According to the website of my local newspaper, the mayor of Telford & Wrekin has reacted to comments published online and “has come out fighting against the website for publishing the rebuke.
” Come out fighting? Since when is whinging in the local newspaper “fighting”?
I think Councillor Hosken needs to get real. I’ve lived in Telford all of my life, and while that’s not quite as long as the 47 years Councillor Gary Davies, Telford & Wrekin Council member for College ward seems to have spent here, I can confidently say that a large percentage of the remarks made online in satirical websites such as Uncyclopedia and UrbanDictionary are true.
I can get on a bus outside my mum’s on a Friday (my day off work) and take the 30 minute journey to our town centre; by the time I reach the central bus station, the tally of teenage mums will extend beyond my own two hands and I’ll have heard “Telfs” bragging about their incest. I go to McDonalds for my lunch and the queue drags out of the door, chavs dressed in their elasticated bottoms/tracksuits and bling-bling gold chains. One of the many local drug dealers — recognisable by the shifty look on his eye and his constantly ringing collection of mobile phones (“yeah, yeah, I can get that shit for you”) — haunts the back exit while kids truanting from school skulk around smoking their cigarettes thinking they look cool.
Our award winning council spends thousands of pounds erecting traffic lights that people ignore anyway, and yet the borough is the 96th most deprived in England, the 7th in the West Midlands. Three wards in the Borough are within the top 10% of the most deprived in the country. Another 15 wards feature in the worst 10% in England regarding education, training, income, health and disability. (Source)
We have a series of failing schools, whose only hope is that the likes of Thomas Telford pick them up and pump the cash in that they desperately need. Unfortunately, while this improves the school facilities it does nothing for the idiots that attend them, most of whom are spawned from the chavs that are the very core of Telford’s society. The local conservatives tell us that one in three 11 year-olds leave school unable to read, write or count properly and having seen the state of my sister’s schoolwork — and she’s a bright girl — I’m not surprised.
Telford & Wrekin has some of the highest council tax in the West Midlands, having risen 3 times the rate of inflation every year since our current Government came into power. Despite this massive hike in prices — of which I’m grateful to escape having moved out of the T&W borough — services have been dramatically cut back.
In one of Telford & Wrekin’s own reports (The Annual Report of the Director of Public Health for Telford & Wrekin 2006):
- Significant proportions of children and young people and adults are misusing alcohol
- Nearly a quarter of men are exceeding safe weekly drinking limits
And:
In Telford & Wrekin, 26% of boys aged 11 to 15 years report drinking at least one alcoholic drink a week – this is significantly higher than the national average (22%). 21% of girls aged 11 to 15 years report drinking at least one alcoholic drink a week. A fifth of all young people aged 11 to 15 years drink once or twice a week and 3% drink every day or almost every day – from this, it has been estimated that at least 330 young people are drinking alcohol daily in Telford & Wrekin.
In addition to this, we give our local scum quad bike days out as “punishment” for terrorising residents of his local estate, vandalism, etc.
If this is the town that Councillor Hosken, Davies and Mr Azam are so proud of, the town that they think think is such a great place to live, then I want some of whatever it is they’ve been smoking… I’m sure it’s available locally.
15 Apr at 5:02 pm
Remind me to stay away from Telford. ;)
Chavs might eat me and call me emo. :(
15 Apr at 5:06 pm
Hah, despite my rant it’s not all that bad. However, I think a few civic leaders are living in a dream world if they think it’s as great as they make out!
15 Apr at 5:52 pm
Chav is like white trash right?
15 Apr at 5:57 pm
OMG move. Now.
:P
15 Apr at 6:28 pm
Hmmm,always wanted to ride one of those quad bikes, maybe I should get out there and terrorise my neighbours some then I will get sorted out too :)
Couldn’t agree more though Jem, Telford is becoming really bad to live in. What I don’t understand is this, if the standards of living are that bad here, then where the hell do these kids get the money to spend on booze?
15 Apr at 7:59 pm
Haha, Rachael.
They’d do the same to me
15 Apr at 8:03 pm
Careful now, they’re trying to make Telford a tourist area. Can’t have people knowing the negatives. :P
Haha “Last Exit before Shifnal”. Well, I for one don’t see a huge difference and I’ve lived here my whole life. Actually I do see some difference…more houses/flats/etc are accumulating all over our fields. Soon we will be rid of any greenery, sheeps, cows and horses. At one point the new houses at my area resembled those of Balamory.
15 Apr at 9:06 pm
I had my car (or my Mum’s that I’d borrowed) broken into during my first (and only, so far) visit to Telford! Thankfully they didn’t think to search the car as there was an £80 MP3 player in the glove box and £80 silver clock in the boot!
15 Apr at 10:03 pm
10 years ago I actually went to Telford on a HOLIDAY. We couldn’t afford to stay in ironbridge, so stayed in Telford.
Yeah. Faceless place.
15 Apr at 10:03 pm
As a resident of Telford, I know exactly what you mean. But generally the place is OK. The Councillors don’t see the chav element however – anyone NOT on the Government payroll is just a minor annoyance to them anyway.
They need to send teams in and inspect council properties and benefit claimants, like they do for the tax disc patrols they do every now and then. A HUGE proportion (but not all – I know people who completely deserve their benefit) of those on long-term benefit are scrounging layabouts who have more disposable income than I do. Paid for out of my tax. Of course, not having to pay for your house, council tax, income tax, gas, electric etc. helps in that respect.
But then they spend it on mobile phone top ups, scratch cards, fags, cheap booze and by the smell, some kind of eau d’biscuit. They don’t buy food (judging by the grey skin colour, sunken cheeks and lank hair), but they all have Gold trinkets, plasma TVs and the latest mobile phones.
16 Apr at 9:56 am
The chavs are invading.
I just think people have lost their respect – adults dont respect the kids cos their out drinking and the kids dont respect the adults cos they don’t punish them – hence they go out drinking knowing there really is no punishment. It angers me! I dont want to have to feel scared walking down the high street – but honestly there have been times I wont go into town because I know I’ll get some kind of abuse hurled at me.
16 Apr at 10:49 am
It seems to me like most small towns are become chav-havens. Whatever you do, don’t go to Middlesbrough. I know it featured on a Channel 4 programme as “the worst town in the country”, but I don’t need a TV show to tell me that. Four arduous years at uni there was enough to convince me.
They want shooting, to be honest. :P
18 Apr at 8:32 am
[…] that I’ve convinced you all I live in some sort of scummy drug-filled ghetto where the lowest of the low choose to take root and reproduce, I would like to point out that […]
31 Mar at 9:04 pm
Middlesbrough is the worst town? Damn, went to university there and came back to Telford! To be honest, I am not sure places like London (stabbings on a daily basis) are better than somewhere like Telford. At least here there is countryside to look at.