I’ve always envied those people that come from London, Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield etc… At least people will have heard of these places when they ask ‘where are you from?’ Peterborough just doesn’t cut the mustard and the generic ‘well it’s near Cambridge’ or ‘Just off the A1 80 miles north of London’ is usually met with a blank look and mild nod that says ‘i haven’t got a clue where you’re on about.’
And it’s perhaps best they haven’t because let’s be honest, who would want to visit Peterboghorror? Possibly one of thw worst-designed cities in the country, a sprawling abortion of 80′s crap architecture with facless housing estates connected with a myriad of rat run passages which become wind tunnels, litter traps and the ideal ambush point for junkies and pissed up pikeys. Of which this insipid little city has many.
A piss poor road system (in fact the only good thing about the city is its parkway system which lets you leave pretty quickly), bland, grey city centre whose main attractions are chip vans, pound shops, boarded up empty retail units, beggars and fat, idle dolescum from the Ortons, Welland, Bretton and Hampton. You’ll see them easily – they’re the ones who wear moody Crocs in the middle of winter and has suffered some form of strange lard osmosis from eating too many chips. They’ll also have anywhere between six and a dozen kids, some brown, behind them in a rag tag band running out of control, despite mother’s best attempts to tame them by ranting swearwords at the top of her voice. Perhaps telling them they won’t get Micro Chips and a Rustlers Burger for tea might do the job…
So that’s the day dealt with. What about the nightlife? It’s not up to much – one of the key moans is that if we had a university, the student scene would invigorate the place. No it wouldn’t. It’d just give more innocent targets for the council eastate Beckham-clone in-breds or the pikey scum from Parnwell to batter senseless.
I’ve always been amazed that a barbed wire fence doesn’t go up along Midgate and Westgate to seal off the ‘passable’ part of the city from the ‘Bronx’. Avoid Liquid, O’Neills, The Brewery Tap, Yates’s, Edwards and The Solstice like a plague. If you do decide to pay a visit, firstly avoid the beggars, slags flogging flyers for some sweaty meatmarket nightclub and junkies out for a fight near the Tesco Extra. Then get past the knuckle-headed apes of the door of most of these shit holes and you’re in – but you’ll wonder why you bothered. Try and spot the person with originality in terms fo dress sense and haircut. It ain’t happening. If you want to know what people in Peterborough will be wearing in a decade’s time, go to London now and take notes.
Fights are part and parcel of a night out and if you’re really lucky it’ll just be with gelled flat-top chav Gary who is upset because his whore of a girlfriend looked at another man. If you’re unlucky, you’ll get the works from some pikeys or an Eastern European gang for no apparent reason.
And don’t expect the thick as a donkey’s dick door staff to help you. They’re too busy making sure either:
A) those violent thungs in trainers and jeans don’t get in (ignoring the wakners in dragon print shirts and Argos shoes with big brass buckles)
B) Getting a blowjob and tops and fingers with an underage Orton slut decked out in Argos’s finest gold
Make it through the night and there’s a possible kebab shop fight on the way home or the nailed on cab rank brawl. Watch as the police stay sat in their vans drinking tea. Still, if i was them, i wouldn’t bother either.
The travesty is that the one decent place we had to try and bring some culture and variety to the city (The Broadway Theatre) was burgled and torched recently. What a surprise. Perhaps Peterborough isn’t ready for this sort of enlightenment. Far better to stick to casual racism, narrow-mindedness and xenophobia, three things that this grotty city excels in.
f**k me, it’s no wonder i couldn’t wait to leave. The only downside is i have to travel in each day to work. Still it gives me a great sense of smugness and superiority watching the social detrius that limps slack-jawed past my office each day on their way to the Post Office to get their dole money.
Whatever happened to social-darwinism?
I actually like Peterborough. I moved here from the arse end of Lincolnshire nearly two years ago from a place that had no jobs and no hope.
It’s got it’s bad points like all places but i love the fact you can get a modern Gas centrally heated flat with parking for virtually tuppence a month. Not all, but most people are great here, everyone i’ve met has been sound but there is a “us and them” trade off between the richer inhabitants and the proles. There are jobs, although they’re mostly s**t. (Especially working in the warehouse of a well known internet retailer…), or you might get lucky and get a job in a Call Centre.
The bad points are: It’s awful for shopping unless you’re cash loaded. Queensgate is awful. Puke stains and p*** sodden tramps on the pavement near the Council Offices/Library, and Lincoln Road, god help it.
Peterborough’s biggest problem, i’ve found as an outsider, is it’s sheer bloody size, a city made up of a hotch-potch collection of essentially isolated 70′s and 80′s housing and industrial estates segregated by dual carriagways.
“Peterborough. Cheer up! it could be Corby…”
I love peterborough
Absolute horror of a place. Moved to Peterborough 11 months ago for work and am moving out next week. Its Cambridges poor tramp cousin.There is a tiny high street crawling with weirdos ,non existant nightlife and awful shopping centre, dont get me started on the new town housing schemes littered around the place. A terrible,terrible place which when i move out i will never be back to.
80′s architecture? You mean 60′s right? The city definitely suffered at the hands of the planners and architects (and Government’s aggressive growth plans) from those decades.
Ahh Peterborough: for all of its sins, of which there are many of the usual associated with towns and cities, people make the place. And this place has introduced me to some fine people.
Peterborough is mainly a dump because of IMMIGRANTS LIVING LIKE ANIMALS – obviously others do it too, but they are the main reason. i’ve lived here for twenty years – and It was never as bad as it is now!
I wandered lonely as a cloud,
That floats on high o’er Peterborian hills.
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of chavs, like Gary’s and Neil’s.
Beside the McDonalds, beneath the Tesco’s,
A continuous wave of gel haired gypo’s.
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Is there intelligent life by any chance?
A poet could not but be sad,
To stand beside the Primark lad.
So when my heart with repulse fills,
And legs it from the ‘boro’ hills.
i think Peterborough would have been quite a nice town maybe 30 odd years ago when my mother was growing up. But the problem now is that Peterborough is entirely populated by pikeys/chavs of varying classes. With the upper classes actually looking quite normal until they open their mouths and you realise how racist they are, down to the lower classes who are barely human at all. The older people remaining here who maybe remember how Peterborough used to be have now turned to crack and/or alcohol in order to blank out what a cess pool they live in.
http://www.charleschurch.com/detail.aspx?development_id=36
Prices from £189,995 to £320,000, that’s mid range. High prices in Hampton can hit £700k
I would like to see how many benefit scroungers can get a mortgage for that amount. Not unless Gordon Brown is doing some kind of new deal scheme that pays for a house. Even a shed in Hampton is worth 10x that of a 5 bedroom house in Orton.
But back to the posters original point. Peterborough is more hit then miss, but when the city hits the bottom of the league in the school tables ( except hampton which is one of the top ten in the UK ) you can forgive the residents…………both PAST and present for making the city the way it is.
People make citys and towns, not bricks & tiles.
Ilgvars says :When is the last time a house in Hamptons sold for over £300,000?
There are 11 currently up for 450k by Charles Church, five have just sold. My friend just sold his last week on Horseshow Way for £475 k. Average price is 200k for a rabbit hutch in Hampton. Look at the higher end around the lakes. Not at the current pikey builds going on around take away city.
2008 saw Hampton bottom out, so 170K would be about right, but thats already changing as we speak ( gawd knows why ! ).
There are Hampton-a-likes going up all over the UK. The problem is O&H got stiffed by the recession and the governments insistence on a 30% social build. Hence Hamptons all over the UK will be a mix of overpriced housing, cheap build town houses and social housing .
A recipe for all out social class war.I can see a whole new social issue being created in Hamptons all over the UK.
It’s neither one thing or the other.
FWIW : A lot of Hampton was bought for buy to let by Idiots who paid over the odds and then rented them out to benefit claiments.
Older parts of Peterborough are still not immune from the dregs of the Orton, Bretton, Werrington, Well’ard council estate dwellers.
There is an upside :
Go live in Sheffield, Manchester , Doncaster, Liverpool, Birmingham, Exeter,Swansea & all of Essex then come back to Peterborough. It’s like returning to the Costswolds
Either way Peterborough is a shite hole and its just lucky I only had the pleasure of the place for a few years.
Whats the formula ?
Find a place with no council housing and you’re on the money. That will be Buckingham Palace then : LOL !
When is the last time a house in Hamptons sold for over £300,000? We bought 4-bedroom town house for 170,000 pounds in 2008, all of hamptons is the same. Many repo’s and peoples on benefits, you can tell by the scum children let loose to roam the streets hopefully they will drown in the lakes, they like to throw life ring in to the water so may be let them try it out!
Older parts of Peterborough are nicest with better housing, but citizens must have some pride in their housing (unlike Millfied!!!!!). when people have pride, then we will have a better standard of life.
I pretty much agree except for the comment regarding Hampton. When was the last time a dole ridden baseball cap wearing spanner could afford £300-850k for a house in Hampton ?
Hampton was built to balance the lowlife areas such as Bretton, Werrington, Well’ard, Orton , Northborough, Glinton………in fact the rest of Peterborough.
Come to think of it 99% of England is like Peterborough, perhaps its not the town’s & city’s after all
Peterborough’s full of scummy cock wobblers, I’m glad I got out of the filthy cesspool.
I must say I do miss walking through town square and being looked at funny by a gang of what can only be described as neglected balemic techno-panda’s with crap hair, dark clothes and pins through their perpetually disappointed and miserable faces
and all this is beautifully accompanied by the aromatic undertone of the backed-up sewerage system that networks under the city streets.
Its what I imagine 10,000 tramps at a guffing competition would smell like. Just what you need when you’re eating your half-cooked 1/2 pounder burger from the grubby burger van in the open air….. tasty…..
lol
Very funny indeed.
Although i have to say, the Hamptons are rather nice in a lego land NEW BUILD type way.