Friend giving safety tips for London?

I think ‘fair enough.’ She’s only trying to help. My daughter has lived I London for 16 years and she’s given me useful advice to protect myself.

A plastic Londoner 😂
What the hell are you on about?

It's what they (we?) in N London used to call the new arrivals who acted like that. People who were so excited to be in London they couldn't stop going in about it.

It might be a very local term or a 90s term. But it was a thing. OFC London churn is greater than ever now so maybe there are fewer native Londoners to be sardonic.

why on earth would you be thought patronising?

If it's as per TheSquareMiles helpful explanation it's not patronising at all to explain something someone has genuinely asked. At the very most I'd say the phrase was slightly misleading, as usually a phrase with the suffix - thefts would be interpreted as the object that is being stolen - e.g. phone theft, money theft, wallet theft. Whereas what you're (if that was what was meant) describing is a methodology of theft, e.g. shoplifting vs fraud versus snatching etc.

I also wouldn't personally consider that sort of thing as particularly niche to London, compared to phone snatching, but that's by the by. If it's focussed more around door to door calling rather than stopping people on the street it's also not going to be very likely to be relevant to people visiting London, who are going to be going home at the end of the day/staying in hotels or with friends rather than answering doors in residential areas.

I think that clipboard thefts may be when people carry clipboards in a bid to deceive people into believing that they are calling on official business.

The people with the clipboards knock at doors and say something along the lines of, say, the council needing all kitchens to be inspected. Sadly, if they find someone who believes them and lets them in, one looks at things randomly in the kitchen and asks questions, while the other slips round the door of the living room to dip into a handbag.

I think that this is what it may be. It's people seeing someone sounding official and carrying a clipboard who is not what they seem.

i was born in london never hear about bats before

had my purse stolen one about 30 years ago policce couldnt gaive a toss even bak then

Still waiting to find out about the risk of bats

Honestly that's just so funny! It's hardly Kabul, as for telling someone 'gently' urgh that would wind me up no end. If I were your cousin I'd turn up in all the bling, phone in my back pocket and sporting a massive open handbag just to wind you up 😆

No, it’s not an autocorrect but I don’t dare explain in case I’m thought patronising.

🤣🤣🤣

What on earth are you going on about? Toilets all bombed? Even back in the height of the IRA bombings, they tended to go for bigger targets than the loos.

I lived in London for years. I have worked in London all of my life apart from two years when I was abroad. In terms of muggings, my friends have been mugged on the Southbank, Green Lanes, on a train coming into Waterloo, in Shoreditch (phone snatching) and I had my purse nicked out of my bag on Portobello Road which I'm not surprised about as it was one with a single popper to close it and nice robber-friendly gaping sides. The worst I have ever had was when I was followed from Waterloo to London Bridge by a sleazy guy who assaulted me and tried to push me into a dark vestibule. I had my phone in my hand with 999 ready and the second he came close I was connected and he then ran off.

Actually, when I think of it, there have been way more sexual incidences - touching, flashing, grabbing etc and tbh that has always been my main concern over being mugged, in AND out of London. That and having a bag that zips up securely. I wear nice jewellery and a nice watch all the time.

I do find you get a kind of second sense for dodgy fuckers and I know my kids - who grew up in a nice market town with little crime - are not streetwise at all. I admit I remind them of basic safety stuff and self preservation when they're out. One is at Uni in a northern city and was far too chilled about my regular demands that he didn't walk through his nearby park at night... until a guy got stabbed there, I sent him the local crime stats and he saw my point.

Annoying OP still hasn't come back and said what the tips actually were.
Hope she hasn't had her phone nicked....

I'm probably being a complete idiot but is clipboard an autocorrect (presumably for mobile phones?) or are people actually going around stealing the 85p plastic boards with a bulldog clip I used to do my geography worksheet on in year 5?

tbf the phone snatching is perhaps one of those things that is more specific to London so possibly worth warning about - I live in a fairly big city and while there's the normal theft to be aware of I've never seen/heard about phones being snatched e.g. by people on scooters etc in the way it happens in London.

Im still waiting for @Allfur to explain why they found this an appropriate comment to make?

Racist and inaccurate.

www.homelessnessimpact.org/news/ethnic-inequalities-and-homelessness

There is a difference between "Guys be careful, there have been a few phone snatching insidents around here lately" and "Make sure you dress modestly because the poor uncivilised London mob may want to rip your family hairloom off your neck, Lady Patricia". Depending which one you did...

I always check how ‘wrenchable’ the strap and hardware on a cross body bag is now and I’m usually not the only one. I can’t believe some of the very easily snatched totes and top handle bags we were all wandering around with in the early part of the century.

😆

I agree, I think there are things that you do naturally if you live in London, like being careful with phone, having a zipped bag, that you might not do elsewhere?

I'm not sure as I've lived here all my life, but I probably do have a bit of a radar for likely tricky scenarios.

Mumsnet is full of posters who consider London the equivalent of downtown Beirut! Just smile and say thank you. It was kindly meant.

@DancingNotDrowning - what is this bat danger!? We live in London and need to watch out for it too 😀!

@mondaytosunday - I was also completely bamboozled by the reference to going south of the river! Makes no sense.

@breezeofqinter Your thread got my family chatting about this. I’ve lived in London for 30 years or so though grew up elsewhere. My DCs (now late teens) have grown up here. Both my parents were Londoners - they married very young and settled elsewhere once my dad graduated because he was offered a lecturing job in the polytechnic there.

So I think we’ve always seen it very much from the inside and it’s easy to forget, when you’re pottering around your local part of London, that it is a city full of tourists and visitors (the city I grew up in was perfectly pleasant but not a tourist destination) which means it has the same pickpocketing issues as other tourist destinations.

Also I think there are things we have adapted to when word has gone round locally about new forms of theft. For example, I’ve now worn a cross body bag for some years and that was in response to a rise in people on motorbikes and electric bikes snatching handbags - word went round the school WhatsApp groups re that. Phone snatching is definitely a thing - I know several London locals that’s happened to; one of my bosses had his snatched in the middle of a work call on his way into the office. We have a street WhatsApp group which shares intel. Very few of us park our bikes in front of our houses any more as they tend to get nicked no matter how well chained. So I think that’s more the spirit she meant it in - locals are sharing this information with each other, too. This stuff is no doubt happening in other parts of the UK, also, but the scale is probably higher in tourist centres just because of the richer pickings.

Btw: my family all love living in London and we take these things as part of living in a big city.

Londoner here. I’ve given a couple of visitors warning about the amount of clipboard thefts as they’ve gone up exponentially recently. Didn’t realise I was being a patronising arse.

I think it's sweet and caring. My grandad still tells me how to get to London and what to watch out for. Despite me working there for 10 years and him not going to London for at least 25 years !

Irritating OP for not responding to requests to say what the tips were & instead repeating how often you visit London!

If my 12 year old was giving me "safety advice" about London, I would tell her she's ridiculous.

I found the "friend" comment funny in a patronising way, so yes, I will mock her. It is funny.