Monday, Apr 12, 2010
No need to wait for a crash anymore
Yahoo: The cheapest street in Britain
If you want a bargain, then the cheapest street to buy a home in England or Wales is Fernhill in the Welsh region of Mountain Ash, where the average property costs just £28,600 . That's only a little above the UK's average wage, so represents a seriously cheap deal.
The street also topped this poll last year, though the value of homes there has actually increased over the past year from £24,640.
Posted by crash n burn @ 05:29 PM (785 views) Add Comment
9 Comments
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1. dill said...
I had to laugh at the bit about about crime figures. Before too long, there will hardly be a safe part of this country.
2. titaniccaptain said...
@Dill
I drove taxis in that area for 3 months and there was hardly any trouble what so ever.
Knives and guns are a rarity there.....but you will find a fight IF you go looking for it...same as most of South Wales.
To put it all into perspective....I used to pick up the bad family in that estate and yes they were scum but nothing you couldn't deal with....actually they tipped quite well as I recall.
I have an interesting stat actually.
Do you have any idea how many policemen are on duty in Mountain Ash/Fernhill on a Friday night?
Actual officers on the streets and patrolling the area......3
Merthyr Tydfil with a population of 70,000 in the borough there are roughly 8 Police officers patrolling the borough at night on the weekend.
So what does that say?
I was talking to a police officer friend of mine the other night and he told me that we are in sleepy hollow compared to the rest of the country but you will get your head kicked in if your looking for trouble.
It is an area that prides itself on being hard but without the knives and guns which are unfortunatly creeping into the area but we are at least 20 years behind the gang culture embedded in England.
Would I feel safe walking in Bath at night in certain areas?
No.
Is there anywhere in the South Wales Valleys I would be frightened to walk around in at night?
No.
Would I live in Fernhill/Mountain Ash?
No.
Would I live there before living in London?
YES.
The best and the worst things about living in the South Wales Valleys are the people.......They are friendly and you can walk into any pub in South Wales as a stranger and within half an hour you will have made at least 5 new friends.
Only trouble is they have a narrow cultural vision and tend to live within the same area all their lives with little experience of the outside world other than the international day in Cardiff for the rugby or to a nightclub in Swansea/Cardiff for a quick grind or in Ibiza doing exactly the same thing except by a swimming pool.
Such a shame because the old Welsh families I remember in the valleys as a lad were a proud and God fearing people where the only reason you couldn't leave your front door open is because your neighbour may try and clean your house when you popped out to the shops.
Should a house in Fernhill be up for sale for £28,000? Yes but then again so should almost every house in Britain.
I remember going to stay with my Grandfather in Colerne near Bath which is a damn fine are with huge price tags.....double that of where i live yet his neighbough was robbed two days before I arrived but where I live you can buy a house and leave your front door open and my neighbours are welcome to try and come and clean my house!
3. titaniccaptain said...
12 years ago you could buy a 3 bedroom cottage in the Brecon Beacons National Park for under 40k.......
You could buy an ex council house for under 17k.
How much have wages gone up in the past 12 years?
4. crash n burn said...
Morning TC. I read your posting with great interest last night.
I agree with you - Bath isn't the place to be anymore. I was there a few weeknds ago with my wife, we went out for a meal and couldn't find anywhere to park. Eventually after some considerable time and about 5 city tours later, I found a space outside a kebab shop. I pulled in thinking nothing of it but then saw a whole bunch of twelve year olds boozing up on beer. We had to dodge vomit on the streets which doesn't serve one's apetite well before going to a nice restaurant.
When we got back, I found some little scoundral clinging on to my wheel arch and vomitting. We had to step very carefully!
So no, it's not the place I remember and I agree with what you were saying above. Which is now why I prefer to live in London than in Bath. I just don't see this kind of anti-social behaviour at all. Having said that, I don't want my daughter going to one of the local schools - so the question is where next then? I'm getting the strong feeling that it will be abroad. This country is an empty shell, drained by the incumbent government.
5. nubbers said...
@4, Toronto is a nice place to live, if you can take the extreme weather. Its a large city, but people talk to each other in the street and the many parks. The outdoor swimming pools are free and much nicer than any pool I have ever been to here. Unfortunately they are also in bubble territory at the moment, so might want to leave purchasing a house for a few years.
6. titaniccaptain said...
Hi Crash n Burn
Talking of Schools, My daughter is just finishing off her G.C.S.E.s and we have been looking to move to Crickhowell which is a fantastic area for Schooling and crime is very very low bordering on non existent.
BUT.
My ex-sister in law who I get along with very well has said that the area is not all its cracked up to be.
She is a health visitor there and she says the problem with the area is not from the socially deprived but from the affluent. There is so much money in that area the children goring up there have no sense of value and its a bit like a playground for unruly children and adults.
There is greater moral degradation emerging from the wealthy who are irresponsibly raising their children to believe its alright to crash Daddy's car whilst drunk because he can buy you a new one and he can pay off any victim of your foolish behavior.
This sort of behavior has been romanticised as the rights of passage for the upper classes but personally it makes me sick.
I went to a public school myself and saw two types of toff.
The first was from old money and had been raised to know the value of what they had and respect for those who provided and sustained them in their lifestyles.....they were very down to Earth
The second was the middle England arrogant p***ks that give the English a worse name than a million football hooligans.
These parasites were often the children of middle class strivers who had attained their superficial goals via treading on as many of their fellow men as they possibly could and it is these people that now infest the once beautiful backwaters of our country.
Beautiful market towns like Crickhowell are now over run with Yummy Mummys in brand new 4x4s (Only used to go to drop the kids off at school) whilst their husbands spend their time with their secretaries performing sexual acts upon each other to alleviate the boredom of their superficial lives.
Every time I go to Crickhowell shopping I find there is a snobbery which was absent years ago when I grew up there as a kid.
On a good note the old ladies who were brought up their still speak Welsh to p**s off the snobs.......superb.
By the way I am not Welsh but I love them.
I have Welsh envy.
As for abroad I would agree that Canada seems to have the edge.
As I said in my previous comment, I hate the way that people just don't talk to each other any more in Britain either through paranoia or snobbery.
The last vestiges of community are found in the run down working class regions of Britain and not in middle England.
The village hall in these once noble market villages that are now glorified retirement villages for the rich once held the community together but these days they are the center for vicious cake making competitions.
The choral societies that once celebrated the Christian religion withing these villages have become soulless expressions where those with a guilty conscience reaching the end of lives staring into an abyss.
7. crash n burn said...
Hi again TC. That's quite a synopsis – your anger is quite palpable and similar to mine. And agreed old money is better than new money when we think of the likes of Kate Price… Although they can make quite entertaining viewing with their total and utter stupidity – I once watched “What Katie did next” – and she was fussing about a ghost in her house turning on the alarm to her sun bed. The problem is that people in this country idolize these daft celebs.
I used to once have a great respect for the general public and thought they were generally a fairly well informed bunch. But the fact that Labour only just trails in the poles proves me wrong. How can they trust a one eyed idiot who has consistently bu88ered up the country and wish for him to have another mandate to send us back to the stone age?
8. smugdog said...
TC, I love reading your tales, raw and down to earth.
Actually, I was in your neck of the woods a few weeks ago.
My youngest represents my partner’s country in gymnastics
and we stopped over at the Village Hotel in Fabien Way, Swansea.
There are some major regeneration projects on the go but the hard
and bracing valleys way of life is not far away.
I have a vision of you as an old Captain telling tales of old at his local.
9. titaniccaptain said...
@Smugdog
I am afraid the locals of my village despise me for hating rugby, football (actually all forms of sport especially cricket which I know you English love) and broadcasting my hatred during matches by telling them all how inbred they are so no one listens to me by choice yet I still inflict my misery, opinions and over inflated ego upon then regardless of their feelings.
Swansea has indeed been in regeneration for quite some years and I would not fear the valleys influence....as I said the valleys folk are harmless enough. I lived in The Mayals in Swansea for a few years and it was a fantastic area close to the sea and Cline Park which is beautiful.
Back to the valleys.
Its strange actually.....the one thing that gave towns like Merthyr Tydfil a bad reputation (Fighting) is the one thing that has saved it from the influence of Knives and guns because in the rough and ready who live in the valleys look down upon the cowardliness of anyone who uses a knife.