Hull: Britain's crappiest city - official

Well, why not start off this weblog with another pop at Hull, the 'city' (a term used loosely) I've lived in since 1992 and which I'll shortly be moving from. A friend in Glasgow sent me an article from the Financial Times about Hull, relating to this fetid swamp of knuckledraggers being designated the crappest place in Britain, a dishonour which I wouldn't disagree with (and I was mostly brought up in Luton, so that's really saying something). I've linked to the article from the title above and below, but I've also copied the article text below that as links on these dynamic websites have a habit of rotting away.


************************


To Hull and Back

By Sathnam Sanghera
FT.com site; Sep 26, 2003

Even if you've never been there, you can't help assuming that Hull is a depressing place to be. Maybe it's the dangerous promixity of words "Hull" and "Hell". Maybe it's the knowledge that Hull was, for some 30 years, home to miserablist poet Philip Larkin. Maybe it's the unattractive way in which Hull's residents insist on pronouncing "Hull" as "'ull", "bloke" as "blerk" and "don't know" as "derrn't nerr". But, all in all, you'd probably rather not visit. And as for spending a whole weekend in Hull . . . well, no thanks.

However, this month, that's what I did. I got into a car, drove more than 200 miles from London to the north of England, and checked into a hotel in Hull city centre for two days. And, as masochistic as it sounds, I actually volunteered to go. The reason? The publication of a book entitled Crap Towns, which lists the 50 worst places to live in the UK according to the results of an internet poll organised by The Idler magazine. Released this week, it ranks Hull at number one.

The result troubled me. It's not that I have an affiliation to Hull. It's just that I have always taken it as one of life's certainties that Wolverhampton, my home town, where I spent the first 18 years of my life, was the crappest town in Britain. Wolverhampton's grimness is legendary. My memories of growing up there almost entirely consist of running away - either from people trying to mug me, people trying to glass me, or from rabid dogs trying to savage me.

Crap Towns does do Wolverhampton justice. One entry says "the city is so divided along class and racial lines that it is hardly a city at all but a collection of tribal groupings". But it places it only at number 19. Are there really 18 towns worse than Wolverhampton in Britain? And is Hull really that much worse? I was intrigued by the possibility and decided to check out the competition. I tried to get some friends from London to join me, but they all declined - vehemently in some cases. In the end I blackmailed my dear older brother Jas into accompanying me.

The book's entry for Hull warned us that the city suffers from an array of problems: high unemployment, high crime, high heroin addiction levels, terrible 1960s and 1970s architecture and low educational standards (it has the lowest GCSE pass rate in England).

"The silent threat of violence hangs in the air, along with the smell from the chocolate factory," says a former resident in a contribution to the book. "Chocolate factories, by the way, don't smell of chocolate, they smell of death. If the wind comes from the south-east, the smell of Grimsby docks adds a fishy staleness to the odour. If it comes from the other direction it brings the smell of the tanning factory . . . rotting carcasses and rancid flesh."

Harsh stuff - but despite intense sniffing, we didn't notice any of these smells as we crept into town. But then, initially, we found it difficult to notice anything at all. Most cities in Britain have something about them, some motif, that fixes them to your mind. Brighton has its Pavilion. Wolverhampton has its, err, bus station. But Hull seemed to have nothing. The characterlessness brought to mind Philip Larkin's comment about his adopted city: "I wish I could think of just one thing I could tell you about Hull. Oh yes . . . it's very nice and flat for cycling."

But once our eyesight got used to the depressing drizzle that curses the city, we began to notice the details: groups of youths drinking high-strength lager in doorways; dogs roaming the streets; incredibly low prices (99p a pint, £5.75 for two meals). And after about half an hour of driving around, we did come across something very remarkable indeed: Bransholme, a disastrous housing estate. It was a bleak sight: burnt-out cars; shopping trollies strewn across front gardens; pregnant teenagers pushing prams. Every other house seemed to be boarded up.

What made it even worse was the knowledge that it didn't actually need to be that bad. In 1999 Hull City Council became one of the richest in the country when it sold a large stake in Kingston Communications, a historical anomaly that was the UK's only municipally owned telephone operator, with its distinctive white telephone boxes. The council made more than a quarter of a billion pounds. Since then the city has built itself a nice new stadium and a fantastic Millennium Project, The Deep, an aquarium designed by Sir Terry Farrell - but too many parts of the city are still in a very bad state. Last year a damning Audit Commission report into the city council revealed that some of the cash windfall had been spent on double-glazing and centrally heating council homes that later had to be be demolished.

By the time we arrived in the city centre for a Saturday night on the tiles, we were quite depressed. And despite the fact that 'ull city centre is actually lovely in parts, by the time we got started, after 7pm, it resembled the seventh circle of 'ell: the countless banks that have been converted into bars were playing consistently inane dance music; the streets were filled with girls in microskirts and groups of young white men who insisted on walking and talking like the American rap stars whose records they buy. Again, the scene brought to mind a line from Larkin, this time from his best poem about Hull - Here - in which he shows us a place seething with people he detests, a "cut-price crowd, urban yet simple".

Getting into the spirit of the crowd, we downed a few cut-price cocktails and went on a bit of a bar crawl, starting at Wetherspoons, then going on to Lloyd's (once a bank), The Mint (once a bank), Jaz (once a bank too), and Spiders (a Goth club). We ended the night at a rather cheesy but fun club called the Waterfront, housed in a converted quayside warehouse, where they were playing the usual Saturday night favourites - except in Hull, the songs seemed to take on a new meaning. Things Can Only Get Better. True. Living On a Prayer. True. The Final Countdown. If only. Nevertheless - although it may just have been the effect of the alcohol - I do think we had a good time for a bit. It was certainly an incredibly cheap night out.

But then it all got very bleak again. Knowing that the population of Hull is 97.7 per cent white - against an average for England of 90.9 per cent - my brother and I were expecting a few odd looks. And if there's anything that life in Wolverhampton prepares you for, it's a bit of racial tension. But Hull makes Wolverhampton look like a Benetton advert. As we walked into Wetherspoons, some of those near us clearly mouthed the word "darkies" in our direction. We scarpered promptly, getting a taxi to the next place. As we got in the cab, the blerk in the driver's seat asked us where we were from, and then warned us "to be careful in town" because "asylum seekers weren't very popular in 'ull". When we explained we were British citizens, he just blinked back at us, blankly.

There was an even more bizarre moment at the end of the evening in the Waterfront club when a group of lads who befriended us suddenly started shouting "hey, nigger!" at my brother, and giving him high-fives. They refused to accept that (a) it wasn't a nice thing to say, and that (b) it wasn't factually correct, given that he was actually Indian. I'm sure they didn't mean any real harm - they were otherwise very friendly - it's just that the etiquette and vocabulary of multiculturalism doesn't seem to have reached some parts of Hull yet.

And this is why I have to concede that Hull might actually be more rubbish than Wolverhampton. Despite being full of many lovely people, it is the most insular place I have ever been to. This is perhaps a by-product of its geographical isolation: Hull sits at the end of a motorway, staring out to sea with its back turned to the United Kingdom, isolated from the rest of the country by the muddy Humber Estuary, 200 miles from London, 200 miles from Edinburgh and some 100 miles from anywhere half-way decent. But is it the crappest town in the whole of the UK? Unfortunately, I have another 17 towns to visit before I can reach a definite conclusion.

Crap Towns: The 50 Worst Places to Live in the UK, edited by Sam Jordison and Dan Kieran, is published by Boxtree Books, price £10

*******************************