Holmfirth is a small town situated outside Huddersfield. It is ill served by transport links, but this potentially a good thing given the ‘people’ (and I use this term in the widest sense) who live here. If you manage to find a bus however, you might find yourself quite ill at ease with your fellow travellers. People have been known to talk quite loudly at the back of bus, ruining your enjoyment of  your Daily Telegraph and sometimes you can hear people playing music out of there phones with the most blatant disregard for their fellow passengers. But don’t expect the bus driver to do anything about it! They just seem to treat with mild amusment when you complain. I think here the law has just given up on Holmfirth.  The picture of the town during the day is a bleak one. The river is unkept, often you will see TWO plastic bags strew on banks. And this is a good day! Incidents of graffiti can be spotted in at least 3 or 4 places in the Town and surrounding area, and the authorities do little, with these eyesores often staying unremoved for days at time.  Weekend nights (and sometimes even the odd weekday!) are strewn with hooligans loitering outside the many establishments blatantly selling Alcohol. These are people of maybe aged 30-60 standing outside with a blatant disregard for street drinking laws. Often clearly intoxicated to point where they might even talk briefly to a stranger. All sense of limits in society just seem to have disappeared here.

But the worst thing is that this breakdown of society has been extensively covered in the media, yet nothing has been done. For years the BBC has been documenting the rural wasteland that is Holmfirth in the show ‘Last of the Summer Wine’. (Beginning at the title, which says everything about Holmfirth’s drugs problem). It documents the extensive contempt the citizens hold for the law. People often fishing without the appropriate licensing. Yet, faces aren’t even obscured because the perpetrators well know that Holmfirth is now an exclusion zone for the Fishing licence enforcement.   In 50 years time, people will finally realize how Holmfirth could have warned us of the impending breakdown of society. This is where it starts.

Now, Leeds. There’s so much talk about how much of a cosmopolitan city it is. How the city centre hosts so much dazzling architecture. How it is a melding pot of all sorts of cultures, world famous, a conglomerate of various lifestyles. In fact, a list came out a few years ago with the 50 Most Deprived Areas Of The UK on it, and Leeds was nowhere to be seen. Obviously the person who compiled that list has never set foot inside the city boundaries.

So, I thought instead of writing something similar to the usual Chavtowns entry which reads along the lines of “yeah this place is full of chavs and they all smoke and they drink and swear and wear jewelerry and have kids at 15 and buy clothes from Argos and oh my god it’s a HORRIBLE place!” I thought I’d divide the city of Leeds into four quadrants, and give a guide to each of them.

Quadrant 1 includes the city centre. The A660 student corridor stems out of it, passing through the “student ghetto” of Headingley, Hyde Park and West Park and when it reaches Lawnswood, suddenly explodes and expands. It basically ranges along the A6120 Ring Road from Horsforth in the West to Roundhay in the East, and up to the North city limits. This is the nicest part of Leeds. Many affluent neighbourhoods such as Cookridge, Chapel Allerton, Moortown, Alwoodley, Shadwell, Weetwood, Rawdon and Meanwood are included. Not without it’s faults, however. Because it’s the richest side of the city, Q1 does attract the scrotes who come up for the rich pickings from the less priveliged areas. Burglaly and mugging does occasionally happen here. And not just from council estate scrotes. You have the occasional grammar school boys who don tracksuits and use slang and take up smoking. “Ere bruv, got a cig”, they usually ask in their soft North Leeds accents. But these occurences are rare in Q1 and trouble isn’t rife in these sleepy suburbs.

Moving onto Quadrant two. It begins in the Inner City slums, Little London and Chapeltown, which geographically should be in Q1 but they have the character of a Q2 place and moves eastwards through Burmantofts, Richmond Hill, East End Park and Cross Green, before spreading out across the not-so-pleasant parts such as Gipton, Harehills, Halton and Swarcliffe, as well as Seacroft which is the largest council estate in Europe. These places are notorious for crime. Tracksuit clad scrotes and tarted up young women, a lot of the time with pushchairs, are found milling about. The A64 has a job centre, conveniently placed, and if you want a close examination of the species who dwell in the outback of Q2, feel free to walk inside and have a look at the gypsies, tramps and thieves who are native to this region. There are a few decent parts of Q2 such as Cross Gates, Whitkirk, Colton and the further out Garforth, but the streets at night of these places have been taken over by the cider swigging pondlife at night. Q2 is definitely the time that land forgot.

Moving further South, we have Quadrant 3. Sandwiched between the westbound M621 and the River Aire running ease, Q3 is of a similar ilk to Q2, except Q3 has no decent areas. If you come in from the City Centre, the first place you will end up in will likely be Beeston or Holbeck, two red brick terraced slums housing smackheads and immigrants, as well as those bombers who blew up the buses and trains in London, and themselves of course. Eastwards are the notorious Belle Isle and Middleton estates, or “Miggeh” as the locals of Q3 call it. All times of day you see beligerent youths roaming the street in these parts, looking ten men. The furthest South part of Q3 is Morley. If you ain’t local, and you’ve never had sexual intercourse with someone who is a family member, they won’t like you. Visiting places such as Morley Markets and the White Rose Centre will give you a taste of what kind of creatures dwell in darkest South Leeds. The only good thing I can think of is that Q3 hosts Elland Road, home of the greatest football team in the world, Leeds United FC. But then Hunslet Hawks are also here, with the most bitter fans in all sport.

Go up past the M621 from Q3 and you end up in Quadrant 4, which extends as far north as the A65. Very mixed part of Leeds. On the whole the areas are generally pleasant. Wortley, Rodley, Calverley, Kirkstall, Farnley and Burley all have a reasonable reputation. On the flipside, Q4 is home to some of the worst parts of Leeds. Bordering the city centre is Armley. If proof be needed that evolution hasn’t entirely occured, pay a visit. All kinds of sub-creatures wandering about Armley Town Street, smacked up grannies and delinquent teenagers. Home of HMP Armley, where most of it’s residents aspire to be. Further up the A647 you end up in Bramley. A place which presents itself as a historical village, when really it’s an amalmagation of some of the most wretched sink estates. The Broadleas, Fairfields, Raynvilles, Gamble Hills, Outgangs, Landseers, Ganners. A total freak show. And across the river is the Hawksworth estate, a place no one would dare to visit, day or night. On the furthest edge of Q4 you have Farsley and Pudsey, the two places I swear The League Of Gentlement took inspiration from. Visit either of these inbred towns and you’ll see what I mean. Q4 is the closest part of Leeds to Bradford, a place which is a whole different kettle of fish and beyond any redemption.

So, in summary, Q1 is brilliant, definitely the best part of Leeds where run-ins with chavs are less frequent than others. Q2 and Q3 are beyond hope, pay a visit to these two quadrants and you pay a visit to the land before time. Q4 is decent in parts but the bad parts, really are horrible.

“Leeds – The pride of Yorkshire” – The jury’s out on that one…

I agree with the opening posters view of Hull, it is a first class shithole and thats all it ever will be.
I was fortunate enough not to have been born there so I do know the difference between good and bad, the cause of the degeneration of that particular cesspit lies firmly with the so called fishermen of yesteryear when it was a bustling fishing port, the fishermen were ignorant oafs who knew no better and encouraged their offspring to follow in their footsteps with the females going into the fish factories, I mean, what did you need an education for if that was your aim in life? those same children are now the grandfathers of the uneducated scum that prowl the streets today, everything from the top down is rotten in Hull, to say that there are some good people there is like saying there were some good Nazis in Germany during the second world war.
Other places mentioned like Portsmouth, Rotherham and Middlesborough as being equall to Hull are way off the mark, I spent time in all of those places and can honestly say those people feel sorry for the “hully gullies” but only because they have never been there.
Those who try to defend Hull are the vermin that these posts are aimed at, it is a manky little hovel that the gene pool has forgotten and never likely to revisit, to call that scum retarded is a compliment.