Time to map out a plan for Villa's future
- Says blogger Matthew Turvey
City ranks bottom in poll of 827 worldwide
Saturday 6th February 2010, 11:30AM GMT.
Wolverhampton has been ranked worst out of 827 cities worldwide by readers of a travel magazine – a second blow for the city in just a few weeks.
Despite being nominated in the Top City category of the Wanderlust Travel Awards, more than 2,000 readers named Wolverhampton as the least desirable city to visit.
Luang Prabang, in Laos, climbed to the number one spot for the third time with a 94 per cent satisfaction rating among voters. Just 20 per cent of voters were satisfied with Wolverhampton.
The results come as a second blow after travel guide Lonely Planet said it was the fifth worst city in the world, ranked alongside crime-ridden cities like Detroit.
Today it also emerged Wolverhampton is set to feature in the next Lonely Planet guide to Great Britain, after the travel bible said a writer could visit within the next six months.
And if they are impressed by the delights on offer, including St Peter’s Church, the internationally-renowned art gallery and lively night life, the city will be given its own section in the 2011 book.
Travel editor Tom Hall said: “Every place is judged on its merits and if the writer is impressed – which I’m assured they will be – it will be given space.”
Council leader Neville Patten today branded both surveys “a load of rubbish.”
He said: “It seems everyone is jumping on the Lonely Planet bandwagon.”
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A politician moaning about OTHER people jumping on bandwagon’s..how ironic.
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I have lived in wolverhampton for over 60 years and they are right, the place is a dump, you can’t park without some jobsworth trying to rip you off, you can’t walk down the high street without someone trying to sell you something or begging,there are no go areas, there are no police, where i live the police have to come i5 to 30 miles to answer a call, the police station shuts at 5:30 I have been burgled and had property stolen off the front of my house and cars damaged, the police were told who it was but said there was nothing they could do. but if you park in the wrong place they come up out of the ground, Yes the place is one of the worst citys in the world and getting worst by the year
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The best holiday I ever had was in Edinburgh, yet I was more likely to be robbed, accosted by druggies and worse than I have ever experienced here.
You need to get out more.
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I agree with this person i,ve lived in Wolverhampton for 43 years. Wolverhampton is a depressing place and if you go to the town most of the people are misrable, if you smile at them they don,t respond and the parking is the worst especially when the races and the footballs on. Your a prisoner in your own home. If you do venture out your sure to come across a hoodie or such.
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Rather than Councillor Patten branding both surveys rubbish, perhaps he should consider why Wolverhampton is being rated so lowly.
Over the past 15 years Wolverhampton has failed to take part in any of the boom economy.
You need only take a train ride into/out of Wolverhampton to see the continuing industrial decay. 50 years of neglect look pretty ugly.
How many projects has Wolverhampton stalled or failed on so far?
i54 Wobaston Road – a massive field off the M54 – currently unoccupied.
Summer Row – a delayed project starting in 2009 – to be finished in 2011. Still no movement. Too little, too late. Wolverhampton missed the boat.
Canalside Quarter – Southbank apartments are good, but nothing else. The old flour mill sold for £1 around 10 years ago – where were the contractual guarantees that the buyer would develop? Now burnt out and decaying. Mismanagement by the council.
Wolverhampton Bus Station – work just starting?
Wolverhampton Interchange – delayed again. Wolverampton has one of the most deprived ‘gateways’ of any city. Our station is a disgrace.
Low-level Station – redeveloped. Looks beautiful, but now a vacant building that needs to be protected from vandals.
Bilston Urban Village – still no sign of any building work. Is the funding in place? A massive expanse of disused land.
City Centre Improvements – a fountain and nice pavements. Looks nice until covered in gum.
Molineux Hotel – a successful regeneration. Shame about the ugly annexe on the side.
Victoria Hall – ugly and half empty. Most students at Wolves uni stay at home. The uni needs to climb the rankings tables to entice more students. Not drop themselves from them as they have done.
GKN site – good new houses. Bizarrely, the ugly GKN office building remains, giving it an undesirable image from the front.
Goodyear – another huge site doing nothing.
Wolves ‘triangle’ – at the Penn Road link to the ring road. The old cinema front sits, supported by scaffolding, next to the decaying Fox Hotel. An eyesore and another failed development.
Springfield Brewery – still sat half developed. Another eyesore on the journey in on the train.
All in all – a sad reflection on Wolverhampton council and on expensive quangos such as (dis)Advantage West Midlands.
What does Wolverhampton excel at? What growth industries are we attracting?
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Couldn’t agree more with these comments.
However, additions to this rather long list include:
Raglan street development
Royal Hospital development which doesn’t seem to be doing much.
Wolverhampton is a tired city which needs an injection of investment – sticking a half arsed fountain in a grotty square ruled by big issue sellers, tramps, goths and hoodies isn’t going to cut the mustard.
Wouldn’t be a bad thing if a bomb was dropped on some parts of the city, at least then some development would have to be done!
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Can anyone give me their honest assessment of Wolverhampton, stating it’s attributes, places of ‘great’ interest for tourists, places not to be missed etc.
I have lived here for over 60 years and basically I cannot think of anywhere that falls into one of those catagories. Maybe it is because I know most of them and they do not appeal to me any longer but what do others think?
PS:- in the text is mentioned the ‘internationally renowned Art Gallery’!
Using Google, the best comment I can find is ‘recommended’ and on a website detailing art galleries in the UK, Wolverhampton’s Art Gallery does not even receive a rating! – DOH!
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Doris,
I rate Wightwick manor as being fantastic. Beautiful gardens, a gorgeous manor house steeped in history, a lovely tea room and nice views over Castlecroft.
I also think Bantock Park is lovely – great gardens, football fields, a 9-hole pitch and putt and Bantock house – again with excellent history of the town/city to discover.
Add to that West Park – one of the best Victorian Parks in the country. Free tennis, football fields, boating lake, palm house etc. It’s gone a bit downhill due to its location in a declining area (Whitmore Reans).
Add to that areas like Penn, Tettenhall, Finchfield, Castlecroft, Aldersley which are quite nice neighbourhoods to walk around.
Also – I appreciate the canals to cycle or walk along. Especially around Aldersley junction and the railway walk up to Tettenhall and beyond.
Plenty of potential, but unfortunately Wolverhampton remains a very undynamic, underinvested, neglected, post-industrial town with a struggling local economy and high unemployment.
Labour haven’t done much to change that over the last 13 years – preferring to pump money into their core voter areas – i.e. the North East, Manchester, Liverpool, South Wales.
Marginal seats in the West Midlands tend to get neglected.
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Council leader Neville Patten if you got off you a**e and had a look around that run down city you might understand why.
I suppose it looks pretty good when you are chauffeured to your office every day then into you plush Ivory Tower paid for by the tax payers of Wolverhampton.
Get on the Bus or the train and WALK round the dirty city and you will understand why it has this reputation.
I got out because of people like you with closed minds.
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Wolverhampton and this country is a slum with Wolverhampton being top of the dung heap. Years of neglect and not listening to the common people have done this. Just look at Broad street and tell me who has listened. This country is ruined with no manufacturing left there will never be a recovery. If i ever get the chance i will emigrate with my family. We have all been let down by Labor.
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Yet again only the councillors with a vested self interest in spin and a few deluded people stick up for the hell hole which is Wolverhampton.
Leaving Wolverhampton was the best decision as a family we have ever made, the place is just spiralling into a den of hell.
It is also inaccurate for those deluded people to come out with comments like “Its the same all over the country” , no it is not, as someone who travels frequently all over the country Wolverhampton really is the pits and the complete delusion to accept its rubbish by residents is simply frightening, still good luck to you all!!!
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How many more times are you going to come on here telling us how clever you were to leave Wolverhampton?
Not that I necessarily disagree with your comments, but please, read your own LOCAL news.
If you have no interest in the city, why spend so much time on here moaning about it.
Me thinks thou doth protest too much!
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It is not in the worst 20 on the channel four website. But then again that is just for the UK.
Personally myself I love how green Wolverhampton is, you don’t have to go far to find a little green oasis. I especially like the area around Smestow Brook and Smestow Valley Nature Reserve, a walk along the canal anywhere in Wolverhampton can be a pleasure.
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Wolverhampton is a good place to come FROM!
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I have lived in Wolverhampton for 27 years, my life to date! And what ever i can do to get out of the place i do! Be it working abroad or on cruise ships!
The only reason i come back is to visit family!
The signs as you come into Wolverhampton should say,
“Welcome to the Ghetto of Wolverhampton!”
Horrible place!
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I emigrated to sunny California many years ago from Wolverhamption. The city is not a dump but as someone has pointed out, under invested. Of course, it depends on which side of the fence you are on. If you are a chauffered councillor, W’ton is the place to be. 1st problem with the city and England in general, get rid of asylum seekers. England is a very small speck of a country and definitely no world power of any sort, why it is part of the G-7 is a complete mystery. It influences nobody, and if the USA ever turns its back on it, it will get invaded by the middle east or eastern europe. England does not have the resources or even space to house these people, no offense to them. It’s an island barely half the size of California. It only has size because Scotland is geologically attached to it to the north and Wales to the west, neither of which want to be or likes to be under English rule or have association with it. Secondly, get tough on crime. Crime is definitely an issue in W’ton and surrounding areas. Stop government handouts. Get people to get off their behinds and work. Increase the legal drinking age, keep kids in school until age 18.
W’ton has potential, but definitely needs a re-shuffle in leadership. But it was my home for some years so I still have some pride in it.
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Wolverhampton has many problems but one problem it doesn’t have is that it will one day fall into the San Andreos fault.It’s always good to be given advice from someone who no longers lives here. The crime we have is nothing compared to LA or the USA
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The fact of the matter is that there are too many council estates in the region housing the low life who have no pride or personal standards. If they are capable of leaving cracked lavatory pans or cars on bricks in the front garden, are they really going to put their chewing gum or McDonald wrappers in a bin? Are they going to visit museums, art galleries or admire statues (except to spray paint) or fountains (except to urinate or discard rubbish in)
The decent people of Wolverhampton are outnumbered by these wasters. They pay income tax and council tax and receive virtually no service in return. All the money goes on drug rehabilitation, policing, vandalism cleanup, young slappers with children by several fathers and useless initiatives to make the pond dwellers better citizens.
I would advise anyone with decent standards looking for somewhere to live to ask the fundamental question “How many council estates exist in the rating area?”
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Wolverhampton is like Paris when you compare it to West Bromwich and surrounding areas.
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How recently have you walked the back streets of Paris?
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I only look at the E&S online to convince myself I did the right thing moving away. I drove back to visit family at Christmas, and as soon as I saw the outskirts of W-ton I knew I had done the right thing. I do miss the hills and the canals BUT I do not miss the beggars and down and outs.
Jane Martin
Norfolk
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i lived in bilston for 47 yrs, now ive moved to herefordshire where i feel much safer, no more gangs of yobs hanging around out side the house every night, that we sufferd year after year. police and councilers did nothing about it, yet i feel sad because bilston wolverhampton has been a big part of my life and like me, i bet many have seen it decline over the yrs, you wont see me back there in a hurry, ive had more than enough, and yes it does deserve its rating of being at the bottom
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Just having returned from a short break in the far reaches of Scandinavia where the problems we have are beginning to bite I find it somewhat comical to hear the bad mouthing of Wolverhampton.
The City is going through a metamorphosis and so far no-one has bothered to clean up the mess left behind the money grabbing industry that so blackened its image. It is not impossible to do this, however.
Why bleat about the view from railway lines? Every major city is ugly when viewed from the railway. Our railways were built primarily to service industry. Indeed the southern approach to High Level station is historically very interesting… and has the potential to be developed into a tourist attraction.
Everywhere on the extremities of the EU is finding itself in dire economic straits. It is the inevitable consequence of the centralised EU. Wton has the double hindrance of the recent experiment with pseudo regional local government which meant everyone in the West Midlands threw money into a large pot which was supplemented from Brussels and Westminster and then spent entirely on Birmingham. That is when Wolverhampton became a wasteland and since then it has partially recovered.
When you complain about this City ask what you have done to improve it. If you cannot identify anything then you have no right to complain.
There is a lot wrong. It remains, however, a historic place (under-rated) and large parts are extremely attractive. Much of the City has views across beautiful countryside.
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Lies, damned lies and statistics!
Bottom of 827 cities. A quick Google revealed there are over 3000 cities with populations greater than 100,000 in the World. This indicates that Wolverhampton is better than more than two thirds of places of similar population and city status.
What isn’t made clear from the “survey” is how many people rated Wolverhampton. E&S say it is 2000, but a look on the Wanderlust site didn’t show any of their stats, so I wonder where this figure came from? Also, it is just an average rating, normalised to a percentage, so we don’t know how significant this is in comparison to others on the list.
One other thing. Does anyone else think 837 is a nice round number for a category? Why not 500? or 1000? I think 837 was chosen because that is the position Wolverhampton finds itself in, and (assuming a “jumping on the bandwagon” conspiracy) the compilers of the list wanted Wolverhampton to be bottom.
The city does have its problems, and I agree with the posts above on that, but let’s not join the list of detractors. Put a petition on facebook, or somewhere online, listing the things we want fixed, and then send it to the council. Maybe they’ll start to listen if they realise people who live here still have pride in their city!
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I love the “Wolves is a dump” comments along with the “I’ve lived here for x years”.
If you don’t like it
a) move away
b) do something to improve it
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Davi comment 3 and replied to number 4 – I couldn’t have put it better myself. Most of the nicest places to visit are a taxi or bus ride out of the “city” centre which is an added cost to anyones trip. The canal and old railway are lovely walks but having run down both of them in both directions (and certainly not alone)you meet all sorts of youth gangs smoking dope and looking menacing. I noticed the other day that W-ton council had put the price of the parking up on the Mander Centre car park again to £2 for upto 2 hours, how does this encourage people to shop there, I went to Shrewsbury on Saturday and paid £3.90 for 24 hours and there is so much more to do there. The big question everyone wants an answer to is what is Wolverhampton Council going to do about the situation. Why don’t they put a free tour bus service on in the summer to promote some of these places?
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