Ah, Middleton. The mixed aroma of weed, exhaust fumes and run-off fumes from the chemical factory, mixed with burning tyres, fills the air. Rosy-cheeked youths amuse themselves by stealing your motorbikes/mopeds and then burning them out in nearby parks, or using them to rob people. And look, over there – why it’s Sarah/Tiffany/Kylie and her five children! They’re all in pyjamas at the time centre, and the children are running free, bothering passers by and eating things off the ground while Sarah sits, eyes glued to her phone while she has a ***, one hand resting on the baby bump. Periodically she looks up and warns her offspring that if they don’t knock it off, she may find herself forced to knock them into next week.
If that sounds good to you, Middleton is the place to be. Also you’re a complete idiot.
A Hole with a ‘Spoons
Let’s start with the basics. Middleton is the place divided between three councils (Oldham, Manchester and Rochdale), which nearly voted UKIP in a by-election back in 2014 (0.8% margin to Labour). It’s a sh*thole. The shopping centre is a mess that doesn’t appear to have been renovated for forty years. Local youths congregate on the corner outside the big Tesco. The vast majority of the pubs have now closed, following years of stabbings and drug offences.
In fact pretty much the only place still standing is the Wetherspoons, where the local gammon hang out and rant about how life was better in the 1950s and they should bring back *******, and how they voted for Brexit to ‘get all the immigrants out’, by which they mean ‘get rid of the muslims’, which is ridiculous but try telling them that.
Not Traditional Working Class
The vast majority – the overwhelming majority – of the community is working class, but rather than your traditional values of the working class (like, I don’t know, working), most people here leave school and head straight onto the dole, and make cash on the side dealing drugs, stealing **** from the slightly posher people in Alkrington, and generally behaving like proper ner’do’wells. When pressed as to why they don’t have a job, the inevitable answer is ‘there aren’t any’ or ‘the immigrants stole them all while simultaneously claiming our benefits and stealing our pensions’. While a lack of jobs was an issue about five years ago, it isn’t now. The real answer is laziness and the fact that it would cut into the time they could spend wrecking other people’s **** and spending other people’s money.
‘Roided Up
The only time the (blokes in particular) aren’t lazy round here is when it comes to hitting the gym. You have to assume that ******* use is rampant, because no one’s muscles should be that size unless you’re training 18 times a day and eating your own bodyweight in rice and chicken every four hours. I’m all for fitness, but here it’s taken to an obsessive quality all of its own. They also think they’re really hard, but that’s mostly because their naturally thick skulls protect them from knockout blows. We can only hope that the constant fighting that ensues in local boozers due to the roid rage will eventually thin the herd. Natural selection at work.
The Posh Bit
The fancy bit of Middleton is Alkrington. Living here is expensive, but also will result in your home being broken into roughly every other day. The worst bit of Middleton is Langley, which is where I live. Here, no one tries to nick your stuff because they know you don’t have any. The shops keep their booze behind perspex screens and the chippy or the park is where the youth congregate of an evening. If you go to Bowlee Park after dark, expect to be assaulted either by someone’s untrained German Shepherd which is both a) aggressive and b) off-lead, or by a bunch of kids on stolen motorbikes and mopeds.
Buy In, Never Leave
There has been an influx of new residents in the Langley area, who bought homes here without doing their research, and are now ****** and can’t sell them. To those people I say… tough. Should’ve done your research. Middleton is a remote place, you can only get to it by bus (and it takes forever and costs an arm and a leg) – I presume this is to attempt to stop the populace getting out, which I understand. Eventually it is getting the Metrolink. This is slated for around 2040, by which point I expect Manchester Council to have come up with a decent excuse for not doing it.
In short, Middleton is absolutely atrocious. It’s a hole, and the people who live here manage to make it even worse. Avoid it like the plague.
