Welcome to Leeds-it’s full of human vermin and it fucking stinks

Over the Bank holiday I had the misfortune to visit Leeds City centre for a short shopping trip. It’s been some time since I last did this and I was struck by how bloody awful the city is. It’s been a good ten years since Leeds tried to market itself as a modern, trendy exciting city (do you remember “Come to the place that’s going to be the place to be” slogan? I do-in fact it still makes me laugh). A decade later and it’s still basically just another decrepit northern mill town with a dingy tiny city centre, profoundly unexciting architecture and a distinctly unpleasant smell.

This isn’t helped by the general standard of hygiene of many of its residents. I’m fairly sure, just from my informal observations over the weekend that in terms of Washing Machine purchases and Soap consumption we are lagging behind the rest of Europe (even France).

A casual visitor to the city could easily be forgiven for thinking that most residents of Leeds are feral, weasely types that smell of old sweat and stale Lambert and Butler smoke and that most of them choose to wear tracksuit bottoms that look like they have been shat in several times, and everyone over the age of 40 has awful grey skin and very few teeth. One gets the impression they subsist from benefit cheque to benefit cheque of a diet of McCains Savoury pancakes, Cheap lager and cigarettes, Gregg’s pasties and grinding resentment.

Also visitors would very probably believe that at least 1 in every 10 people is on (or at least should be on) some kind of mental health register, as it evident that a large proportion of the population is (probably due to inbreeding) clearly just not fucking wired up correctly (e.g. their behaviour includes shouting at windows, walking sideways etc).

No, I don’t work for the Leeds City Council Public Relations department, although you’d be forgiven for thinking that…