Opinion : High Wycombe achieves a rather unpalatable ‘first’…

High Wycombe has achieved a rather unpalatable ‘first’. In fact it’s a ‘first’ that no town would ever want.

A few days ago Wycombe became the first town in the UK where an acid attack took place that lead to a manslaughter conviction.

By George! What a dreadful thing to have associated with our town. Sadly it just about sums up modern day Wycombe.

Let’s face it, Wycombe is a criminals paradise. Drug dealing, prostitution, begging, drunkenness and anti-social behaviour are everyday occurrences in High Wycombe these days. Indeed you could say they are so common that they are regarded as ‘petty’ crimes nowadays and nobody bats an eyelid at them.

Once upon a time Wycombe was a quaint market town with a river flowing through that was famous for the chair making industry. Oh my, how that has changed over the years.

We’ve see it all in recent years, from international terror plots that lead to the banning of liquids on flights to acid attacks that result in the death of innocent people taking a rest on a bench in Frogmoor.

So how did we get to this situation?

In my opinion we arrived where we are today for several reasons. Firstly a failure of the powers that be to keep the town centre vibrant. What’s more there are too many fast food shops that open late into the night which attract the ‘wrong’ type of people into the town.

Then there is the dreadful way that the Frogmoor area has just been let go. It’s no more than a concrete wilderness with the filled in remnants of the bungled attempt to bring back a fountain to the area still visible as a reminder of the dilapidation and stagnation that has set in there.

Once known as the ‘Frogmoor Gardens’ the flower filled gardens have given way to a place where hoodlums meet for fights and drunks stagger around trying to extort money from anyone stupid enough to go there.

The sense of community has also disappeared from the residential areas of the town thanks to buy-to-let housing creating swathes of the town where people stay for a short time before moving on once the debt collectors, police or other enforcement agencies find out where they are currently staying.

Of course a dreadful lack of law enforcement must also have played a part in the state of Wycombe today. It seems that some crimes are ‘tolerated’, at least nothing appears to be being done to stamp them out. Once people know they can ‘get away’ with certain crimes they inevitably try more serious things to see if they can get away with them too and so the downward spiral in to social depravity begins.

Anyway, Wycombe is in the news again for all the wrong reasons. My good self doubts it will be the last time but yours truly fears what despicable crime will be perpetrated next in High Wycombe.

What do you think?

My blogs are published every Tuesday and Friday evening around 8.00pm here on the WycombeToday.com website.

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