What a thoroughly depressing place..........

.....had the misfortune to visit Barnsley town centre this morning and what a dumpo mundo it is.

Not been for months but it may be years before I frequent it again after today.

Bad Points:-
1. Alhambra Centre - all sheeted off in places, dark, untidy and very unattractive.
2. Cheapside - aptly named shopping 'experience' full of run down old shops, cheapo shops etc etc
3. Market street (think its called that - leads from Yorkshire Bank upto old Hedonism club/pub. - again crappy pound shops, £1 Bakery (ffs-worse than Greggs)
4. Scruffy streets populated by a collection of scroats, smack heads freely wandering about and drunks sat outside Wetherspoons on their first drink / *** of the day (approx. 9.30am) - how can these people afford to smoke and drink all day everyday without working I wonder?
5. A thoroughly uninviting cesspit of a once vibrant town

Good Points:-
1. You don't have to frequent the **** hole to watch the Super Reds
2. It's better than Rovrum

My advice to any young uns about to leave school / college is....go find somewhere decent to work / live because you deserve better than this dump.

Hopefully the town will be revived in the next ten years before my bin lids leave education (at the earliest) but it sure is not going to be an easy task to revive that hole......at the moment they have more chance of reviving Jimmy Savile.

Yuk yuk yuk..... there is no point hoping this helps cos it does not.

N.B. You'll notice I havn't gone in to who is to blame..... I have my thoughts on this but i'll leave that for another fred.

 

Don't let the folk who comment on WAB hear you saying that. According to them Barnsley's fine as it is. It doesn't need '£££' spending on it trying to renovate it all. Waste off money!! New college site? We should be spending it on getting bins collected reyt! Chuffin thatcher

 

Best thing I ever did moving out to Tinglee town. Daughter rubber stamps that on a regular basis.


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You are upset because you fitted in perfectly

 

I spent a lovely couple of hours with the wife and kids in town last week. Most of it (almost all tbf) was in the arcade area where we went to the 8oz Burger restaurant, vinyl record shop, vintage clothes and furniture shop and then looked at new guitars in the music shop opposite the town hall. Not all bad. By a long way.

 

Dont be blaming them people who pass you and dont buy your mag.

 

It obviously suffers from misjudged and ill thought out planning in the past.

the town centre planners (if there are any!) need to work out what it wants Barnsley to be. quaint market town or big city shopping centre.... currently its neither

i would love to see the markets revived to past glories, the arcades celebrated and pushed as bastions of independent traders and local produce. If it means the area of shopping space is reduced but subsequently the quality improves then so be it.

It would be a massive undertaking to knock half of it down and start again but its almost at the stage where that may be the kindest thing to do

Tell all those who want to shop in generic populist stores such as next etc to do it on the internet or bunch them all together in the alambra.

 

The town has been in limbo because Sir Steve said ten years ago a load of it was getting rebuilt but it never happened even though every couple of years he would claim work would start soon.

It's like if one day you think, "I'm going to get a new shed soon", you probably won't be too bothered if your existing one develops a leaky roof or you crack a pain of glass, but then ten years later you've still got the old shed now almost completely falling to bits.

This seems to have been the mentality in the town centre - no real push to fill empty units and little demand anyway as a lot of them were supposedly going to be knocked down, which is why we've ended up with tacky temporary shops without proper signage that are only open for a few month. If you're a national chain you aren't going to pay for a shop fitting out if you're going to have to move out of it again in the near future.

As it's all turned out, a lot of what was supposed to be going is now staying.

I will say though, as depressing as Barnsley Town Centre can be, it's certainly not as bad as a lot of similar pedestrianised places I've been over the last couple of years.

 

No better or worse than many other places. Too much self loathing and inverted snobbery.


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Thank God we didn't have a credit crunch and the worst recession in living memory. Oh, hang on a minute....

 

I like living in Barnsley.

When I was at college a few years back & used to be on the bus every day & around town I used to be one of these that did nothing but criticise it but since I've started work & am now in a job I travel to different parts of the north of England & Barnsley isn't that bad in the grand scheme of things.

For me Rotherham, Castleford, Bradford, most of Sheffield & parts of Leeds are a lot worse than Barnsley.

There's plenty of chav's & rough folk in town but no more than other local towns & cities. Although there's plenty of Eastern European's in town these days it's nothing compared to Leeds, Sheffield, Wakey etc who seem over run with foreigners who don't speak our language.

I never feel uncomfortable or nervous when walking the streets in town. There's parts of Sheffield & Bradford I'd be terrified of walking.

 

If anyone can answer the eternal question of how those out of work can enjoy pints and fags all day I'll be extremely grateful.

And what all the foreigners are up to eg how maintaining their lifestyles

 

Annoys me that us who work at night get accused of being those who do not.

 

You don't drink all day every day though do you when not working?

And without being pompous you can spot those who aren't in work/employable

 

Correct, to many folk on here just want to decry the town. When the council do something theykoan about it, if the council dont do anything the same people fecking moan about it. They cant win! Simple answer is, if you want to go shopping atasouless mall, **** off to Meadowhall, but remember why Barnsley town centre is so poor, its because so many numpties will do anything to drag the town down!
Barnsley has its problems but it is no way any worse than many other places.

come on Barnsley !

 

Nobody drinks all day, mate that isjust stereotypical ***** !

come on Barnsley !

 

What a load of ********. You appear clueless to what is about to take place in the Town Centre.

Haven't you noticed that the Town Centre including the Alambra Centre is about to undergo a major re development.

That doesn't occur without places being closed down and boarded up.

What the flying £$%^&& is a scroat?

Maybe there were a few shift workers having a drink or even pensioners? The main trade at Spoons in Wombwell are pensioners in the mornings or afternoons.

The unemployed are not lepers and they may be having a drink using saved income or they may even have a legal income like an occupational pension. If you are so concerned why didn't you have the balls to ask them why they were outside drinking?

Slagging the Town off when it has been raped by the unelected Con Dem Government is about as fair as the cuts they have made Nationwide. Particularly to the poorer Northern areas like Barnsley.

lovely person*s like you really piss me off. F*** O** just that.

 

hope you had a good morning outside wetherspoons

how rude

good day sir

 

******.

I was out training this morning not drinking.

 

I went to wake with the wife and kids on Saturday and yet again ended up at trinity walks.
Take note town planners of Barnsley............... that my friends is how to do it, excellent atmos, nice restaurants and shops and just enough shops, all connected to old wake ie church etc...........nice.
Now can anyone tell me the difference between Barnsley and Wake councils please, as we seem to be of a similar size and therefore I would guess similar budgets.
Btw credit where its due I do like the town hall water fountains, do carry on!!