If you're about to write a diatrabe about the harms of political correctness or scold the writer on inventing a victimhood complex for themselves, please read the ending of the OP:

> Much as I’d like to, I can’t just blame the puritans if my old jokes don’t work any more. Nor can I claim that the Crap Towns books were an unqualified success

[...]

> before closing, I should admit that there is a more straightforward answer to the question of whether you can still get away with doing something like Crap Towns.

> That answer is: yes. There’s a website (I won’t link to it) that has kept on running a survey of the worst places in the UK for years and years- and, honestly, when I look at it, I hate it. Partly because I feel like they’re ripping off my project, but mainly because when I read the comments on there about incels and chavs and carbuncles and brutalism it all just seems grubby. Maybe even cruel.

> I could argue that I don’t like this website because their approach and criteria are different to mine - and I hope there would be some truth in that. But I also know that I now also just react against the whole thing. It’s been done. It’s grown stale. It doesn’t fit - especially since so much has changed around it. In short, the world has moved on. And maybe that’s not such a bad thing?