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    What's the roughest place in England?

    I read an interview about a bloke playing in Swedish club AIK. A massive Millwall fan, he is. Two things he said:
    AIK is the closest you can come to play for an English club, referring to the fans, so you can imagine what he thinks fans should be like, and the other was him banging on about what a rough place Peckingham was, where he came from.

    A fun bit, I must admit, was him telling the story of when he was a delivery boy. Him and a colleague were sent to Buckingham Palace with a telegram, something to do with Elton John and Diana's death. Ones inside the palace, while sat waiting, he exclaimed to his mate:
    I bet no one's sung Millwall song here, and the begun singing "No one likes us"

    So, what with this Peckingham? What's the roughest place in England? Logic tells me that where the most notorious football fans are, you have the roughest suburbs. Or?

    It would be great if you could remember that not all of us are from England, so blurting out a name without reference to a city and some brief motivation will just be a name.

    #2
    What's the roughest place in England?

    So, what with this Peckingham?
    A good question.

    I think he means Peckham.

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      #3
      What's the roughest place in England?

      You sure your mate didn't mean "Peckham"? It's in London, south of the river and is (I think) the borough in which Millwall are located. It's not genteel, but it would be a stretch to call it the hardest neighbourhood in England or anything.

      edit: gah!

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        #4
        What's the roughest place in England?

        I think I might have turned Peckham into a poor man's Buckingham, hence Peckingham.

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          #5
          What's the roughest place in England?

          You'd be in good company. Didn't Ossie Ardilles used to talk about his love for Tottingham?

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            #6
            What's the roughest place in England?

            My mother assures me that Peckham is now known as Peckham Village, in an effort to make the place seem more up-market. This may be sour grapes from her, who lived in the area shortly before Del Boy turned up on our screens and apparently made the place fashionable.

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              #7
              What's the roughest place in England?

              What we need is Danny Dyer to guide us around Britain's nawtee-est estates.

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                #8
                What's the roughest place in England?

                The only area I ever made a point of avoiding in London was Canning Town.

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                  #9
                  What's the roughest place in England?

                  Ones inside the palace, while sat waiting, he exclaimed to his mate:
                  I bet no one's sung Millwall's song here, and they began singing "No one likes us"
                  It's well-established that the dear old Queen Mum, Gawd Rest Her Soul, loved everything about the East End, and would often sneak out of Clarence House at night, disguised as a Co-op till girl, so she could go up the East End and go and join in (well, more often than not start) a good gin-fuelled knees-up around an old Joanna in a run-down pub.

                  It's inconceivable that she wouldn't have insisting on belting out, on occasions, "No-one Likes Us", or "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles", for example at a banquet to celebrate the successful conclusion of a UK-Tanzania trade negotiation, before laughing uproariously, farting and then falling back to sleep.

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                    #10
                    What's the roughest place in England?

                    Peckham is a bit lively, in my opinion. Well, my experiences of walking down Asylum Road at 1 in the morning at weekends are always horrific.

                    I'd suggest West Croydon too, and parts of North London - Edmonton. This is all based on personal experiences though, as places that traditionally had bad reputations (like Brixton, parts of East London) were okay when I've been there.

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                      #11
                      What's the roughest place in England?

                      I lived in Canning Town for a bit. The bus shelter got smashed a day after it was fixed. It probably stands out from other areas because it's ungentrified, but it's probably not much worse than eg Camden.

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                        #12
                        What's the roughest place in England?

                        Brixton Tube station has the highest concentration of mentallists anywhere in the world. Though the area as a whole isn't bad.

                        This is predictably London-centric, this conversation. I'd say there are far rougher places in smaller towns and cities, where outsiders almost never venture and "Common People"-esque slumming-it 20-somethings wouldn't even have heard of.

                        The roughest town in Britain I've been to is Merthyr Tydfil, by some distance.

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                          #13
                          What's the roughest place in England?

                          The odd thing is that the roughest places I've been were also the friendliest: Port Talbot & Redcar.

                          In both cases, people were coming up for a chat & being really nice, whilst complete bloodthirsty mayhem was kicking off all around us.

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                            #14
                            What's the roughest place in England?

                            What people were saying on the Northampton thread made that sound particularly bad.

                            It's life on and around the rough estates in any of these areas that is the worst, I think. That's where people who are even slightly nutty/hard start to think of it as 'their manah', that they rule the place, and that anyone who isn't their (nutty) mate is their enemy.

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                              #15
                              What's the roughest place in England?

                              Well, Middlesbrough types like me would be wary of going to Redker on a night out - it's not so much Redcar people as all the hillbillies from East Cleveland who go out there - Loftus, Brotton, Liverton Mines, funny places.

                              It is the one horse towns that are the worst - I spent an evening in Annfield Plain, Co Durham a few months back & it made my hair curl.

                              Middlesbrough is still the type of place where you see a couple rowing in the street, a lad goes over to tell the guy to calm down etc. & their lass starts to batter the Poor Samaritan.

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                                #16
                                What's the roughest place in England?

                                None of your JJB-bedecked, tattooed primary school drop-outs would last five minutes on the scarred rural battlefield that is Clayton-le-Woods, I can tell you. Only last Sunday afternoon there was a lengthy debate at the bar in the village pub about the respective merits of private owners or governments running banks that almost ended in voices being raised, and opinions being disregarded.

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                                  #17
                                  What's the roughest place in England?

                                  Is it safe to assume that where the roughest football fans are to be found, are among the roughest places in England, or?

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                                    #18
                                    What's the roughest place in England?

                                    Middlesbrough is still the type of place where you see a couple rowing in the street
                                    They do that in Canada, too.

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                                      #19
                                      What's the roughest place in England?

                                      I haven't travelled at all, so my experience (of such places) is limited. Thus, I have 'scratched record syndrome' about the few places I have experienced. Obviously, the one I always mention on this type of thread is Aldershot. It's the only place I've ever been to where I've walked past a pitched battle between two gangs in a side street in the town centre at about 3pm on a Saturday afternoon, with shoppers just carrying on walking past the melee. I walked behind the back line of one of the gangs and one of them looked at me, smiled, said 'Awright?' and then carried on lobbing bottles and suchlike. Weird and scary.

                                      I agree that it's often the small places that are the scariest in terms of making you feel the most threatened, simply because the people who live there and think they're hard necessarily suffer from 'big fish in a small pond' syndrome. They wouldn't last five minutes elsewhere in the country.

                                      My two ex-girlfriends each warned me that their hometowns - Hull and Blackpool - were pretty rough, before we first went drinking in each of them. However, I found them each to be okay, really: alot of women in slip-dresses and heels in mid-winter and gangs of blokes in pastel shirts that had obviously come straight out of the packet - not even ironed, like. (A strange phenomenon, that.)

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                                        #20
                                        What's the roughest place in England?

                                        I think there are places which are rough in daylight (generally, though not exclusively, housing estates), and places which only become rough at night (town centres).

                                        I'd volunteer several large chunks of Merseyside in the former category (Norris Green, Dingle, Edge Hill, Dovecot, parts of Kirkdale), and Barrow-in-Furness in the latter category.

                                        Whilst respecting E10s nomination of Merthyr, I believe the Welsh valley estate of Penrhys to be potentially worse (although I've not been through it for a couple of years, it's true). In the 80s it was where they rehoused all the worst tenants from Merthyr and the surrounding valleys.....

                                        I don't believe there's a direct correlation meaning shit towns = psycho football fans though.

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                                          #21
                                          What's the roughest place in England?

                                          Working in Archway (North London, ganj) over the summer, I saw three separate fights on the street in one day on my lunch break. But it was generally okay, and right on the edge of some seriously nice areas.

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                                            #22
                                            What's the roughest place in England?

                                            Abu Al Torotoro wrote:
                                            Working in Archway (North London, ganj) over the summer, I saw three separate fights on the street in one day on my lunch break. But it was generally okay, and right on the edge of some seriously nice areas
                                            London N19? That was probably me, Hof and Wyatt dissing some crossword clues.

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                                              #23
                                              What's the roughest place in England?

                                              I haven't got very much out-of-London experience on this subject, so I'll vote for Stratford, Bermondsey, Walworth and Custom House as pretty unpleasant places to visit. Hackney wasn't great either and I seem to recall that its murder rate was the highest in the country a few years ago.

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                                                #24
                                                What's the roughest place in England?

                                                Stoke-on-Trent.

                                                Specifically, Hanley.

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                                                  #25
                                                  What's the roughest place in England?

                                                  I can well believe Clive about Aldershot; it's just the kind of place that really gets up a head of steam, anomie-wise.

                                                  In a similar though not identical way, Hastings must be in with a shout here. St Leonards and parts like that, anyway. My mate Nige, who teaches there, says there are kids in some parts of Hastings who've never seen the sea.

                                                  Now, Ganja won't instantly appreciate how striking that is; do a quick google-map, mate...

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