Londoners have absolutely decimated my city

Spot on and why I moved to Wales Bristol is crazy and it will now be filled wth new student accommodation pushing residents out. It's a real shame

People did this to London first. They moved in and priced out all the locals and built huge luxury flats that are empty most of the time. See One Hyde Park. And Londoners who could no longer afford their home city received scant sympathy.

Limited sympathy, I'm afraid. It's shit but it's hardly an isolated problem. People go where they can afford a good standard of living. Sometimes it's not where they were born. Sometimes it's nowhere. 'Tis the state of the country. If you vote for elitist charletans, that's what you get. And there's no right to buy a house where you grew up.

I can’t imagine ever having the arrogance confidence to think that I could move to a town and liven it up! 🤣

Out of interest where do you live? And I understand, where I grew up average wage earners could buy houses there, but now you have to be a banker from London, one primary school has actually shut as there are not enough young families anymore, lots of Bouji cafes set up now too, I like those but yep vibe totally different! No more teachers, nurses,shop assistants living there now. It feels so artificial

Brighton was a run down fishing village which was built on being a bolt hole for rich Londoners from the Prince Regent onwards.

Sorry, no sympathy from this Londoner.

OP, don't move to Bristol. It's full up and rents are the same as London - that's if you can find anything.

They sound like a “nice” bunch 😳

Oh I’m a person like you too…although probably naturalised now.

My parents moved us down here from East Croydon when I was 3.5yo 😂

Yep. That’s been my impression of London. Moved here age 18 and felt welcome and never left. It’s brilliant.

And what do you reckon the people in Sheffield or Birmingham are going to think about a southerner coming and driving up housing prices and killing the vibe of their city?

Your frustration is misplaced OP, we’re all just trying to live best we can in difficult circumstances.

Really? I’m a Londoner. I moved to a tiny Welsh village. I’ve never encountered anything like that. We just settled into the village quietly and our children both attend the local Welsh education. We bought a property that had been empty for over a year and was completely run down. We are doing it up because it needed it.

Im perfectly able to cope with brutal winters and storms with the power cuts and our village getting cut off. Being born and living in London didn’t suddenly make me an incapable person or likely to moan about silly things. Tbh I’ve encountered more sniping and council reports in the village than in all my years in London, still love it here though. I think people are just more bothered about how things impact the village than they are how they impact a rented London property.

Am I becoming an amiable (hopefully) pedant as well? Because that was the first thing I thought, and then someone lower down in comments said that London itself had been decimated and I was thinking, “That’s a LOT of killing that I missed.”

Or alternatively, everyone in London is a Londoner, and all are welcome here.

I'm one.

Your OP and this really resonate @CrushedOrange

I don’t live in Brighton, but in a place that many people have moved into from London and affluent SE England since the first lockdown. They move for the vibe, but they don’t contribute to it and they are pricing out the people who do. I am also thinking of moving….

So if the defensive among you have moved to a new place for its vibe in the last few years, I’d implore you to get involved and make the effort. Invest your time in community activities, donate. It won’t stop you pricing people out of housing but it will help preserve the culture everyone values.

Er I am.

There are no Londoners in London.

I'm pretty sure theres a generation of people who were in Brighton before you and your friends who weren't keen on how you all changed their city too.
Places are always changing, everywhere and when you and your friends go elsewhere for the vibe, you will be changing that area too.
Nowhere stays the same always.

No worries!

You can't have spent much time in Hastings. It has a great community spirit and absolutely tons to do! Especially music related stuff. Shaking my head...

Sheffield is great if you are seriously thinking of moving.

You're moaning about people moving to your town and now you're considering moving to somebody else's town

Pot, kettle, black

@LadyTiredWinterBottom2 My friend's family have lived in London for several centuries longer than your family have lived where you do.

She moved away from London by choice, before her part of London was allowed to become unaffordable (unaffordable partly because of people moving to London from other parts of the UK).

However some of her friends have had to move out of London. Not to buy but simply to afford to rent.

Tbh I used to think she was exaggerating when she spoke about her friends back in London and how bad things were for them.

Unaffordable to live where they're from but unwelcome elsewhere (despite numerous threads on MN telling them if they can't afford London to move out...).

@Waitingfordoggo DH's friend (moved to London from another part of the UK then later moved to Brighton) doesn't describe himself as a Londoner, but he says many who did the same as him, especially the wealthier ones for some reason, do say they're from London.

Shouldn't matter if 'born and bred' (London or wherever else imo) but I can now see my 'born and bred' London friend's point and I used to think she was OTT. Miscategorising 'incomers', especially wealthy ones, as Londoners is ever so helpful to the people who're chomping at the bit to 'London bash'.

OP - to add to my previous post, are you originally from Brighton yourself? It’s always been a transient place, with people moving in and out. I moved there for university but my family connections go back to the 1940s (my dad was a mod there in the 1960s, there’s a fairly famous photo on the seafront with him in!) and even then according to my parents it was full of people from London.

Just destroy our farmland? We can not be self-sufficient for food as it is but permanently destroying the food production areas we do have in a time of increasing climate uncertainty would be worse than idiotic.