Goole, East Yorkshite.
Close your eyes and think, for a minute, of any port town. Felixstowe for example, or Hull, or Grimsby, maybe even Immingham.

Now take away the nice things you get in port towns, this bit may take a bit more imagination, but remove all thoughts of marinas, sailing, romance, fishing, relaxation, profitable industry, uniformed captains, rolling seas, fresh air, seabirds, fresh fish and chips, international culture etc.

You're almost there - you now need to remove anyone who earns more than 60% of the average national wage, as they'll have moved out of the town into a village, or a different town, leaving behind the poor, and the disenfranchised.

Now add all the lovely things that port towns bring - persons for whom English is a foreign language, drugs, alcohol.

Add a few rough pubs and rougher clubs filled with rough young men and rougher young women, all partaking of the widely available drugs and cheap contraband alcohol.

Getting the picture? Brillant, you've almost got a picture of Dover, now move that picture about 4 notches towards "extreme" and you've got Goole - Britain's most inland seaport.
(ymmit, Sat 31 Oct 2009, 7:31, 7 replies)

When I see that place name
I keep thinking it says Google.

Can't be bad being named after a search engine.
(Cloudane, Sat 31 Oct 2009, 10:36, closed)

I was born in goole
and lived there briefly as a child. My parents saw sense and moved away only to move back when I was 7/8 :(

I don't have the literary talent that others on this site do, but I will say that Goole is a grim place. Most crap towns/cities will have at least one "nice" or "quiet" area. Goole does not.

At the tender age of 9 I watched the inhabitants mete out their own style of justice on an apparent paedophile. They had no proof for this, other than some ratty little kid saying "He's a paedo!". This man was set on fire, stabbed, beaten to within an inch of his life and finally urinated on.

It's a truly awful place to spend any amount of time and I feel for anyone who who has ever had to drive through the place nevermind live there.
(panda_sam, Sat 31 Oct 2009, 11:53, closed)

driving through???
Thankfully with the M62, A614 and A161 routing the way they do, driving through Goole is seldom a necessity.
(ymmit, Sat 31 Oct 2009, 19:24, closed)

You know how they used to deport criminals back in Victorian times?
Well in Yorkshire, we do something similar - only instead of Australia, we send them to Goole.
( The Mock TurtIe ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Sat 31 Oct 2009, 17:56, closed)

Wasn't Goole at one point the place with the highest number of coke users per thousand in the entire country.
It truly is a depressing shithole.
( Noit happy baby orangutan, Sun 1 Nov 2009, 16:55, closed)

It was herion
But yes.
(Hagbard MacDougal, Tue 3 Nov 2009, 12:41, closed)

I've lived in Goole most of my life
Not that it's been a long life so far, and I'm in Manchester at the moment. But one thing I will say about Goole is it sets you up for life when you're faced with living in shitty areas. Nothing really seems bad after living there.

Plus one thing I might add is it has the Macintosh Arms, most bizarre pub I've ever known in my life.

www.goole-guide.net/macintosh.htm
(Hagbard MacDougal, Tue 3 Nov 2009, 12:47, closed)