Crap towns

The Idler has a fascinating collection of peoples' rebuttals and confirmations of their list of the worst towns in Britain:

We're making our decision on the number of nominations each town gets. So we'll be surprised if it isn't Hull — but you never know. There are a number of strong contenders across the South West, there are dozens of costa-del-granny seaside towns forcing their way up the rankings, more and more of you are furious with life in London. Cumbernauld still seems unrelentingly miserable.

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We're finding the semi-illiterate hate-mail particularly funny — please keep those coming in, they're providing great material for out next book.

It's fascinating and hilarious reading; we Brits seem to be at our most amusing when running down the towns in which we were raised. Unsurprisingly, there are plenty of entries scattered across the suburban South-East where I grew up. Take the entry for Crawley, for example; we used to go shopping there when we needed more exotic things than our home town could provide, but we couldn't be bothered to go all the way to Croydon (which also has an entry). Gavin Blackmore writes:

Rome wasn't built in a day — but Crawley was. Temporary dumping ground for bombed out cockneys — a selection of post-war municipal shantytowns have congealed around the diverse selection of roundabouts. Each shantytown has its own pub, where you can be stared at for free.

The best thing about Crawley is that it's good old-fashioned Labour voting urban blight, sticking two fingers to the rest of toffee-nosed Telegraph reading Tory West Sussex.

That just about sums the place up perfectly.

[via Mr. Bsag]