The Cities of the UK
The idea of a "city" in the UK is a bit more nebulous than it is in the US, because of the aforementioned overcrowding. Almost all the UK's cities have burst through their official boundaries and swallowed up the surrounding towns and villages, sometimes entire neighbouring cities as well. The official population figures for most British cities can be misleadingly small and as a result most Americans think they're fucking villages. For that reason, I'll use the UN's figures for "Urban Areas" to give you a more accurate picture of how big these places actually are. I'll compare them in size to US cities, but also in their general culture and atmosphere to give you more of an idea what these places are like. So, in descending order of size, the UK's top 12 cities are:
1 - London.
Population: 10 Million
The same population as: New York
But really more like: New York, Detroit and Los Angeles mashed together into one never-ending nightmare
Nickname for its inhabitants: Cockneys (East London only), Cunts (everywhere else).
London is one of the largest cities on the planet. It's bigger than anything in the EU and bigger than anything in Europe altogether apart from Moscow. London sits in the south-east corner of the country like a massive super-dense black hole (this isn't just a figure of speech, London is so heavy that it's causing the south-east to sink and the north-west to rise by about a mm each year). London sucks in money, politics, culture, happiness, hopes, dreams and most of all people, who go there to seek fame and fortune and find only an insane cost of living and out-of-control violent crime. If it exists, you can find it in London and you probably can't afford it. London's property prices start at Silicon Valley levels and just go up from there. Most of its population live in its endless, sprawling suburbs and the centre is inhabited by a mixture of the global super-rich, penniless immigrants living six to a room in literal sheds illegally converted by shady Pakistani landlords, and the lucky few who have tenured subsidised public housing next door to billion-dollar skyscrapers.
The reasons for these insane prices are immigrants. But not the immigrants you're probably thinking of. In the early 90's, Boris Yeltsin was far too drunk to prevent assorted criminals from stripping Russia of all its valuables. And where was that dirty money laundered? In the London property market. What began as a Russian funny money operation soon extended to various ultra-rich Chinese and Arab "businessmen" taking their loot to the UK to not only clean it, but to invest in what was rapidly becoming the biggest property bubble on Earth, which continues to this day three decades later. Whole streets are bought up by avaricious Arab Sheiks trying to get as much money as possible out of their home countries before the oil money runs out and/or the peasantry rise up and overthrow them. They often don't bother renting them out, as having sitting tenants makes selling them on awkward and the capital gains on these places dwarf what rental income they would get. Then the other immigrants arrived - the British. For decades, young adults would graduate and move to London in search of fame and fortune, but instead find debt, overcrowding and despair. And then get burgled.
London's insane prices don't just extend to housing. If you go to a pub in London and order a beer, it will cost you more than the Australian gap year student handing it to you earns in an hour. Given that most British beer is watered-down piss, you will have to remortgage your house if you want to actually get drunk. So a lot of Londoners don't bother. You can get enough weed to get "well proper mashed innit" for an entire week for the cost of a single round of drinks in the typical London pub. That is one of the many reasons London is so crime-ridden, as the drug gangs run the place with an iron fist. London is nothing if not diverse, so the subsequent drive-by shootings and flick-knife bloodbaths will be carried out by any number of Jamaican Yardies, Russian Mafiosos, African warlords, Irish terrorists, Somalis, Albanians, Romanians, Pakistanis, and of course the local cockney Firms who reacted to the increased competition the way they react to literally anything, by picking up their "shoo'ahs" in order to "fackin' sort 'em aaaht". Think of it like a Coca Cola commercial directed by John Woo.
London is one of the most unfriendly cities on the planet. Nobody knows their neighbour's names, and making eye contact with someone is tantamount to trying to start a fight with them. It is especially important not to make eye contact on the "Tube", London's ancient and crumbling underground metro system, which combines Japanese levels of overcrowding with Venezuelan levels of reliability. I once heard a tube driver announce to his passengers: "Please take your rubbish home with you. Despite being round, metal and smelling like a landfill, this is in fact a train, not a bin. Thank you."
London's Police force is run by the hilariously inept Cressida Dick, the unelected and unaccountable head of the Metropolitan Police who became famous for leading a unit who chased an innocent Brazilian electrician half way across London and shot him five times in the face because they thought he was a Pakistani terrorist. She lied to the commission of enquiry, and, as is so often the case with British functionaries, was rewarded with promotion and a knighthood. This year alone she sent her lads in to violently end a peaceful women's vigil protesting yet another murder committed by one of her own officers, and was found to have obstructed an investigation into the murder of a journalist who was investigating Police corruption. If you think that any of this might threaten her job security in any way, you don't understand Britain.
2 - Manchester
Population: 2.5 Million
The same population as: Chicago
But really more like: Philadelphia
Nickname for its inhabitants: Mancs
Manchester is like London's little brother - jealous, desperate to be cool, but barely even noticed by the object of its envy and hatred. The city centre itself is rather uninteresting. The locals insist it's a cool and happening place, but struggle to explain exactly why, especially since the city's music scene died after the 1990s after the "Baggy" scene ended and Oasis became just another bunch of dysfunctional, violent cokeheads that you could find anywhere in the place on a Friday night. The BBC forcibly moved half its staff out of London to the notoriously run-down Salford area of the city in the idiotically-named "MediaCityUK" building in 2013, resulting in most of its best staff preferring to leave to its rivals than be uprooted 300 miles to a place that makes Mogadishu look safe, and they were replaced with dangerhair Media Studies genderblobs who were more interested in power than integrity, explaining why the BBC is in the state it now is.
Manchester is surrounded by a belt of miserable, dirt-poor Lancashire towns that are notable for ethnic ghettoes, Pakistani rape gangs and being one incident away from full-on race war. In fact the only reason that hasn't happened is that everyone is too strung out on heroin to do much fighting. For some reason, most of these towns begin with "B", and have football teams that used to be good but are now either shit or have gone out of business entirely. Bury, Burnley, Blackburn*, Bolton and Blackpool form the "B Squad", though you could be in any of them or any of Oldham, Rochdale, Stockport, Stalybridge, Warrington or any other of a dozen other places and not be able to identify what place you are actually in. Maybe you could ask the junkie holding a knife to your throat.
*Fun Blackburn Fact: the local District Council used to be called "Blackburn and Darwen" but the inhabitants of the identikit Lancashire shithole of Darwen whined about getting second billing, so the Council spent millions of pounds to rename the place to the thoroughly jarring and stupid "Blackburn with Darwen" rather than, you know, actually improve its living conditions in any way.
3 - Birmingham
Population: 2.5 Million
The same population as: Houston
But really more like: Chicago
Nickname for its inhabitants: Brummies
Manchester may be shit, but it has a kind of manic energy to it (probably all the MDMA). Birmingham is just as big, dirty, dangerous and lacking in any merit as Manchester, but it's also breathtakingly dull. Even the local accent (once voted the least sexually appealing in the UK) has an air of cynical, bored resignation. Nothing interesting has happened in Birmingham since the 1970s, unless you find labour disputes and people getting pushed into canals to be fascinating. Ask a Brummie what the highlight of the city is, and they will inevitably say "The Bull Ring", which is a fucking shopping mall. It's not even a very good shopping mall.
Birmingham is dirty, ugly and sleazy. Its city centre is full of barely-diguised knocking shops and sweat-stained strip clubs. It's also horrifically polluted, despite any real industry having closed down decades ago. Things to include catching STDs and getting shot. Birmingham may be a quarter of London's size, but it crams in enough gun crime for a small South American country, as various immigrant drug gangs vie for the right to sell crack from the boots (trunks) of their stolen BMWs.
4 - Leeds/Bradford
Population: 1.8 Million
The same population as: Phoenix
But really more like: Karachi
Nickname for its inhabitants: Mohammed
Chew that Khat, arm that C4 and slaughter that goat, it's time to talk about Yorkshire! Leeds and Bradford are two once noble cities that have sprawled into each other. Leeds is slightly bigger and on the eastern side. It's an ugly, confusing, unplanned mess of a city and the biggest in the UK without any kind of tram, tube, metro or other rapid transit system, and consequently is choked with traffic. Its ugly grey tower blocks are slowly turning brown with pollution and the city sprawls out over the surrounding hills like vomit on a rockery. If you ask a local what makes Leeds special you will be told it has a branch of the posh department store Harvey Nichols. Yes, whilst the people of Birmingham are inexplicably proud of their shopping mall, Leeds manages to be even more pathetic by being proud of just one shop.
But to the west, looming out of the Pennine Hills as if they were the Tora Bora mountains, is Bradford. Bradford is like those shit Lancashire "B Squad" dead-towns turned up to 11. The religious and racial ghettoes of Bradford are the worst in the UK, and the simmering racial resentment, as the natives and the massive Pakistani immigrant population stack up their mutual grudges until every few years the dam bursts in sometimes days of race rioting. The Police and local government are too frightened, indoctrinated, intimidated and infiltrated to do anything about this. Bradford has bred more Islamist terrorists anywhere outside London and bits of its famous sons may be found smeared over walls and ceilings from Paris to Baghdad.
Absolutely Haram.
5 - Glasgow
Population: 1 Million
The same population as: Austin
But really more like: Pittsburgh
Nickname for its inhabitants: Glaswegians, Weegies
Glasgow beats even London as the most unfriendly city in the UK. They hate outsiders almost as much as they hate each other, for you see Glasgow is a city divided by religion. In every pub and on every street corner, the locals engage in vigorous theological debate over such important matters as transubstantiation, the status of the Holy Trinity, the validity of Henry VIII's second marriage and the relative merits of different translations of the Bible. These debates may appear to the uneducated outsider as riots, stabbings, football hooliganism and terrorism, but those people just don't understand the unique way Glaswegians talk to each other. Come to think of it, nobody understands how Glaswegians talk to each other because the local dialect is incomprehensible to literally anyone outside the city and it has never been uttered by anyone who was sober.
Aside from sectarian strife, Glasgow features tower blocks, heroin, and tower blocks full of heroin. Glasgow was the venue for the notorious "Ice Cream Wars", whereby there were so many ice cream vans selling heroin in the city that they engaged in vicious turf wars, up to and including a string of murders, for whom nobody was ever convicted because everyone was too terrified to testify. Every now and again some naive soul would buy an ice cream van just to sell ice cream to children, and be extremely surprised to find angry men in balaclavas waving shotguns at them.
Edinburgh to the east is Scotland's capital. It is very similar to Glasgow except it's smaller and has a pretty castle you can look at while someone pickpockets you. Which is nice I suppose.
6 - Liverpool
Population: 900,000
The same population as: Charlotte
But really more like: Boston
Nickname for its inhabitants: Scousers, Liverpudlians
I have said that Liverpool is like Boston. In many ways this is extremely accurate. It is full of people who claim to be Irish who couldn't even find Ireland on a map, is the only majority Catholic city in the country, and the local pastimes include drinking too much and taking sport too seriously. Its inhabitants are also fiercely proud of it for reasons that nobody else can understand. But Boston is also famous as a seat of learning, and Liverpool is not. Liverpool is a city of violence, crime and corruption. (OK it's still a lot like Boston).
Liverpool's culture veers between cloying sentimentality and vicious, merciless violence. There are a lot of famous Liverpudlians, none of them live there - they don't like Liverpool "that" much, but they will turn up in the press to whine every time someone dares criticise the shithole city they fled decades before. The city's airport is named after John Lennon, because it was the first place he went as soon as he got any money. Liverpool also loves crime. Only Scousers could come up with a concept like the "Scally", a pre-teen petty criminal who lies and steals - and Liverpool is full of these little vermin, fully encouraged by their parents, who then grow up into hardened criminals. Liverpool's sizeable Irish Traveller population surely has nothing to do with this at all.
Liverpool is by far the most left-wing city in the UK. In the 1980s a man called Derek Hatton and a group of Trotskyists calling themselves the Militant Tendency took over the local Labour party and ran it as their own personal feifdom until they bankrupted the city and were disqualified from office amid allegations of corruption. But you'll be glad to know this is in the past, as earlier this year the proudly left-wing Labour mayor was arrested for corruption, with the government using emergency powers to take control of the city's failing and bankrupt City Council directly. Also arrested for corruption at the same time was his deputy, a man named ... Derek Hatton. Huh.
7 - Portsmouth/Southampton
Population: 800,000
The same population as: Seattle
But really more like: Norfolk VA
Nickname for its inhabitants: None
I disagree with the UN that these two places are really one, but they're worth talking about and they're similar in many ways. They're both troubled port cities - Portsmouth is the Royal Navy's biggest dockyard and Southampton a major container port. Like many port cities, they're hellish. Southampton has the highest rate of heroin addiction and teenage pregnancy in the country, even beating places like Glasgow and Leeds. Its soulless Council estates house teenage addict mothers and their interchangeable shiftless boyfriends. Portsmouth is your typical naval town, which is to say it is full of drunk, violent sailors on shore leave and the many prostitutes and absurdly dangerous pubs that cater to them. Both cities smell of seaweed and piss.
Whilst Glasgow had its "Ice Cream Wars", Portsmouth had its "Kebab Wars", whereby assorted Turks with links to organised crime feuded with each other over the right to sell congealed meat products to vomiting sailors out of stinking mobile kebab vans. They weren't even selling any drugs, just the right to give sailors artery obstructions. Embarrassing.
8 - Newcastle
Population: 750,000
The same population as: Denver
But really more like: Cleveland
Nickname for its inhabitants: Geordies
Massive pot belly. Hairy chest. No shirt. Scruffy facial hair. Shit, faded tattoos. Bellowing football chants outside the pub at 3am.
Those are Geordie women. The men are like that, but more bald.
Newcastle is England's attempt at making its very own Glasgow, and I have to say it has done a fine job. A typical night out in Newcastle involves drinking the local "Nukie Brown" (Newcastle Brown Ale, which to its credit is one of the few British beers that tastes of anything) down the pub, starting a fight with someone who you think might have looked at you funny, getting thrown out, buying a kebab from a Turkish migrant who can barely disguise his contempt for you, vomiting into a bin, passing out and waking up in a Police cell. Also like Glasgow, it has also developed its own utterly incomprehensible local accent, which is fun because the government decided to house many of its call centres there and I'd literally have less trouble trying to talk to an Indian who learned English from watching the Teletubbies than I would trying to talk to a Geordie about my taxes.
Whilst the shallow consumerists of Birmingham and Leeds are proud of their retail opportunities, Geordies are above that kind of thing and instead are really proud of their bridge, which looks a bit like the Sydney harbour bridge except much smaller and more shit. Also it's in Newcastle, which kinda robs it of any cultural significance.
9 - Nottingham
Population: 700,000
The same population as: Boston
But really more like: Minneapolis
Nickname for its inhabitants: Whatever they ask you to call them while waving a gun in your face
Nottingham: Celebrating 800 years of armed robbery.
True to its traditions, Nottingham sure loves its weapons. It has been the most violent city in England for a very long time, beating even places like Liverpool and Portsmouth for the honour. The city centre is OK, but to get there you have to travel through its suburbs, then you have to get out again the same way. Good luck. One South African doctor working in the local hospital said he saw fewer gunshot wounds when he was working in Soweto.
Nottingham is also full of nutcases. If you're brave enough to take the tram or bus to the centre, there is a very good chance you will be accosted by someone who wants to tell you all about the Jews, Jesus, How the Jews killed Jesus, how Jesus was a Jew, or who will just vomit into your lap. For Jesus, you understand.
Also the River Trent floods the place every year. You might think that might make the place a bit cleaner, but you haven't smelled the River Trent.
10 - Sheffield
Population: 650,000
The same population as: Memphis
But really more like: Erie PA
Nickname for its inhabitants: None, it's not interesting enough.
Sheffield is a steelmaking city where nobody has made any steel in 40 years. It is a place without purpose, containing very little of note at all other than being a lot bigger than you expect. It's not a patch on London, or even Leeds in terms of its population but it just seems to sprawl on forever, coating the hills and valleys with mile after mile of Sheffield. Its high elevation in the Pennine hills means it is a bleak, windswept place, prone to being cut off by blizzards in the winter. I've been there several times and I genuinely couldn't tell you anything about it other than it has a lot of car parks and the road network is such an incomprehensible tangle that my satnav basically gave up and said "your guess is as good as mine, frankly". Grim.
11 - Bristol
Population: 600,000
The same population as: Louisville
But really more like: Seattle
Nickname for its inhabitants: Bristolians
The South-West of England is one of the more bearable parts of the UK. The climate is warm, it has nice beaches and a good standard of living. Even though the typical inhabitant of the West Country (as it is known) has less teeth than fingers and speaks in an incomprehensible pirate drawl (the "aarrr" pirate accent is based on the West Country accent because so many pirates, and sailors in general, were from its many ports back in the day) and the roads are choked with caravans and RVs driven by people called Derek from Birmingham, it's generally OK. You'll even have your car stolen by white people for a change.
But sitting in the West Country like a big, steaming shit in a wedding cake, is Bristol. Once the home of the world's greatest engineer in IK Brunel and the gateway to the Empire, it is now home to squatters, Communists and fat dangerhairs of indeterminate gender. The generally easy-going South-Western way is replaced with the kind of taking permanent offence at everything and violent race riots on behalf of other ethnic groups that many Americans will be more than familiar with. They take particular joy in throwing statues of prominent Bristolian historical figures into the harbour while the Police watch and do nothing.
Bristol is riddled with smug hipsters, and only Bristol could have spawned Banksy, jumped-up graffiti vandal and darling of shallow liberal media types who think that "war bad" is some kind of deep and original idea. He's also Robert del Naja, keyboard player from local "Trip-Hop" band Massive Attack, but apparently that's a secret so forget I said that.
12 - Belfast
Population: 600,000
The same population as: Milwaukee
But really more like: The deepest pits of Hell
Nickname for its inhabitants: Nobody has survived there long enough to find out
Fucking hell, Belfast. At least the other cities on this list look like cities. Belfast looks like something out of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games, except with a lower life expectancy and more mutants wandering around. If you thought Glasgow was religiously divided, at least the Weegies didn't build literal walls between their rival communities so that they didn't have to look at each other. The "troubles" may be officially over, but the heavily armed gangs that were involved merely shifted their focus to more regular crime instead - protection rackets, drug smuggling, bank robbery, the usual. And every now and again they blow someone up anyway just to keep everyone on their toes.
I'm not going to go into Northern Ireland's caveman politics in this post, but suffice it to say that everyone in Belfast has a grudge against at least one religious group and aims to provoke the other as much as possible so that everyone involved can throw petrol bombs at each other. The city, like the rest of Northern Ireland, is pretty much ungovernable and nobody even tries. The gangs keep order in their own communities and the Police hide inside fortified stations and curse the fickle fates that brought them to what may well be the most impossible and thankless job in the country.
Belfast is also the whitest city in the UK, 97% according to the last census. Even immigrants have standards it seems, and even the most hardline ex-Isis militants who survived the worst that Saddam, Assad and Putin could throw at them think that Belfast is too hazardous to set foot in.
Also it rains. A lot.
