Best city in the UK?
25 November 2018, 09:45 PM
#1
Scooby Regular
Thread Starter
Best city in the UK?
Amazed at how our cities have been transformed. Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham ( my nearest one), Liverpool to name a few. All utterly fantastic transformations over last ten fifteen years
brilliant
Still get starry eyed when I go to London though. Still think its number one . Different world that place. Somewhere bit special
Mind you not had a night in Newcastle yet and that's got to be the place with the accent that says - we got it best- love that accent.lol
brilliantStill get starry eyed when I go to London though. Still think its number one . Different world that place. Somewhere bit special
Mind you not had a night in Newcastle yet and that's got to be the place with the accent that says - we got it best- love that accent.lol
25 November 2018, 11:31 PM
#2
It’s good to see regeneration but really its at least ten years behind Spain’s cities, and despite this UK cities are still left wanting for road/rail infrastructure improvement and really lack a holistic view with regeneration...Spain got a lot of its new infrastructure ten years ago and did it as part and parcel of city regeneration.
I’m can be 25miles from Alicante, I can drive there and park up in 30mins and cost me about 3euros for the best part of a day. Alternately I can drive 15mins to the uni, park up for free and take the tram in for €1.50
Meanwhile back in Blighty I’m 10 miles out of Brum and it takes 40mins to get there and park if I’m lucky, that was before all the Broad street chaos. Cost of parking about £10 for best part of the day (not all day; full day is stupid money). Train is impossible to park and ride as all the local stations have no parking capacity so much so that all local residential streets are double yellowed or need permits. Bus takes an eternity; same clogged roads but stopping every 30seconds to pickup/drop off.
Plus if I want to go to the airport I can’t get a direct train to new street as they stopped them 20 odd years ago due ‘lack of capacity at New street’..it only took 20mins from Cradley, now its 35mins and the time walking from Moor street or Snow hill in the p1ssing rain with suitcases on what should be a simple platform change (which you could do back in the day)...You’d think that when they built “Grand Central” they’d have sorted the railways out, no they just plonked a tarty new shopping centre on top of the ancient railways underneath. Nobody thought about folk travelling to or from Britain’s ‘second city’
HS2 airport link won’t fix that either as you will still have to walk to Curzon street instead...in all weathers. Those lovely artist’s impressions showing folk meandering around on a lovely sunny day -yeah right! Then there’s the airport itself; Massively over capacity and crying out for expansion (whilst Heathrow gets the limelight) nowhere to sit in the departure hall when it’s busy ( unless you want to buy food/drink -even then it can be a struggle), massive immigration queues should you land at the same time as a A380 or 747, and NCP taking the p1ss by charging £2 to just to drop off...Alicante is free..I wouldn’t mind if I could get to the airport quickly via public transport without getting soaked (which you could do in the 1990’s). Birmingham International station has also been plastered with Red Route Double lines everywhere with only two bays for drop offs...constantly being loitered by Uber drivers.
I pity any sorry visitor who has to put up with this farce. Our cities could be a lot more accommodating to vistors trying to visit them, no doubt it contributes to the so called death of the High Street...I’m not going to travel into Brum to visit Richer Sounds when it’s impossible to carry any of their large goods on public transport and the authorities are hell bent on banning cars.
I’m can be 25miles from Alicante, I can drive there and park up in 30mins and cost me about 3euros for the best part of a day. Alternately I can drive 15mins to the uni, park up for free and take the tram in for €1.50
Meanwhile back in Blighty I’m 10 miles out of Brum and it takes 40mins to get there and park if I’m lucky, that was before all the Broad street chaos. Cost of parking about £10 for best part of the day (not all day; full day is stupid money). Train is impossible to park and ride as all the local stations have no parking capacity so much so that all local residential streets are double yellowed or need permits. Bus takes an eternity; same clogged roads but stopping every 30seconds to pickup/drop off.
Plus if I want to go to the airport I can’t get a direct train to new street as they stopped them 20 odd years ago due ‘lack of capacity at New street’..it only took 20mins from Cradley, now its 35mins and the time walking from Moor street or Snow hill in the p1ssing rain with suitcases on what should be a simple platform change (which you could do back in the day)...You’d think that when they built “Grand Central” they’d have sorted the railways out, no they just plonked a tarty new shopping centre on top of the ancient railways underneath. Nobody thought about folk travelling to or from Britain’s ‘second city’
HS2 airport link won’t fix that either as you will still have to walk to Curzon street instead...in all weathers. Those lovely artist’s impressions showing folk meandering around on a lovely sunny day -yeah right! Then there’s the airport itself; Massively over capacity and crying out for expansion (whilst Heathrow gets the limelight) nowhere to sit in the departure hall when it’s busy ( unless you want to buy food/drink -even then it can be a struggle), massive immigration queues should you land at the same time as a A380 or 747, and NCP taking the p1ss by charging £2 to just to drop off...Alicante is free..I wouldn’t mind if I could get to the airport quickly via public transport without getting soaked (which you could do in the 1990’s). Birmingham International station has also been plastered with Red Route Double lines everywhere with only two bays for drop offs...constantly being loitered by Uber drivers.I pity any sorry visitor who has to put up with this farce. Our cities could be a lot more accommodating to vistors trying to visit them, no doubt it contributes to the so called death of the High Street...I’m not going to travel into Brum to visit Richer Sounds when it’s impossible to carry any of their large goods on public transport and the authorities are hell bent on banning cars.
26 November 2018, 09:47 AM
#7
Scooby Senior
Interestingly, a lot of that regeneration, particularly in Liverpool, has been funded by the EU.
Sadly the UK government and local councils are not willing to invest in regeneration or renovation, instead they rely on private investors to do the job, but private investors are only willing to invest where there is a commercial benefit, so investments are limited to small areas of bigger cities and very commercially focused rather than community focused.
Manchester airport is abysmal though. Whenever I fly into that airport it makes me think what a terrible first impression visitors to the UK have. Since they introduced the zones separating arriving and departing passengers its like a maze of tiny corridors. Everything looks old, cheap and poorly maintained. There is a horrible tacky duty free that looks like an afterthought desperately trying to scrounge every penny out of the passengers. At least one of the lifts to the car park is always broken and they take forever to arrive by which time there is a huge crowd waiting which will never fit into the lift. Now they moved the car hire to somewhere near Salford, you have to wait in the rain for a bus, with one tiny bus shelter that fits a total of 2 people with luggage for a filthy old bus that takes forever to arrive. As long as you don't arrive out of hours, its now actually quicker and cheaper to take the train to Piccadilly and use the car rental at the train station - the trains are of course filthy though, but at least more frequent than the hire car bus!
Sadly the UK government and local councils are not willing to invest in regeneration or renovation, instead they rely on private investors to do the job, but private investors are only willing to invest where there is a commercial benefit, so investments are limited to small areas of bigger cities and very commercially focused rather than community focused.
Manchester airport is abysmal though. Whenever I fly into that airport it makes me think what a terrible first impression visitors to the UK have. Since they introduced the zones separating arriving and departing passengers its like a maze of tiny corridors. Everything looks old, cheap and poorly maintained. There is a horrible tacky duty free that looks like an afterthought desperately trying to scrounge every penny out of the passengers. At least one of the lifts to the car park is always broken and they take forever to arrive by which time there is a huge crowd waiting which will never fit into the lift. Now they moved the car hire to somewhere near Salford, you have to wait in the rain for a bus, with one tiny bus shelter that fits a total of 2 people with luggage for a filthy old bus that takes forever to arrive. As long as you don't arrive out of hours, its now actually quicker and cheaper to take the train to Piccadilly and use the car rental at the train station - the trains are of course filthy though, but at least more frequent than the hire car bus!
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26 November 2018, 06:11 PM
#11
i recently went to birmingham to see slayer @ the birmingham arena and was very impressed,there was loads of helpful staff around and the arena had everything we needed (food/drink etc). me and my friend bought standing tickets as we were planning to have a bash around in the mosh pit but she has done her back in and ive got a bad infection in my leg so we went to the customer service desk to see what they could do (wasnt expecting alot to be honest) but fair play to the women who served us she organised seating for us and got somebody to take us to our seats which were very close to the stage at no extra cost. all in all it was a fab night apart from the drive there as there are some major roadworks going on. i worked on the doors in brum many years ago and it wasnt a very nice place to be at night time so i was happy to see quite a big change.
me and a group of work pals always go leeds every year to see europes strongest man and i will be honest im not that impressed with leeds, we go to the 1st direct arena which is quite good but other than that i dont like it there.
we recently went to portsmouth for a 4 day weekend and im sorry to say.............what a complete ****-hole. other than the war memorial and the dock yard museums it was a complete dump. if it wasnt for the fact that my friends were on a train to get there i would have turned around and gone home.
me and a group of work pals always go leeds every year to see europes strongest man and i will be honest im not that impressed with leeds, we go to the 1st direct arena which is quite good but other than that i dont like it there.
we recently went to portsmouth for a 4 day weekend and im sorry to say.............what a complete ****-hole. other than the war memorial and the dock yard museums it was a complete dump. if it wasnt for the fact that my friends were on a train to get there i would have turned around and gone home.
04 December 2018, 05:25 PM
#25
St David's in West Wales, great roads, stunning scenery, surfing, walking, quiet places, empty beaches and not half as much traffic as Cornwall either. Also the smallest City in the UK.
Cardiff as leaped forward in the last 20 years. A train right to the city centre, stadium and pubs. Or a bit more trendy down Cardiff Bay.
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