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Website slags off Langley as ‘chavtown’

David Edwards
28/10/2004

A BIG new poster has gone up at the entrance to Langley promising they are "changing Langley forever" with the housing market renewal programme.

But, on the negative side, Middleton, and particularly Langley, has this week been officially named as a "Chavtown" on the Internet and that's not really an accolade to be desired.

It's been reported in the national press this week that "chav" is the buzzword of the year - similar to words such as mods and rockers and teds in the past. According to the Oxford dictionary a chav is a young person, often without much education, who follows a particular fashion, such as wearing designer baseball caps which they still consider a status symbol. Other on-line dictionaries describe chavs as "non-educated delinquents" or "the burgeoning peasant underclass".

Now the authorative chavtowns website has added Middleton to the list of towns to acquire the distinction of being a hotbed of chavs, and its description has annoyed some Middletonians. The site says there was just one problem when they started to regenerate the town: "The council houses were just too close by - a haven and a mecca for the poverty stricken underclass who have made it their own: Langley estate.

"A no-go area for all but the Chaviest pikeys and witness to more stabbings, shootings and Ford Fiesta soupings than anywhere else in the North-West, bar Salford. The place is complete with its own drop-in centre - busy daily handing Methadone/morning after pill cocktails for all pre-pubescent chavettes. The streets are littered with needles, burn outs and dead staffy dogs".

And it says when they go down to the town centre it's Middleton Shopping Centre - the former Arndale - that is the magnet. And it warns: "In this, their natural habitat, keep your head down and move quickly, your non-Burberry outfit will mark you out as prey for the peasants bent on nicking your mobile; eye contact is a no-no, become the grey man and think stealth."

Former councillor Peter Dawson of Middleton Environment Forum said: "I am so proud of what is happening on Langley at the moment. Every time I drive through the estate I see the work going on that is making the estate such an in-place.

"When Manchester ran the estate they had to advertise in the national, and even the Scottish, press to try to attract new tenants. Today, people are queing up to live here, and I am angry that a website such as this is slagging off Langley worldwide."

The Langley-born managing director of SAS Security, David Ward, whose company provides security across the estate said: "Nowadays, because of positive policing and security patrols, the area is virtually trouble free.

"I just hope that people will contact the website and put it right before any damage is done and investment in the estate is endangered."