h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

i'd just like to say that i agree with her comments completely and that some noticeable form of action should be taken.
i think that some areas of rhyl are decent but if the current progress of vandals carries on, then it will soon turn out to be like the other rough parts of rhyl- that is a terrible shame.
i think that this is a shame because of how well kept and nice rhyl did used to be like in the 60's and 70's, rhyl was quite a popular seaside ressort, a favoured place for holiday breaks- not any more.
rhyl should try and be preserved by the commiunity and the younger generation.

I remember Rhyl from childhood holidays, mainly. (Whatever else might be said, it was a kind of childhood wonderland if you were under ten) It was heartbreaking, in a funny sort of way, to revisit the place as an adult and see the way it's gone downhill.

Looking at the buildings on the seafront: so many of the old lodging houses and B&B's, closed, boarded up, decaying, or demolished. So many gaps in the seafront that it was like looking at a mouth full of bad teeth. Not so long ago EVERY ONE would have been full for every week in summer...

Some things are perhaps best left as happy childhood memories.

Coming back (I'm still AgProv, btw. After a dispute on another BBC board I got locked out under that name and had to generate a new ID. Maybe Ag was just too Prov for the mods!)

Thinking of the way places like Manchester and Liverpool and Wrexham Queens' Park (the "Caia". Ha!) are off-loading their problem cases and Rhyl is dozy enough to accept them. You wonder where people might go if they breach an ASBO, or lose entitlement to council housing in Manchester through behaving too badly even for Wythenshawe.

I can see some Housing Department person doing the hard-sell to an uberchav family from Benchill:

"We aren't entirely unsympathetic, Mrs Scum. OK, so your family's behaviour has been aso unspeakably atrocious that it's lost you a council house in Benchill. apparently your neighbours, the Jailbirds and the Dreggs, both complained about you. However, we are in contact with a council in North Wales and we can offer you a chance to make a brand new start at the seaside, isn't that nice, and Social Services can even help with your relocation expenses..."

(Housing Officer does a "YEEEE-HAH!" and leaps into the air clicking his heels for joy, having just got rid of another Somebody Else's Problem.)


But correct me if I'm wrong. You have a large and ill-educated and badly socialised family. Mainly to shift a problem along, you take them out of their city, let's say Manchester. In Manchester, there are many, many, Mc-jobs - OK, low wage, low skill, low status, but as they are now, can this family aspire to better? They should be encouraged, schooled, forced even, to take a Mc-job as an alternative to benefit to break them out of the claimant cycle. Who knows, re-socialise them with regular habits of work, they might want to move onto better, later.

so you send them to North Wales, an area that might have had full adult employment in the 1970's, but which following the decline of Courtalds, Shotton steelworks, Mostyn colliery, et c , has less and less with every passing year - there aren't even enough jobs for the Welsh!

Our problem family might also havew a problem with money management, so you put them in a seaside resort with loads of arcades and gambling dens. Brilliant. Compared to Manchester, public transport is crap and is there anywhere to go anyway? So Rhyl in January - they are trapped there.

Who dreamt this nightmare up?

Down the road in Conwy, there is a problem with a gang of English thugs known as "the Beckham Seven", because they all wear England football tops, beating people up for speaking Welsh in their own country. Bets on where these people came from? (Although I did hear that the days of the seven were going to be numbered as a lot of people were keen to bypass the Heddlu and take direct vengeance...not sure what came of this)