The post you are reporting:
Bumped into my neighbour in town just now and what she said was probably the most telling comment on the town I have ever heard.
"I can't wait till I get up there," she exclaimed. Was she moving to Whitfield or Guston, I wondered?" I mean heaven. When I'm dead. I went to Canterbury the other day and it was lovely. There's nothing here."
At first I felt depressed but as I reflected I became angry and so I am venting here. It is a national scandal that anyone should feel so bad about where they live that they would rather not be alive.
I blame for Dover's decline, in no particular order: British Coal/Department of Energy, World War 1 and 2, the Department of Transport, P&O, Dover District Council, 60s so-called town planning, the peddlers of the absurd destructive quasi-religion of Political Correctness/smug privileged holier-than-thou Guardianistas, governments of various colours, the privileged positon of Dover Harbour Board which prevents the town benefiting properly from the port, the selective education system which short changes 75 % of the town's kids/the ineptitude of South Kent College, the lack of vision and dynamism of those in charge of the town over the last 40 years, sheer market forces beyond anyone's control, SEEDA, the lily-livered adherance to Political Correctness of elements of the local press /the sensationalising of sensitive issues by same for a cheap circulation boost, an obsession with the past and historical anachronisms, hatchet jobs by elements of the national press, the snobbery/Schadenfreude of the rest of Britain (and especially neighbouring towns) that they have not got some of Dover's problems.
When I say that Dover shames the UK, that it is not a criticism of Dover so much as of the UK.
A learned friend once suggested only half-jokingly that we should turn our backs on Britain and join France. It is starting to seem like a good idea.
If Britain had merely let down Dover it would be a vast improvement on what has actually happened. I was going to write that it was the equivalent of a so-called 'happy slapping' - like a robbery carried out and filmed while the criminals laugh at the victims.
But in Dover's case it is not that good. At least the victims of happy slappings get sympathy from the wider community. Not so Dover. Our very howls of protest have been laughed at and used against us - in fact it is as if the whole town had been subjected en masse to a kind of mental abuse, Persecuted in fact. Dover has been turned into what sociologists would term an out-group by the rest of the UK. Anyone who doubts this should look at non-league football forums and see kind of abuse aimed at Dover.
I personally feel no loyalty whatsoever to this country any more beyond supporting our sports teams and would not fight for it in a war as a matter of principle.
I am also fed up with the rudeness of people in places like Canterbury, and Deal (especially the stuck-up self-satisfied DFLs descending on Deal) who feel justified in openly insulting anyone who comes from Dover. We're back to snobbery and Schadenfreude again. And good old English hypocrisy.
Dover fulfils the role of Britain's scapegoat. It is like the character of Goldstein in George Orwell's '1984' - an entity onto which a nation's disowned darkness is projected.
How is it that a town which possesses such world class icons as the White Cliffs, Dover Castle and the Port of Dover is not uppermost in the public consciousness for these things? If you carred out a nationwide free-association on Dover I would bet the main result would be none of the above.
And it would demonstrate the level to which the rest of the UK mean-mindedly projects its own disowned racism onto our town. Hypocritical, NIMBY England.
If there was an equivalent of a war crimes trial for crimes against society, there would be a few candidates in Dover's case, for sucking the hope out of people to such an extent that they would rather be dead.
