Oh! St Neots
Other people have described St Neots, so I won't. But the most monumentally rubbish thing about St Neots is the thing it is most famed for - pubs.
Once home to the highest concentration of pubs in the UK, the High Street now consists of four pubs. The New Inn, which mis-spells the town it's in and is off the list if you'ver over five foot. The Wrestlers, lovely if you're looking to score any drugs. The Corner House, £3.50 a pint (of FOSTERS), and lastly the Priory.
Oh, the Priory. Badly designed with a school disco DJ, usual sticky carpets etc and a soon-to-be-implemented over-21's policy that will make it useless for it's main purpose, which is getting into 18 year old gash.

There's also the fact that a good proportion of the town is in orgasmic excitement about the X5 bus, to get you out. Brilliant. The best thing about our town is a bus. Fantastic.
(MightyX5 living on a small island on, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 17:15, Reply)

Port Glasgow
Ex Missus now lives there. Best place for her.
(Rikaitch is full of crap ideas., Fri 30 Oct 2009, 17:15, 1 reply)

Southampton
Full of miserable fuckers.
(Robot_Lover loves robots, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 16:58, 4 replies)

Telford and its Many Islands
Telford: the only town so bereft of entertainment, they name their roundabouts. Not once, but twice.

1) The official name (xxxx-roundabout)
2) The local name (yyyy-island)

The local sense of humour is so strong, they gave the following name to the roundabout outside Western Europe's biggest arms dump: Falklands Island.

To be fair, it does have 3 large field guns on it.

In this town, they love them so much, there are hundreds of Islands [sic]; some with one road in, and one road out.

They must have sat there in a Friday afternoon planning meeting and said (in their demi-midlands accent):

"Bored... whaddarewegonnadew?"
"Oiland?"
"Yeah"
"Weer?"
(random finger pointing at map)
"Theer"

Could be worse, I went to school in one of the satellite towns - Telford was a metropolis to us. You could get a train to Wolverhampton and *everything*.

Edit: 1st time posting (rather than just replying) woO! That's how much I hate the place.
(MartinB9999, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 16:53, 2 replies)

Morecambe
I lived there for 6 months. Reasons include:

In the one cold autumn that I was there most people walked around in just a T-Shirt presumably trying to convince themselves of sunnier climates elsewhere.

Pubs contained nobody younger than 45 and the one person my age that I spoke to asked me where he could get clean needles.

Frontierland has the scariest and oldest rides I have ever been on. I genuinely feared for my life.

The one time I went out for a meal the maitre'd was so bored and drunk that he pulled up a chair and joined us. He was very drunk and the conversation was neither pleasant or coherent.

People die there, the old, the chinese and the bored alike.

There was a massive pile of rubble behind the station, 2 months after living there I ventured behind said rubble and discovered the other half of the town.

True, this was over 10 years ago and it might well have turned into a trendy place for wankers but I some how doubt it.
( Mond, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 16:42, 5 replies)

Peterlee
Our claims to fame include the annoying fireman off the series of Big Brother that had Jade Goody in it, and the worst Christmas tree in Britain. Notice the Poundland in the background, probably one of our more upmarket shops.

Clearly a spectacular town.
( Kittenpants, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 16:34, 1 reply)

Surely its Hull
Isn't that where all B3tans seem to end up?


(no apologies if its been done already).
(ParaSitius is an Optimistic Pessimist, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 16:30, Reply)

Bradford
The arse end of the universe. Boarded up 1950s houses, gangs all over the place, crap weather, middle of nowhere.

Nuff said!
( Finite "Aardvark sorted out my shit!" on, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 16:23, 7 replies)

Rubbish Towns 2009 Official Map
Here's the finished map. There wa sa limit to only 200 places so i had to limit it just to the UK so sorry all you foreigners.

Hover over a number and click more info for a related story from all of you lot and maybe you'll find your own.

www.bing.com/maps/?v=2&encType=1&cid=C466460095A9834F!537
(NuffMuff fucks shrubbery, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 16:19, 9 replies)

Chesterfield
I got out. But before I did, my favourite memory was walking along the street on a Saturday night. Two lads approached two girls walking just in front of my brother and I:
Lads: How do - where's the best place to go out round here?

Lasses: Sheffield.

Never a truer word spoken.
(kidcamel is due to call your mum at, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 16:16, 1 reply)

Paisley
Large town near Glasgow. Really let down by the local council. A town that really has promise but is now, sadly, a hole.

The main street is nothing but charity shops with all the major shops closing down and moving out to the more prosperous Braehead centre in Glasgow.

The main street is now a haven for neds who hang around there on Friday and Saturdays nights threatening anyone who dares walk up that road late on those nights.

As I say, it's a real shame that this town has hit rock bottom, as it had a lot of promise, but it had it's day and will go the way of the rest of the forgotten towns orbiting Glasgow (Cumbernauld, Cambuslang, Drumchapel etc).

Now living in London. Slightly better, but not by much.
(scotsbloke, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 15:59, 2 replies)

Whitehaven, Cumbria
My friend works with a guy called Neil who had to travel to Whitehaven to perform an audit.

The very first thing Neil saw upon disembarking the train was a dog fucking a cat.
(Sir Harrington Titsmith disgraced himself on, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 15:58, 7 replies)

Burnley
Unless I've missed it, Burnley hasn't yet been mentioned in this QOTW, which is an absolute scandal - there can be few places in the entire world, not just this country, as unequivocally shit as Burnley.

It's in the arse end of nowhere, which is probably the best place for it to be fair, and all of the buildings are constructed from the same drab and dreary stone, that makes the place seem singularly miserable and grey, even on a sunny day.

I've never lived there, thankfully, but dwell in a neighbouring town which, despite having the usual gripes associated with pretty much any town or city in this formerly grand land of ours, shines like a brilliant beacon of success alongside the hemorrhoid on the arse of the nation that is Burnley.

Do not go there!
(Martin3112, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 15:50, 7 replies)

Thornaby-on-Tees
www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/teesside-news/2009/01/22/young-mums-locked-up-for-frenzied-thornaby-knife-attack-84229-22752941/

I could post a litany of misery but this just about sums up the place where I grew up.

Sorry for lack of funnies... this QOTW is somewhat depressing I find.
( TheFinch is getting to grips with the complex plane on, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 15:43, 2 replies)

Worksop...
This is a place where most of the curry houses serve their dishes with a Kraft Cheese Slice melting on top because it's what people ask for.
( Kung_Fu_Russ ran out of amusing signatures on, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 15:39, 2 replies)

I live near Weston-Super-Mare.
Up until a few months ago, I had always wondered why the local media never mentioned that Roald Dahl had spent a few years at school in Weston, they take every opportunity to name-drop Jill Dando, John Cleese and even Jeffery-cunting-Archer, but never one of the worlds best loved authors. Then I read his autobiography. The chapter that covers his time in Weston begins; “Weston-Super-Mare is a seedy little seaside town…” and goes on to describe how miserable he was during his time there.

Now Weston takes a lot of flack, and I had always assumed that it had had its heyday in the pre-war years, but Roald wrote that in 1984 and was describing Weston in the 1920’s, which suggests that it has always been a dump. Quite frankly it is getting worse, it seems that all the best parts have either shut down or burnt down. During the summer I paid Weston a visit and took the opportunity to check out some of the places I frequented as a child/teenager in the late 80’s/early 90’s.

Trapnells Model Shop: I loved this place as a kid, whether your thing was Airfix model kits or Kiel Kraft balsa wood gliders or radio controlled cars or BB guns, Trapnells had it all and if it didn’t, Mr. Trapnell would order it for you. I had phoned the day before but nobody had answered, when I got there I saw why. Steel Shutters were locked down and a notice said “We have shut for good”. I moved on to…

10:15 Records: A great place, just like the shop in High-Fidelity except it was 2 shops in 1, the shop on the left was second hand records, the shop on the right was second hand stereos, musical instruments, computers and the like. Now also closed down, so I moved on to…

The Arcades: Now I have to admit that I was never a big fan of playing the arcades, as a teenager I saved up for an Amiga to get my gaming fix, but I spent many a happy afternoon watching my mates spunk away their hard earned paper-round money on Street Fighter 2 or Mortal Kombat. I was interested to see how the arcades had survived in the era of X-Box and PS3 where every kid has an arcade perfect machine in their own bedroom. The simple answer was that they hadn’t, they were now full of fruit machines and despair. I walked down to…

The Grand Pier: Obviously I knew it had burned down, but I wasn’t prepared for all the idiots I heard laughing about it. Yes that’s right, “HA FUCKING HA!” The one decent attraction Weston had to offer is now a twisted eyesore, I suppose it goes well with the derelict Tropicana swimming pool just down the promenade. As I walked off in disgust I noticed some ragged looking pigeons pecking at a large dog turd, someone had taken the effort to push a couple of plastic forks into it.
( Colonel Dracula Two manky hookers and a racist dwarf, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 15:37, 10 replies)

Bisho, ex-capital of extinct Bantustan, Ciskei.
When I was a kid growing up in Apartheid-era South Africa, various crappy patches of land were assigned as "independent" "homelands" (i.e. dumping grounds) for verious tribes.

The Ciskei was fairly small, and it's capital city was truly... odd.

In an amphitheatre, with identical tiny, boxy houses on all sides, sat precisely one ugly concrete building featuring the local shopping mall and presumably the legislature. Large edifice, with a supermarket whose shelves were stocked with sacks of grain and other bland staples. I am at a loss to understand how anyone besides the supermarket staff managed to live there.



That's it. All there is. Country no longer exists, but the capital city lingers on, serving no known purpose.

Oh yes, the Bisho Massacre.
(Ladyfingers is in your wardrobe,, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 15:33, 8 replies)

Sheffield - the bain of my existance
It hates me. I hate it. Every time I've been there, save the first, something bad has happened. Two most noteworthy instances are as follows:

Living in Huddersfield at the time, drove to Sheffield for a gig. Had trouble finding my way out of the city center. Ended up heading out in the complete opposite direction to that which I wanted to go. This was ok, however, as my car broke down about 2 miles out and I had to be towed. Waited about 90 mins for the tow truck to come and take me in the right direction to Hudds. The guy said it'd cost £80. Fair enough, I ask him to pull over if he sees a cashpoint. We find a supermarket with a couple of cashpoints outside, so I go to get some bucks. Card in machine, PIN number in, £80 please. NO DEAL. Oh dear. Try again, still nothing, try the next machine, nothing. I know full well I have enough cash, so I call Nationwide, who tell me their servers are down for the night, so no one can draw money. My only option was to call my dad at 1am (who wasn't particularly happy about being woken up) and get him to pay the guy by credit card.

The most heinous incident happened when I was living in Newcastle, about 2 and a half years ago. Some mates and I were going to Newquay for a 4 day weekend, so I got on the train in Newcastle, went to Northampton where my mate picked me up, and we drove to Luton to stay at another mate's house overnight. In the morning we drive to Newquay and all is good. While there I book a train ticket back. I work out what time we're going to leave Newquay, approximately how long it took to get there from Northampton (minus the stop-over of course), then add 2 hours for safety, and book my train. Still managed to miss the fucker by 2 hours. So I get on the next train headed in the same direction. Due to change at Derby, so I get off there and go into the station to find out when the next one to Newcastle leaves. No Newcastle trains on the board, so I ask the teller and she says there aren't any more until the morning. Fuck. So I decide to head to Sheffield on the ticket I already have, as it's closer to Newcastle and theoretically the ticket back in the morning should be cheaper. I went to a pub in Derby for an hour to wait for my next train, and in hindsight I should have asked the people I got chatting to if they'd put me up for the night. Ah well.

So I go to Sheffield, get there about 11:50. I figured I'd find a bench in the station to sleep on or something. About midnight, however, security comes round to tell me that the station's closing and that I need to get out. So I'm stuck on the streets of Sheffield on a Saturday night. Went to get a burger because I was a bit hungry. Went to the nearest hotels to see how much a room costs (well over £100). Went to a little newsagent I found that was still open and bought a copy of Viz. Finished it. Went to get another burger, this time really just for something to do. Headed back to the train station around 3:45. The sign on the door says opening hours are 4am to midnight, Monday to Saturday. So I'm waiting for the station to open so I can sit in the warm. Around 4am, all the lights turn on. I figure someone has to come round and open the doors. But nothing. So I look at the sign again, and realise that, since I got there on Saturday night, it's actually Sunday morning, and the station opens at 7am.

Fail.

Not to worry though, because I'm about to make a new "friend". Some pisshead with a tin of generic larger who's missing half his ear rocks up and starts talking to me. The guy's hammered, stumbling about, looking pretty dirty and is missing a chunk of his right ear. Fortunately not a fresh wound, but still a little unnerving. He says he's waiting for his mate to come in on the 8am train, so fuck knows what he was doing there at that time. So I keep wandering about looking for something to do, and he keeps following me, as I'm too good natured to tell him to fuck off. He talks about various things, including his girlfriend being in jail for stabbing one of his mates, and I generally respond to humour him. He then says he knows another way into the train station, and suggest we go round the back of it.

It's about this point I realise that this is a real low point in my life, and if I'm going to be stabbed to death, this is the night it's going to happen.

Fortunately some considerably more sober and pleasant people turn up at about 5:30 or 6am, and I start talking to them. They've been to a gig and missed heir train home too, so they actually have a sensible reason to be there. I manage to get stuck into a conversation long enough for the drunkard to lose interest and go to sleep on a bench. Around 7am the station opens and I find the next train to Newcastle and say my goodbyes to my companions. All is pretty good, until I get back to Newcastle, only to find that my car won't start.

Bollocks.
( Styxx hates when people talk in the third person, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 15:31, 4 replies)

Stoke and Ust Barguzin
Yet another vote for Stoke.
What a massive shithole that place is. I spent three long and miserable years there while at Uni. Just thinking about it makes me feel a bit sick, and I've vowed I will never return there for any reason whatsoever.

That said, the crap town crown has got to go Ust Barguzin, Russia. Some friends and I stopped off there for a few days during a Trans Siberian trip last year. The place is a sort of post-apocalyptic shanty town on the edge of Lake Baikal, where the only pastime is drinking vodka. The only thing to see/do/visit is a small local shop that sells mainly bread and vodka and as there is no plumbing throughout the town you are forced to shit in a pit wherever you go.
Also, the only way to reach this wonderful place is to take an 8 hour ride in a cramped taxi, surrounded by grumpy, drunk Russians on a "road" that would be considered too dangerous to drive on in any other part of the world.
Also, after we left we heard that a Japanese couple once went there and were so horrified by it they actually hired a chopper to get them out of there! "Get to the chooo-paaah"

If you're struggling to imagine what a ridiculous place this might be, I invite you to check out their coat of arms;
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ust-Barguzin

Says it all really.
(thejuicydangler, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 15:31, 2 replies)

I used
to live in Blaenau Ffestiniog, North wales - it's twinned with Bosnia, and the Bosnians are fucking livid about it.
( social hand grenade I was a lurker before you were a lurker, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 15:29, 4 replies)

A few I've been to
Portsmouth: Arguably one of the worst places I've ever lived in my life. A grey, depressing, scum of the earth filled cauldron of skinheads and chavs. I doubt anyone would miss it if it was walled off and carpet bombed.

Sunderland: Has been mentioned earlier and really is an awful place.

Slough: I couldn't possibly imagine what reason anyone would ever have for moving to or visiting this hellhole, unless they had a masochistic desire to be beaten, mugged, sodomised and stabbed.

Yeovil: Locally known as Yobovil. Any illusions of it being a quiet country town are quickly shattered, after driving through kebab alley and seeing the various miscreants unconcious in their own bodily fluids and past a Weatherspoons where inevitably you'll see someone getting glassed/bottled, you don't even hit an area that could be considered civilized until close to the northern part of the town. That is, assuming you even stop after the horror show when entering from the direction of Sherborne.

Swansea: Ugh.

Southampton: only seen the immediate area around the train station, while stranded there for 3 hours because someone had jumped on the train tracks, probably because they lived in Southampton. But from the initial impression of that area I'd say it looks like a concrete hellhole.
(Spackles Made sexual advances in your general direction on, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 15:17, 4 replies)

Doncaster
If England were a body, Doncaster would be its ringpiece..........
(bongotheflatulent, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 15:12, Reply)

Got Your Wish
Who was it last week who asked for a boring question this week? Request granted.
(danalan Pretty good, for an amateur., Fri 30 Oct 2009, 15:06, 1 reply)

Newark
Half of the year is stinks like rotting flesh and for the rest of the year its raining. We should just fence Newark off from the rest of the world
(dirtyotter Touch Me I’m Sick, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 15:04, Reply)

Brum...
I once got mugged (sort of) in Birmingham when I was but a SubCulture Hero In Training (henceforth abbreviated to SHiT). I was bumbling around the city centre looking for a handy pizza hut from which to obtain an affordable alternative to the overpriced, under-edible hotel food for me and my mate.

While I was trolling around looking for it and having a quiet smoke I was approached by what was possibly a retarded monkey in a tracksuit demanding the loan of a smoke. Being a kind soul I obliged the miscreant, and obliged him again when he insisted I gave him another. When he requested, somewhat gruffly and after parting me from my precious tobacco products, that I then hand over my even more precious beer money I refused, naturally. It was at this juncture he demonstrated he had a knife and that my refusal had not stood me in good stead.

Being a shrewd, but cowardly SHiT I decided my only option was to negotiate with my assailant, promising him that if he led me to the nearest Pizza Hut I'd happily pay him for his time. He agreed and off we went. Luckily, his chosen route took us right past the hotel in which I was staying and so I feigned momentary memory loss, claiming that in all the excitement I'd forgotten what I was supposed to be ordering for my friend and, if he'd just wait outside for a couple of minutes I'd nip in, find my friend and be reminded what I was getting for him. My helpful miscreant agreed and sat on a bollard waiting for me.

I spent a good twenty minutes watching him from the 10th floor bar, munching on my overpriced prawn baguette and sucking on a Bacardi Breezer.

Birmingham - So rubbish even the muggers can't get it right.



I'm going to sCUNThorpe next week... wish me luck.
( SubCulture Hero ... ... He... .... Comes ... ...., Fri 30 Oct 2009, 15:01, 1 reply)

Shut up, there was a festival on
I go to Bradford every year, because I'm not quite brave enough for more direct masochsim. And there's a cybergoth festival in August, on a disturbingly closely-related topic. One year - 2004, I believe - I noticed that the streets were absolutely covered in crap. Not literally - this was the posh part of Bradford, although I'm sure you can find that elsewhere - but it was like the council had decided the best way to deal with the overflowing rubbish bins and the issue of feeding fruitflies was to let them cancel each other out.

However, maybe there's a better explanation. Pity the poor bugger in charge of cleaning up Bradford. Torn between the job he's paid to do and his moral obligation to hide as much of the godforsaken armpit of Yorkshire as possible under a deluge of empty pizza boxes, used condoms and soiled undergarments. Lesser of two evils and all that.

What would you do in his place, b3tans? Could you suggest a more noble solution? The use of nuclear weapons notwithstanding?
(Darth Foxtrot A one-man army dedicated to making fetch happen, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 14:59, 1 reply)

I can guarantee that none of you has neighbours as in-bred as ours
Still, I shouldn't grumble, they don't complain when our dog craps in their garden.
(Capo, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 14:54, Reply)

Swansea, Cardiff
Had to go to both for work, in fact spent a week living in a Novotel in Swansea, pretty much on my billy lonesome.

I don't have sufficient time to describe the full dull tedium and utter shitness of the places, but when you are being paid full overtime rates to sit round, eat pizza and watch TV (sorry, test network functionality) for 8 hours a day plus get pissed on expenses, and you would still rather be in a fiesta van driving back up the M4 towards home, it's bad.

I used to think Goldie Lookin' Chain were being ironic.
(fridgefreezer inserted a topical reference into his sig on, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 14:49, 4 replies)

another vote for Stoke
Had the misfortune to live in Stoke for a year while at Keele Uni. Some bits believe it or not are fairly posh with big Victorian houses. I lived on Shelton Old Road opposite a pub called The Cliffe Vale. Ventured in to the Cliffe Vale once - broken windows and decore from the victorian era. I was certainly in the down market part of Stoke. Lost count of the number of times my car got broken into. Still had a great time at uni and beats this working for a living.
(SimonCorrigan, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 14:49, 1 reply)