A city in Staffordshire,
England. Stoke is famous across the world for it'
s pottery industry. Many
fine brands such as Wedgewood and Spode originate from Stoke.
However, the pottery industry is currently dying a sorry and painful
death, due to Mexican sweatshops being a far cheaper source of plates and cups than
England, with all it's health and safety laws and 'minimum wage' bollocks.
This has resulted in Stoke, formerly a haven for academic under-achievers due to the thousands of manual jobs in pot-banks, becoming a ghost town populated by recently redundant, now-unemployable, skilless (unless you see 'Fettling and Sponging' as a skill) troglodytes wandering about having fights with each other and/or students from the two local universities.
'Stoke-on-Trent' is also Mockney rhyming slang for 'Bent'. If you ever visit the place, you
will see what a splendid aptronym-
cum-epithet this is.