What is the most rubbish county in England?

I felt that the "worst state" poll generated a lot of good discussion and I learned a lot of things about my own country that I never knew before.

they're all great imo

however, my southern brethren in hertfordshire, i think they have the least going for them

i reckon middlesex is still a county btw

somerset

Fuck, I just copied this out of wikipedia. Is Middlesex a particularly bad county?

no. it might not be a county. they're always buggering about with these things. it might be in "greater london" or something.

Herefordshire
Rutland
Staffordshire

what are these places like?

this is so hard, but lincolnshire is an early favourite to get my vote. but then again i haven't been there, just going on hearsay

Of the ones I've been to I'm voting Bucks. Feel guilty doing that though as it was seen through the eyes of someone being shown around by a drunk older brother at uni there.

yeah, wiki says it's not strictly a county no more, though given that it's a millennium old, people still use it informally. will check if "avon" still exists too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middlesex

Yes, I just read that it got split up into several of the surrounding counties and Greater London over a period of time. Also, I went with "Ceremonial Counties," of which there are 48, whereas there are 83 "Metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties"

herefordshire is truly lovely, i've been there quite a bit and have nothing but praise - the word 'bucolic' becomes it
rutland is small and quaint and is mostly made up of a lake so can't really be all that bad
staffs is part shropshire loveliness part west midlands industry and part peak-district uplandness, has my dad's university in it and a load of great canals

Like Essex won't win this in a landslide!

I thought Avon had become BANES (Bath, Avon + Northeast Somerset) but that's not on the list either and driving to Bristol I pass a few signs welcoming me to Avon, so I dunno what it is now. But I don't want to vote for it so it doesn't matter, I suppose.

My first reaction was Bedfordshire but it probably has nice bits that I don't know about.

Essex is so far from being the most rubbish county it isn't even funny

My nan lives in Essex and urgo I have fond memories of it.

somerset

― لوووووووووووووووووووول (lex pretend), Thursday, 4 March 2010 12:24 (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Based on waht, may I ask?

North Essex, Constable country, is some of the best and most idyllic scenery in the LAND. South Essex brings the human drama, North Essex brings the 'oh shit rolling hills, butterflies, beatific fields, Saxon churchyards, fuck me'

essex has really nice bits (clue: not near london)

the only thing i can remember about herefordshire is the claim that fred west's malfeasance should be seen in the context of the high rates of incest among agricultural labourers there

Bedfordshire is great because of the song "Up The Wooden Hills To Bedfordshire".

Come on, Essex is irredeemably shit. And I've *been* to the supposedly "nice" bits. But I might just be saying that because I was accidentally born there.

based on having lived in the fucking rural shithole for 8 years

xpp

yeah can we please not bias this against one's personal experiences of a county

So instead we're supposed to vote on non-personal biases of places we've never been to? Fuck that, hatred of counties is a deeply personal thing and should be kept pure in that way.

like, my ex is from herefordshire and we had a bad breakup but you won't find anything but praise from me about that place where they all talk like they're from The Archers

like i say, lincolnshire has struck me as being abysmal but what do i know

yeah can we please not bias this against one's personal experiences of a county

what, so uninformed prejudice about places we have no experience of is a better way of judging this?

i phrased that badly - yeah personal OBSERVATION is valid and desirable, but one's own bad experiences within a county should be regarded as separate to that county unless they're part of a universal malaise

Lincolnshire is actually very pretty in a bleak, windswept North Sea kind of way. The bit around The Wash is gorgeous!

Mind you, my experience of most counties is meandering around back roads trying to waste time to avoid getting to the next venue too early.

l0u1s jagg3r, thread cop

the only things i can remember of lincolnshire are 'the potatoes and the windmill and the shit'
and the claim of david cameron that his family own a few fields near scunthorpe, which transpired to be several thousand acres of the best farmland in the country

or just let people vote and discuss however they want?

dammit i just want people to consider all the options rather than be all 'oh i had a shit time in x therefore i'm voting for it' straight outta the gate

What about Surrey? What goes on there?

Fair enough, I had a shit time growing up in Worcester but I'm never going to vote Worcestershire as worst county.

xpost

you better bloody not ;)

I think that "I was born/grew up in..." is a bit more than "I had a shit time there once" and certainly entitles one to validly hate a place.

Essex is a notorious shithole and "there are some pretty bits in the far North" does not save it.

guessing i won't have time to learn how to use photoshop to make a straight outta (the) compton (that is about a five min drive from me) picture before it becomes an xpost.

lol xpost.

What about Surrey? What goes on there?

i have read defences of it, but i've been there and it is quite a lot like you might expect.

I could vote for Buckinghamshire fairly easily if not for Bletchley Park. Also the countryside there seems pretty enough, if dull and flat. I like to imagine just how pissed off the residents of twee Bletchley village were when Milton Keynes appeared right next door.

My possible votes for Beds and Bucks are real narcissism of small differences stuff since I grew up in Wiltshire which is also obviously in the "pleasant but really fucking dull countryside, biggest town is a shithole" category but I am more familiar with the smaller towns and villages and therefore have some positive memories of them

yeah, i'm pretty sure it's surrey.

btw if we're going by personal experience, one of the great times of my life was spent in a narrow-boat in worcestershire and the west midlands, plus i'm a worcs cricket club fan, so colonel poo has escaped admonishment :D

What about Surrey?

the most wooded county in Great Britain, with 22.4% coverage compared to a national average of 11.8%

with all of these im thinking of the countryside rather than the cities

id even k what the big city in wilts is. devises?

Swindon!

What about Surrey? What goes on there?

― Tom D (Tom D.), Thursday, 4 March 2010 12:42 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

All a bit middle class, nice scenery, has a nice horse racing ground, nice enough to give me a degree living crime-free and all just a bit pleasent. Nothing spectacular but not worth voting MOST RUBBISH.

swindon is a bit nightmarish despite xtc, salisbury's slightly posher but still not *great* iirc

surrey deserves a better name

it should be renamed clackmannanshire

Wiltshire has White Horses therefore it is OK.

All I know of Surry is "fuck off back to Surrey you posh home counties git!" which is what they shout at you in Essex if you have a posh accent. (Hertfordshire, thank you, not Surrey.)

btw i discovered yesterday evening on our map of britain kept by the toilet that surrey and bucks share a border for a couple of miles

the discovery made me incredibly excited

I liked the Isle of Wight on a visit. Bit of delapidated seaside stuff (plus some classic seaside Deco), pretty & lush countryside, ice cream, dramatic cliffs, abandoned military emplacements, shoddy theme parks, & a ton of slightly bizarre lit-history stuff - Swinburne's grave, a seafront shack where Turgenev stayed, etc. Would revisit.

Kent brilliant despite some shit commuter towns. That's how you do it, Essex, Surrey, Berkshire. <3 Broadstairs.

Kent has weird and wonderful nowhere zone of Dungeness

These Cornish Ginger Fairings need more investigation post haste.

home of england's worst filmmaker

xpost

Oh you bitch

Gotta admit the lads at the stag party I rented Blue for weren't very impressed tho.

trying to determine if any of these wacky bedfords sect are extant

sects

although that said it constitutes about 90% of my countryside experience so I probably would say that. but where else can you find a nuclear power-station on a nature reserve? a nature reserve on an island which was at one point the teen pregnancy capital of europe? historical ports with light railways going through them? innumerable oast houses?

i travelled all the way to london's fashionable east london to see a half-hour jarman film, 'imagining october'. idk why i do this, but i've seen p much every foot of film he ever shot. h8 jarman.

but where else can you find a nuclear power-station on a nature reserve?

dunwich iirc

xxp

Here are the Southcottians.

Mabel Barltrop (Octavia) was the last in this line, and thus it fell to her to receive the Divine Order that Bedford was to be the Lord's chosen centre for His Kingdom on earth.

Thus she was able to gather a group of believers who dedicated themselves to the preparation of His Kingdom. Various houses with adjoining gardens on Albany Road and Newnham Road were acquired throughout the 1920's and early 1930's which Octavia and her followers were able to prepare for His return to earth.

nobody dare vote for bedfordshire

Sry. Too late.

It always felt weirdly full of odd sects to me - walking from the station in Bedford you go past the Italian Pentecostal Church, & there's def a Spiritualist one.

And sry if I've offended any Italian Pentecostals.

Aren't the Transcendental Meditation lot in Bedfordshire somewhere too?

Was thinking of the Natural Law Party at Mentmore Towers, but they've since sold it (Eyes Wide Shut was filmed there, hey ho)

Leicestershire: I can take or leave, personally, but Leicester itself is fun, plus cheese, plus pork pies, so I wouldn't wanna vote for it or anything.

Leicester is also the home of Walkers Crisps, not sure if that makes it more or less voteworthy

walkers originals are some str8 bullshit unless we're talking worcester sauce or tomato ketchup flavour

No way, I think of West Sussex as being a lot more conservative (Worthing, Arundel, Haywards Heath, Chichester, all those wealthy areas), East Sussex at least is a little more left-leaning. As far as the geography goes, it's got all the stuff you mention, but also great big cliffs (Seven Sisters), huge marshy areas (the Pevensey and Pett levels), all the heathland of the Ashdown Forest, crazy stuff like Camber Sands... West Sussex is a bit samey in comparison.

I could go along with most of that, but I'd struggle to think of East Sussex as left-leaning. I really know central Sussex, tbh. West of Arundel and east of Pevensey are a bit of a mystery to me.

walkers tried to break ireland, imagine! home of tayto and they bring walkers to the party? fuck off lads while ye've legs ta carry ye i said to them

I'm a Leicester native & Walkers lover; but I spent every family holiday in Ireland & that is a joke that does not show fitting respect to the land of Tayto & King.

yeah and i mean king is a poor substitute but i mean no, walkers just no

lol @ how everytime we britishers talk about something non-sport related it ends up w/ crisps.

'we britishers' i'll allow, because i am an interloper in this thread tbf

If I've had too many Taytos sometimes King make a nice change. A stinking, salty palate cleanser.

irish crisp eating bitches

Srsly man Taytos are minging, gimme Walkers any day. The kids love taytos tho, think it's genetic.

cidona >>> taytos in terms of why the fuck can't they sell it here grocery items

I'd struggle to think of East Sussex as left-leaning

Oh, I only meant it relative to W.Sussex! Think it has a few more lib dems along with the tories. Then you've got pockets of craziness like Lewes and Forest Row.

We do have the gypsy-burning folk of Firle though.

thread approaching real talk status re cidona

sussexes not rly in consideration here

I was really hoping no-one was going to even notice Leicestershire and so I wouldn't be called upon to defend it's many and numerous charms (and gloss over the fox hunting and high percentage of BeeNP members). I love living here but I couldn't say it had any one thing that you wouldn't be able to find better in some other county. It's just got a lot of, for me, perfect countryside. Nothing very taxing, not too flat, very lush. Lots of nice little villages. Some decent pubs. It's not trying too hard (unlike me).

But as this...

I liked the Isle of Wight on a visit. Bit of delapidated seaside stuff (plus some classic seaside Deco), pretty & lush countryside, ice cream, dramatic cliffs, abandoned military emplacements, shoddy theme parks, & a ton of slightly bizarre lit-history stuff - Swinburne's grave, a seafront shack where Turgenev stayed, etc. Would revisit.

...is just about my definition of a perfect county, take no notice of anything I say.

A pedant writes - the shack in Ventnor replaced the house that Turgenev stayed in.

If it's a shack on the Isle of Wight you want it's this one.
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/205/461897632_bfe136e968_m.jpg

Imo it's clearly Berkshire its just out and out bullshit. Yorkshire is pretty decent, I think it has it's charms which I understand may not always be uh apparent.

In previous threads.
what is the most rubbish UK county?
Lot of anti- Leicestershire feeling, but more for Lincolnshire.

The worst of all counties
Lincolnshire take it in this one too I think. Although Herts gets a good seeing to, too.

Anybody who thinks Lincs is the worst county in the country has some pretty weird values imo.

Bedfordshire is great for food shopping, thanks to the fact that there's only about four English people still living there.

Anyway, Sussex.

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Monday, 19 September 2005 13:15 (4 years ago) Bookmark

looooooool public schools amirite

it is true that bedford is like 50% italian these days

More like 30% but it is amazingly diverse. Very good with bricks those Italians.

Berkshire's a bit of a funny one. Some really lovely countryside in the west and north, gorgeous villages by the Thames, especially Cookham, but then you have Bracknell and Wokingham which are really only there to make Reading look good.

I think I voted for Greater Manchester last night. Was that wrong?

its not really a "these days" things

xposts re italians

upt0eleven, you were perfectly wrong

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

lol u jealous

runoff?

Fuck an east coast

Anyone that voted for a county with an inch of coastline is simply the most disgusting of savages.