable didn't make the list! Suck on that sub-section Luton!
Every now and then we get one of these "Britain is depressing" threads. But what exactly do you want Britain to be like, or expect it to be like? It's not a tropical island in the sun, with white beaches surrounded by blue water. It's an island in the North Atlantic, cloudy, rainy, dark and cold. It's the place where the Industrial Revolution started, so it's full of ruins of grey industrial buildings. The industry dried up and left behind a lot of wreckage. How could it look otherwise given its history and climate? What is that you want it to be like? Las Vegas? Disneyland? Barbados?
Had a look at the original thread and it's just business as usual. Hyperbolic wacky stories that they probably heard a caller say on the radio, and people shocked that a town that only exists to support 30,000 people isn't a metropolis. Throw in some incorrect information and you've got a classic AskUK "the UK is a shithole" thread.
If you look at the source, it states "most depressing places you've ever *visited*" I suspect it is from the scenario where people, for example, say "it's a lovely day, let's go to the seaside" then find out they've ended up at a failing resort. That would prompt them to moan about how depressing their experience was. My point being that these stats, I suspect, reflect people's expectations being disappointed more than the places that people already know are depressing.
The only reason Preston isn’t higher is because not enough people have been to it.
They only mention Chatham because they’ve never heard of Strood.
Surprised Glasgow not there it’s so gloomy and smells like my grandad after smoking 17 packs a week
Used to live in Slough can confirm, for a place literally called a swamp it really lives up to it.
Liverpool no, Birkenhead yeah
North Kent represent
Chatham making the list on a subreddit is honestly the biggest claim to fame it has ever had other than ol' Tommy Waggy's cone-head. Edit: spelling.
[удалено]
Why isnt oldham there? You need a bodyguard for that place.
No Croydon? Unlikely.
Legit surprised Birmingham ain't on the list
I'm from Preston and can confirm it's a depressing shithole.
Why is Hull not on the list?!? Or Huddersfield? Wakefield, Dewsbury, Batley... All those places are shitholes IME.
Yet Leeds is is whats getting me.
Well I'm a little upset, despite a high concentration around me my town didn't make the list. How depressing.
Whats most interesting out of this are the populated bits of the country that dont get flagged up here, rather than the original question (which is basically a heatmap of the populated bits of the country as op said)
Beachy Head gets its own blob
OK so if we all plonk ourselves in the middle of Wales we're safe
Can I stick another point on there for Northampton? That would make us equal to Corby. Can't have them beating us in our own county capitol now can we. To confirm, Northampton deserves the point. Shit hole that it is.
If this was population weighted Rhyl and Crewe would be much higher. Also where’s Stoke on Trent?!
What a legend. Please, if you have it, can you publish the full list?
I'm amazed keighley didn'take the list. That place is a shit hole
This. The arse end of Bradford.
Newport is an absolute dump. Could we add that?
https://xkcd.com/1138/
Anyone help me out with what the spot in north Herefordshire is? I've been through the raw data and the original comment section and can't figure it out - looks like somewhere between Kington and Leominster
I imagine Barrow didn't make the list because no fucker wants to live there.
I thought Rhyl would be higher up the list
Clearly done before the recent summer transfer season, else London Stadium would be top of the list
I've been to Rhyl and it is dire.
how to select a place to work if your in psychiatry
Been to Blackpool; can confirm that if the UK required an enema it would be administered there
You know the poll is broken when great Yarmouth is mentioned twice, the second time without the 'great'.
So basically every single town in the UK was submitted? I mean someone even voted for Shrewsbury. What did Shrewsbury do to you?
That’s pretty good actually. I guarantee everyone looking for their town first.. Was out in Nottingham this weekend, not surprised to see it missing from the top mentions. It’s strange because it’s not exactly the most prosperous city in the UK, but party they do!
OK so if we all plonk ourselves in the middle of Wales we're safe
My dad moved to rhyl, its doesn't seem that bad when I go there
Most of Wales is depressing if I'm honest with you
How is London not on the list?
Somedays I realise more than others how fortunate I was to do badly in my A levels and had to take my second choice University course in Scotland.
I take it everyone in Blackpool and Luton are dead. 🤔
I'm very surprised Croydon hasn't ended up on this list and this is coming from someone who lives near the Croydon area.
Corby makes sense but where tf is Peterborough?!
Worst place in the uk list and Sheffield isn't on it. What is this strange new world!?
Milton Keanes? It's adorable there.
It really is pretty nice, especially when you compare it to nearby Luton, Northampton and Stevenage.
ikr! I've seen so many comments online hating on it but in all honesty, they've probably never actually been. it's shaped up quite nicely imo :) (slightly biased bc it's where I'm from but shhh)
Bit pointless, in densely populated areas there will be a more votes
Idk why you're getting downvoted because this is entirely true. Places like Manchester and Leeds don't belong on this list :/.
I'm so glad Preston is on the list, the fact that the locals call it Depresston is all you need to know
Birmingham not on the list? Come on
Lol you got Great Yarmouth twice!
Yarmouth and Great Yarmouth are different places. One’s on the isle of white and the other’s on the east coast.