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.
