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I used to live about ten miles away from Clacton in Harwich. It's weird... I'm a freakily-dressed dewd at the best of times, and whenever I go back there I get less bad vibes than I do here in Brighton, and yet that part of the country's voting record shows it's hell-bent for leathering up the immigrants (hell-bent for leathering should be an idiom, damnit!). Immigrants are not even that predominant there, which is probably why the locals are so afraid: prolonged exposure, making friends with these cats and painting over the blurry spots in your paranoid imagination, will usually allay most of your fears (as opposed to just gawping at some wimmenz walking past in sarongs). That area's got a really grotty voting record, but fairly nice people. My theory: niceness is a lukewarm state in which disease thrives, due to never inspiring you to being inward-looking enough to see you're being manipulated with fear. That takes a little confrontation and cantankerousness. I remember this one time in Clacton when this travelling huckster came to town, putting leaflets through everyone's doors offering ipods, fridge/freezers and laptops for a pittance. He'd hired the town hall, where people gathered in droves. Standing outside were shills claiming they'd '...gone 'ere last week and gotten an ipod and an xbox a piece for a tenner'. People handed over their money for these quadruple-wrapped boxes of wonder which, by the time you opened them, your humble rip-off merchant would be long-gone. As your random piece of tat came to light- a puzzle set, or hair clippers- it dawned on you that he never actually specifically said that herein you will find an ipod. I can't see a scene like that taking off in any other part of the country than that particular part of Essex. Looks like they got fooled again, except UKIP is now the travelling huckster. That was a few years ago, though. Perhaps there are now a few other towns ripe for exploitation.
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