Nothing To Do

At home with Jason (left) and Nathan. Photo by Bruno Bayley.

On the Falinge estate in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, over 75 percent of the residents of working age are on benefits. Many newspapers were up in arms about this, so we thought we would ask the few locals who would let us southern fairies into their homes what was going on. It turns out it’s often easier and more profitable to get a free flat and live on benefits and gambling than it is to work. On top of that, the estate is crammed with heroin zombies, dogs the size of lions, and homeless alcoholics who spill into it from the remand centre nearby.

Vice: Did you see the newspaper articles a while back about your estate being the benefits blackspot of the British Isles?

Nathan [surname withheld]:

On the Falinge, you have a load of refugees who can’t work even if they want to and a load of alchoholics and smackheads who can’t either. It’s not like 90 percent of the estate are on benefits because they want to be.

Jason [surname withheld]:

Yeah. Some fuckhead said it was worse than Iraq. I don’t see many people wandering around with AK-47s, do you? See many bombs about?

What are the main problems round here?

Nathan:

Drinking problems, drug abuse, it’s full of smackheads and that. Rochdale is dogshit.

Jason:

There’s no work either.

So why are there no jobs?

Jason:

The work-seekers’ office is full of immigrants. I don’t blame the factories for taking on immigrants. If they employ English people they will work for three months then sack it off. You employ an immigrant, they will work their fucking arse off for you.

Nathan:

They have a better work ethic. They graft hard. They haven’t got a community here, so work becomes their community.

Are drugs a problem for people your age?

Jason:

With the younger lot it’s mainly the drinking that gets them. Heroin is more popular with the older people. The towers over at Seven Sisters [the neighbouring estate] are crawling with addicts.

Nathan:

We know a load of kids who drink around here, out on the stairs, using them like a fucking toilet. That’s why they stink of piss.

Do the addicts cause you much trouble?

Nathan:

Sometimes they go out robbing and that. You see them all waiting in the mornings rushing around trying to get their fix for the day, then they go indoors and stay there until the next morning.

Jason:

You can tell them a mile off, skin like the walls in here.

What about the Salvation Army centre next door?

Nathan:

All that lot are the idiots who got chucked out of other Sally Army places, then they come here and meet all the others and come into the estate and cause trouble. They are the worst of the worst from all over the place. They end up here.

So you two both sign on?

Jason:

Yeah. I have just been put on hardship. I got fired from the factory where I was making springs for car engines. I am down to £25 a week now.

Nathan:

A few of our mates have jobs. They get out of here as quick as they can. I was in the army for two and a half years, but I wasn’t that into it.

So if you can’t get a job, what do you actually do on a day-to-day basis?

Jason:

We gamble.

Nathan:

Roulette machines, horses, dogs. The rest of the time we sit in the estate pub drinking orange juice, waiting for weekends. Then we drink the money we have left.

So it’s Tuesday now. You got your dole money yesterday, right?

Nathan:

Yeah, and we just lost it all in the bookies. But if we had won, we would have been sorted for a few weeks. As it is we are a bit fucked.

Jason:

Now we have to stay indoors all week, or borrow some money and gamble it, hope we make our money back and cover the borrowing. There is fuck all to do here.

Is it changing around here?

Nathan:

Seems to be getting worse to me. There are loads of refugees now. They keep themselves to themselves, you know, it doesn’t matter to me. But it means the people are constantly changing. Asian areas of Rochdale are a different matter, though. They aren’t refugees, they are British-born. Those areas are no-go zones. We can’t walk through them.

Jason:

Used to be we would know everyone on the estate, but now the faces change every week. There used to be football tournaments and that, but they stopped.

Nathan:

The community shop closed, the youth club closed. It’s all closed. There’s nothing left.

BRUNO BAYLEY & ALEX STURROCK