and it, honestly, isn't poor. Nowhere in MK imho is a poor area. There are areas of less affluence but compared to other areas i have lived none are deprived, none are run down and none are decaying and full of empty boarded up housing and burnt out shops.
While I accept that MK is rather middle class overall, I have lived in other places and I do hail from the North West, and I would say that Fishermead certainly is deprived, run down and does have boarded up premises (albeit none burnt down that I know of). Go and take a walk around it if you want to get a feel for it - it's not so bad that you're likely to be relieved of your wallet if you do, but it's certainly very run down.
Furthermore there are significant social issues there - as one example I have a friend who works as a tree surgeon for the Council, and he was assaulted and spat at there purely because of who he works for (by someone who was clearly very brave given that his job involves a chainsaw!
) - I hear they are presently reluctant to maintain the landscape there at all because of the risk to staff (which is making it look very tatty and overgrown - which itself breeds vandalism etc). There are also issues with gangs reported in the Press frequently, notably (and I'm not being racist, this is a recorded fact in many newspaper articles - Google it) a specific gang of mainly first generation Somali immigrant origin.
The Lakes isn't really that bad, OTOH. Just needs a bit of a cleanup, and for the Council to put proper roofs on the houses they own to stop them falling to bits - I think with the views of the Brickhills (allegedly the reason for said flat roofs) it'd actually be quite desirable if it had been built properly - the similar "hide the cars behind the houses" layout works well in West Bletchley and apart from the decaying flat roofs the houses are very similar in parts as well. Coffee Hall and Beanhill are very similar, and while I wouldn't choose to live in any of those three unless it was all I could afford I don't think I'd feel unsafe if I did.
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Why is it Milton Keynes Central?
Well.....Maynard Keynes Central just wouldn't be right
As someone else posted, despite frequently being given this origin that isn't the origin of the name. It simply comes from one of the villages (now often known as Middleton to avoid confusion) which make up the New Town area. It was decided not to use one of the larger towns (Wolverton, Bletchley, Newport Pagnell) in order to avoid any bias, so one of the smaller settlements roughly in the middle of the built-up area was chosen.
And that name has nothing to do with JMK either, it's much older - I believe it is derived from the family de Cahaines as a former landowner - i.e "Middleton of the Cahaines estate", or more drilled-down, "the town in the middle of the Cahaines estate". (More here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middleton,_Milton_Keynes)
