I’m from a small town in the of Worcestershire called Redditch. Never heard of it? It’s got over 80 000 inhabitants, and one of the biggest indoor shopping centres in the country. It’s also bigger than Worcester, the county town, and is one of the first ‘new towns’ ever to be built. So why haven’t you heard of it? Because nothing or no one important originated there!
Here’s Redditch’s biggest claim to fame: Rik Mayall once went to school here. Others include it being Jacqui Smith’s (former Home Secretary) former constituency, a breeding place for all Mormons east of Utah and the world’s former biggest producer of needles.
Just to give you an idea of how sad this place is, here’s a link to Wikipedia’s article of Redditch in popular culture. See how ridiculously small that article was? Scroll down a little, and look at “Places of Interest”. Notice that? There are six places of interest in Redditch! Three of which aren’t worth even worth writing about!
If we leave off the whole “Redditch is boring and unimportant” part of the argument for a minute, there’s still plenty more to complain about. Arrow Vale Community High School, one of the local schools, in a recent inspection, turns out to have the third lowest grade average in the country! And don’t get me started on the chavs!
Taking a walk through the estates’ centres is a pretty scary experience – especially Church Hill, Winyates, Woodrow and Matchborough. The chavs sat at the bus stops or in front of the Costcutter’s will stop at nothing to make your day worse.
The night life is lousy and the word culture doesn’t appear in the typical Redditchite’s vocabulary. There’s no library and a cinema was only recently put in, since the old closed down some ten years ago. The only semi-decent nightclub, Fuse, is still pretty rough and full of drunk chavs.
The overall feel of the town is grim. No one ever seems all that happy, and the schools are s**te. If it isn’t chavs that you find on the estates, it’s old people and they can sometimes be scarier than the chavs.
In conclusion, Redditch is the mirror of many other new towns around the country: it’s grim, soulless, rough and smells of piss and old people. It’s no worse or no better than your average new town, but if you’ve ever lived in a new town, you’ll know that’s no compliment.
By: Jake
Very funny and true on many counts. Problem is we are as you said a ‘new town’ and thus the overspill mainly from Birmingham. It could be fair to say that the problem ended up in Redditch from a different place. Much like just about everywhere else on the Planet. The English arnt truly English neither are the welsh or the Scots etc.
What we would like to know is how we are going to stamp out this whirwind if s**te that appears to be consuming human race.
There are actually two libraries in Redditch; there have been for a while!! Town centre library has been there since 1886 albeit in a different building since 1974 and the library in Woodrow has been there since 1970. So there!
f**k this, Arrow Vale got top 2% grades in the country last year, and also, there is a library, in the town centre. Although everything about chavs is true..
All this dump consists of is pubs, an endless string of heart attack joints kfcs mcdonalds etc all naturally, populated by ignorant morons and badly dressed track suit bottom wearing chavs with white trainers (yes very original i know) add to the toxic mix – loud mouthed fat ugly chip eating troglodyte girls, with mixed race chavlettes wobbling along after them eating crisps or happy meals, and then you have the central area, and this is awash with filthy ****s congregating in skirts and sandals around a huge mosque and add to that scruffy heavy drinking cohorts of obese polish,my advice? naturally, avoid this cesspit like you would the plague.
If you think life is bad now just think what it will be like when all these babies grow up having less and less knowledge and culture to pass on each generation. They will just be s**t consumers and waste producers
this place is a dull soulsucking hell. suicide should be mandatory. it really is appalling. the ammount of prisons adds to the general grimness. the kingfisher centre is derelict.
the ammount of immigrants is increasing. yet despite all this a lot of the residents seem to have a superiority complex.
take my advice and leave the place well alone.
I live in Redditch and have worked at a youth project in Matchborough, it truly is an aweful place. The teenagers are really rude for the majority…around 90% of them! There does seem to be a disrespect for pretty much evryone and everything.
Nicely articulated argument Jake but there are a couple of inaccuracies in your piece I’d like to point out. Firstly, Redditch does have a library in town (quite a nice one to be fair which was recently refurbished) and another at Woodrow estate centre; secondly, Arrow Vale (my alma matter fifteen years ago) is only averagely crap in terms of results. Perhaps you misread county as country?
A bigger concern of mine is this tendency to dismiss all working class youths with a penchant for sportswear as troublesome ‘chavs’. In my experience, some are spiteful little s**tes but for the majority of them their only crime is to have grown up somewhere that isn’t posh. I guess I’d have been classed as one back in the 80s.
Oddly enough, I’d have thought that being dismissive of old people and enjoying generic commercial dance music (like that played at Fuse) would be two character failings so-called ‘chavs’ might be accused of…..