Anglia, Belle Isle, Leeds, April 26th 1991.

Anglia, Belle Isle, Leeds, April 26th 1991.
Originally uploaded by Eleventh Earl of Mar.

I've added this picture to the Rubbish Britain and the Things That make Britain Great groups because it's a picture of a typical English council estate.

It's not just that council estates are often shitty places to live and often full of shitty people (not always, I admit). It's also that they look pretty much the same no matter where you are in England - you could wake up in a council estate after having being abducted by aliens and then dumped back on Earth, and you would have absolutely no idea which town you were in, because, as i said, all council estates look the same.

But even worse than these damning enough reasons for inclusion in the aforementioned groups is the fact that the fucking dirt filthy Tories sold off council housing in the eighties, thus largely creating the homelessnes problem and encouraging the fuck you culture that Britain enjoys today. In a way, there is common ground beween the rich Mercedes driving cigar chomping smal business man and the horrible rat boy stereo stealing chav - they're united by a complete lack of respect for their fellow man.

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This was my first car - a 1966 Anglia. I passed my test earlier that week and then drove up the M1 with a large gentleman called Mike as my passenger, partly because he wanted a lift, but mostly because I was scared of driving so far so soon. Mike lived in Nottingham, and I dropped him off, then drove round and round Nottingham for ninety minutes unti lI found my way back to the motorway.

The exhaust broke when I was in Leeds, so the car sounded like a tank driving around.

I didn't havea child seat or seat belts in the back of the car. Every time i braked, Ben would slide off the vinyl seats and onto the floor.

After my parents seperated my ma was reduced to penury, and had to take a council house in f*cking Belle Isle, depicted here. Mum went to work at St.James' hospital as ward clerk until she retired in 1996.

At least she was on the edge of Belle Isle, and faced out on to this green, which was something. She was burgled three times. I could barely walk from the bus stop to my mum's house without being called a 'fookin' 'ippy c*nt', and that was a policeman!

So, a choice,select neighbourhood. You could tell which people had bought their council houses, because they would immediately become pebble dashed, and have gnomes and wishing wells in their gardens, or they would paint the downstairs exterior a slightly different colour from the next door neighbours' house.