I like to get some scratchies every now and then - it’s one of the major funding sources for museums and sports in the UK, so I see it as a little donation with a dopamine hit rather than an attempt at winning big!

OH god, in Coventry it’s all they talk about. But a tentative yes. It was flattened in WW2, but didn’t have the clout of London so it was rebuilt as the utter hell hole it is now. However, there was still a lot of industry there (mostly cars) until the Thatcher era. And then that went away as well. Now there’s two unis and that’s about it

The fact we have an idiom “sent to Coventry” meaning to deliberately ostracise someone should tell you all you need to know.

I went to uni in that city; there isn’t enough money in all the world to make me go back there. City of 300k people with over 3k homeless. Utter monstrosity of brutalist architecture (the university library is based on a panopticon prison, I kid you not). And the ring road! Taking your life in your hand just merging into it!

Absolutely insane amount of crime, with one of the highest rates of child sexual abuse in the country (for context, it’s crime index is about 20% higher than London’s). And I’ve never seen so many street walkers in my life! Plus they charge, I am not joking, £20 a go.

Loving all the Scots embracing the United Kingdom in this thread by describing England as a part of their country 😉

Nah, in the UK it’s the midlands. Coventry, Birmingham, Leicester, and Loughborough can all go in the bin.