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For me it's Pitsea in Essex, dual carriageway over the town centre, smog fumed hellhole. The sense of pollution was seeping into me. It's big neighbour Basildon was the envy of the denizens. Says it all.

I go to Oxford everyday to work. I win the thread.

Poi Pet - A Cambodian border town.

 As town centers go,cant decide between Gilliingham and Wrexham.
They both make Swindon look nice.

Morecambe.

But seriously though Portsmouth, Middlesborough, Grimsby Hull and Scunthrope are shitholes

Newport (South Wales) is quite awful, although they have a few nice buildings along the shit coloured river so it's probably not the worst of the worst.

Kviteseid.

Aldershot. Shithole.

In English bro.

Newport is OK. A degenerate town but far from the worst. It is compulsory of all towns to be shit and promoting their naffness and wallow in it.

MIddlesborough is like the Walking Dead - a shithole and the ICI factory rots the locals brains. Widnes is a fuckhole as well. Luton, Rotherham, Pikeyland. There are so many but Middlesborough is the worst.

To be honest it's the giant brown river through the middle of it that reflects badly on the rest. The town centre is a total dump, but the Arts Centre and the Transporter Bridge are actually quite nice.

Good call Chalky

May I add Warrington and Runcorn to that hit-list?

You may but Widnes shades those two.

You ever been to Penang mate?  It's like Swindon-next-the-sea but with an army of legless beggars (well, George Town is anyway).

Nemo, that river, The Usk, is truly beautiful up river, absolutely stunning, but it disgorges itself in the Bristol Channel in a very unsightly way.

I'm told Redcar takes some beating.  Not been myself though.

Oh absolutely, much of rural Wales is bloody gorgeous. Which is why Newport makes even less sense.

Its not nice but it is Middlesborough lite - although not too lite

Bury says hello.

L.A.

No, no and thrice no. Black pudding. World famous market - self appointed. Its a good honest working class town.

I'll bow to your greater knowledge. I only know it from going to Gigg Lane. If they invented black pudding I unreservedly withdraw my negative comment.

Very right Nemo, but the people in Newport are desperately poor, provision needs to be made for these impoverished folk. They have been smashed to bits. I got on well with them, when I holidayed in Merthyr Tydfil and sought out a pub because I had to change trains there,  

AHAH!  Just remembered the worst place I ever visited.  Fitzwilliam, near Barnsley.  It's an ex-mining town.  A lot of the old back-to-backs have been demolished and nothing new built, meaning there are rows of streets of nothing.  Aside from that, it is one big council estate with no jobs, full of kids on (presumably stolen) motorbikes.  Think 'Skint', but with fewer opportunities.

I dare say there are many worse places in the world, but I think it's the worst one I've visited.

newport is fucking horrid. I had to wait there's whilst my passport was processed. Blokes pissing up shop windows everything grey and dull. Proper shit hole.
Birmingham,wolves,walsall area is a right old shit pit

Bridgwater has to be up there, Widnes is horrible too but for me its probably Middlesbrough.

I was going to venture Merthyr, but if I did I'd be worried that Dosser would explode.  So I won't.

Arriba,

they are very poor, there but the grace of God go us! I am pleased Newport County have regained league status.

I have a soft spot for the place because I changed there on my way to Swindon games in my teens.

That said, it is shocking!

I think pretty much everywhere mentioned in this thread is desperately poor- not many shit towns in Surrey.

These poor people have no choice. We would be like them were we offered the same path in life.

To break out from that background deserves respect. We treat them with contempt.

Give your brother a dime

Desperately poor?

That's right Flashheart, a poor man doesn't grovel because he wants to, he is humbling himself in the most embarrassing way. Don't snort at him, he is your brother, and deserves respect

Yes.

Several times. I worked there for 2 months once. Swindon next-to -the sea-is-not-far-off. A great place for food though. Huge variety from all over the world and dirt cheap.

The night life is pants as are the beaches.

I worked from an office block and from high up you could literally see the stream of sewage flowing through the otherwise crystal clear waters. Something that would probably not be visible from ground level.

How do you define desperately poor?

We are in the realms of philosophy.

For me, poorness is the loss of dignity. The beggar on the street that we disdain.

That's the thing about being a football fan and going to away games; you do get to see some god-awful shitholes.

Wrexham is very bad yet 10 miles away, Chester is lovely.  Rotherham and Barnsley really felt like tough northern towns where a lily-livered lager-drinking southerner wouldn't last five minutes.

But top of my shithole league would be Burnley.  Most shops seemed shut - permanently - and this was pre-recession.  I remember we found one place open and it had a big sign in the window saying "We serve food - HOT!" as if this was a proud boast.

Went through a village in Tunisia which was so deprived it didnt even have a name. The houses were roofless, the people wore rags and sold goats to make any kind of money. That was a massive fucking wake up for me.

It was still nicer than Middlesbrough though.

It's not a philosophical thing at all.

To call the people of Newport 'desperately poor' when they have access to free education, the NHS and all sorts of other benefits is somewhat shortsighted and a tad ignorant considering so many people in the world have absolutely fuck all.

Don't you think?

Ah, yes.  The food was great.  My friend who came with me was disgusted with me because I was eating street food whilst sat on a plastic patio chair, on a wooden board over an otherwise open sewer.  He was right though, chronic squits the next day. 

Is it me or does all the food in Malaysia have a boiled egg in it?  Mostly a variation on this:

(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--aVMUkd3r_s/TfcMDcle7EI/AAAAAAAADzE/gUums8bxsw4/s640/boiled+egg+sambal5.jpg)

Salalah

Do you think that drug-addled, alcohol ridden individuals have access to these resources? These are displaced persons who have NO recourse to their rights. Addiction disinvests them from reality.

A wasted generation. Clever words don't help them. Kindness cures everything, embitterment will eat you up.

Dunno about the eggs

I went mainly for the Indian dishes. There is a restaurant near Soho that does perfect currys (I forget the name of it now). Faultless. You could fill up for 3 quid tops including puddings and stuff.

Make your own curries, like I do, and add Madras spice to give it real kick

I have two servings left over from earlier. Me and Cola Fola are having a feast

Massage the chicken, then roll in olive oil with oregano and thyme. Add onions, thinly sliced. Once fully fried add a carton of sauce, the hotter the better, and simmer for half hour. During simmer process add a handy load of Madras spice. Boil some rice with a pinch of salt.

Enjoy it!

Ashford 1st,2nd and 3rd-no redeeming features whatsoever.

Kent, Middlesex or Surrey?

I hate Skegness with a passion.

Walked through an estate in Dublin which scared me a little.  Looked like it was condemned for demolition but several enclaves were holding out and still living in their flats.  Made worse by the overwhelming sense of anti-britishness in the area (odd how you can completely forget the issues between our two countries).

Are you sure you aren't just recounting the plot of robocop? :)

cruelty to chickens. Rise up and save the fowl

It was very similar!  We got clocked in a pub nearby which we visited when parched without checking first.  Couple of the locals made us feel suitably unwelcome and we ended up leaving mid first pint.  On leaving we noticed it was called The Patriot :-)

That story annoyed me and it was only a sentence long  >:(

 I guess being British, I wouldn't understand their motivation, but I would have thought most folk are reasonable enough not to blame a random tourist/visitor for something a king/government/army may have done years ago.

Kent

To be fair, after the two hour tour of Kilmannon Gaol I felt a little ashamed to be British as it was!   Well worth a visit though, get a much better understanding of the place and it was good to get away from Temple Bar, just wouldn't recommend the place we walked through to get there.  In fact, it took hours, so I wouldn't recommend walking from Temple Bar at all!

Nah, that's Port Talbot. Did you know the dystopian city (L.A.? Chicago? Can't remember) of the future in Blade Runner was inspired by it? Fucking gurt chimneys bellowing out smoke and crap 24 hours a day, refineries and smelting and all sorts of industrial stuff going on (all run by Tata now, the Indian company. There's some weird reverse colnialism stuff going on with industry in this country...). Town itself is a fucking dump, because it's hardly a tourist hotspot. The water is black/brown on a good day.

On the other side of Swansea Bay (can't be more than two or three miles across), mumbles is beautiful.

I wouldn't take a dip in there mind. It's still the Brizzle channel.

Handsworth, The valleys, Newport, Bolton, Moss side, Swansea, Blackpool, Trowbridge, South Bristol, Southend, Llanwrst, Leeds, Hull, Port Talbot, Slough and Tower Hamlets.

Oh, and a shout to Brighton. You may have the sea and a pier but you can't polish a turd.  :pint:

:no:

I seemed to have forgotten Wolverhampton, then again I guess most people do.  :suicide:

All the Leeds I saw on 93 was shite

Swansea can seem to the layman to be a shitehole. But there are honestly great things to be found if you look hard enough.

Tower Hamlets, again, seems like a shitehole. But some of the markets, small shops, Pie/mash/eel shops that still exist are fookin' mint (To speak the lingo). The canals (minus the odd dismembered corpse) are a fascinating and interesting segment of London life, full of wildlife and  If nothing else, the London public transport system means you can escape easily, so it's really not that terrible.

I've lived in both, and they are by far and a way not the worst places I've been.


They do try though.  :gay:

Luton, what a hole

I've never been to Luton. It always looks a dump on those police programs

Middlesbrough was indeed grim and I hated my visit to Liverpool too.

Also, Trowbridge. How could Wiltshire allow its market town crumble?

A shit hole maybe, but redeemed by being a good night out.

Swansea isn't as grim as Newport, plus there is beautiful coastline within a few miles, the Gower.

Has Bradford been mentioned yet?  This has been the main shopping centre for over a decade:

(http://www.croydonguardian.co.uk/resources/images/2087166.jpg?type=articleLandscape)

Then why did you say it wa....

Oh, wait, 4D.

Oh oh oh! Huge oversight!

Crawley!!!! Now THAT is a fucking hellhole.

Bedford and Kavos

Mansfield is quite awful.  The town centre after dark is grim.  Full of minging people dressed as ABBA in 70s revival clubs.  Wakefield is similar.

Swansea is alright.
Slough, london,birmingham horrible places.
wednesbury and all the west midlands are even worse.

Mong Ho Pung in Myanmar, just a small border town full of soldiers who liked ponting their AK47's at me.  Was followed around by fifty or so street urchins begging which was quite heart breaking (they've probably all grown up now to be gun toting twats though). 

Been to some truely awful places and I'd still stick Swindon in my top five terrible places.

I only read the first page and where I live and where I work were both mentioned. This is probably not good.

Plus the commute from Gillingham to Poi Pet is a bitch!

Stretching it to call London a 'place' though, isn't it?  It's too big for that.  Someone once called London a collection of villages, and when you spend some time there you realise that it's true.

Here's a Sunday morning stat: it's further from one side of London to the other (contiguous urban area) than it is from Swindon to Oxford, or Swindon to Gloucester.  Don't think you can dismiss a city of that size as a single 'place'.

Morecombe is a shit pit at the moment but give it 5 years and it will be very different I suspect.

In terms of true northern hell I nominate Barrow,  Millom,  Grimesthorpe,  Bury, Bolton, Blackpool. 

For me on my travels around the UK it is around the Dagenham,Dartford area.....they should rename the whole area Industriaville.....no thought has gone into the people who live there and the roads and industry make it a landscape i hate.

Basingstoke...

Good shout.
Bit like Eldene but without the culture.

Living in Coventry for three years is enough and gets my vote. The place oozes greyness.

Haringey.

I take your point but it was a general comment by myself on lodon as a whole. The sheer size of the city is part of the reason i don't like it.

as well as the arrogant cunts who live there

Milton Keynes and Blackpool

Not as bad as Middlesborough though

Very true, they don't call them the smellies for nothing.

I'll add Liverpool to the list. I've never seen so many run down half-burnt housing estates in my life.

Isn't it Smoggies they know them as.

Not sure. My mate from Newcastle knows them as the smellies.

Definitely the Smoggies.

Smog Monsters because of the chemical works isn't it?  Shortedned to smoggies by the mackems and the geordies.

Haven't read the thread back but for me Didcot, I haven't been there for a few years but I couldn't imagine it's changed that much.

Rugby.

Lived there for 6 years and the only good thing about it was that, being centrally located, it was handy for football - I never went to so many away games.

How ironic.

(That is ironic right? I haven't had any coffee yet...)

About as ironic as having ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife.

"You have no idea what irony is, do you Baldrick"

"Yes, it's like tinny and goldy but it's made of iron"

Truro

This is only going on visits to the first two in the dim and distant past, but the second two are based on much more recent encounters.
Port Talbot
East Kilbride

Scunthorpe
Sunderland

and on a more local note - Ludgershall/Faberstown

Ludgershall is a weird place indeed....though it does have a nice little Delli there ran by a Swiss woman i believe.

Swindon

Blackburn has to be at the top of this list. John Lennon wrote about the 4,000 holes (road pot holes) in Blackburn Lancashire in the Day in the Life lyrics, must be twice that number today.