To think London is in a major decline?

Used to go to London regularly (from the NW) for weekends etc, not been in a long long time does not have any attraction any more , no good news comes out of it. Sounds like a lot of other city centres which are basket cases.

I think we’re still recovering from Tory austerity and a third less money going to local government, plus Brexit, plus Covid in London. Going outside London a few times to visit, it looks equally knackered. I don’t know what the solution is.

Literally, judging by the number of comments about dogs and dog poo here!

Whilst it is lovely, it’s certainly not immune from the dogshit issue, particularly the roads around the heath…

Me too. But I have noticed a big decline in people taking responsibility for their own dog shit / bad parking / type of thing, since approximately the mid 2010s and I do think Brexit encouraged a big sense of "fuck it, I can do what I like" among a lot of people.

There are loads of other factors encouraging that as well that happened around the same time though. Huge council cuts under the coalition and Cameron, and 60% of your council tax going to private care home providers hasn't helped. We lost a week to ice last week and no one had gritted any of the B-roads. Used to see gritters all the time when I was younger.

literal joke candidates.

it’s disrespectful at this point

My brother moved to Zurich. I have stayed with him several times. I kid you not and they clean the streets with proper machines like 3 times a week in the autumn. They then came to shake some plums off the tree lined street, they call it an “Allee”. Some vermin or fox attacked his bin bag and he called the council and within 30 minutes they were there to clean it up. It was like being caught in the Truman Show. There was no a single pot hole on the streets. I did see a few druggies though, at least that.
To top it all off, people have to pay extortionate amounts for bin bags for normal waste and yet there appears to be no fly tipping. The bin bags are their waste tax. If they did that here, there would be piles everywhere. They also have dog shit bags everywhere for people to use. It is like an alternative waste universe.

We are not central (z6, SW direction) but are in regularly.

I have noticed a large increase in marijuana smoking - can smell it very regularly. Doesn't hugely bother me, apart from the illegal aspect - the smell isn't as awful as smoking.

Crime in my area, touch wood, is not so bad. That said, I am literally looking at getting a door bell camera, just in case.

But Oh My GOD! The dog shit. It is EVERYWHERE. What is wrong with people??? I am sick to death of it. And also of dogs, who are a) increasing in number and b) increasing in volume and scariness - we have a pitbull (I expect they get away with this illegal breed by calling it a large staffy) AND a doberman living opposite us, and I genuinely fear for my children walking to school.
For the dog reason alone, I feel London and the UK is on the decline.
I don't know when people started getting so selfish. Dog shit has always been a problem, but it is getting worse, year on year.

Yep agree! He’s vile ….apparently doesn’t know what child grooming is! Sooner he is out the better

Some parts of London I don't feel like I'm in the UK.

I moved out recently having lived there all my life. I was in Ally Pally which was nice, but London as a whole I felt was declining. The majority of the high streets were all full of chicken shops, mobile phone shops, discount stores etc. there were so many new developments with no accounting for the infrastructure putting strain on schools, GPs, transport etc. It was getting so noisy and crowded. I now live in Frome in Somerset and have no regrets whatsoever. When I've gone back to see family I think 'Nice to visit but wouldn't want to live there!'

it makes our really nice shopping centre in Kingston feel sort of run down.

I still find Kingston the best place to shop tbh.

@ojdolnipl well crime & the lack of resources is a wider topic but I was just making the point that just because somewhere looks nicer & costs more it doesn’t mean the crime has gone. And for what of a better word it’s easy pickings for someone to rob someone walking around locally with an expensive mobile etc.

@UpTheLoobyLooTree I live in a part of London considered ‘naice’ and the local high street is increasingly a bit of a disaster.

My theory is that because everyone is working full time x 2 to afford a house, no one has any time at all to visit the high street and do any shopping. Efficiency is more important and that means getting things delivered.

Terrible but true!

Also I recently went to Naples for my birthday, I suggest you go there for a day and you'll think London is the cleanest city going.

@blueshoes

Thanks for mentioning the City of London. That is what I initially thought this thread was about when I read the title.
It is not only the rubbish in the streets but where is the UK generally headed if the taxes generated by the City are no longer there for the milking.

Yep. The City has generated the majority of London's wealth for decades and is now in precipitous decline. People love to hate on it and say its full of rich wankers and we don't need it but it supports a huge amount of associated business and wealth creation. If the City dribbles away to irrelevance (which is underway and with no sign it will be reversed) a lot of other people who work in adjacent industries will be affected, their wealth will decline and it will have much wider ramifications.

This is rarely discussed outside the financial press but there's a potentially very significant impact here for people way beyond the Square Mile.

Especially with the new revamped M&S foodhall.....

I agree. If you travel regularly to Europe, the decline is very obvious in a number of cities. This is not a UK specific issue.

Agree though I think the decline is country-wide. My local town has a street full of shops mostly boarded up and those that remain are charity/betting/vaping shops. I hear rents are sky-high and this makes it unfeasible to make a profit. It doesn't help that few people seem to live in UK city centres, whereas European cities are very much residential as well as commercial and judging by the large number of small/independent shops that survive in those cities, rents must be more affordable.

Not so long ago I visited the English town near to where I grew up - in those days it was prosperous, clean and safe, with large numbers of interesting small shops. You could spend a fun day out just browsing. I was shocked at how it had changed. Not one shop worth looking in and the streets were deserted on what should have been a busy shopping day - I guess few people even live in the town centre, let alone shop there. The market, which used to be full of lovely local produce and useful craft-made items like woollen socks and scarves, was much reduced in size and mostly sold plastic tat you can get anywhere.

The number of homeless is increasing country-wide. I am not sure why the UK government doesn't study other countries that have solved their homeless problem and copy what they do. Anyone who has inside info on this, please enlighten me!

100% agree with this!

I mean this was the case when I was in school and that was long before brexit

I think it is a nationwide thing but the effects are uneven and not altogether easy to define/analyse.

I live in what MNers would call a "naice" town in the southeast and it's become much dirtier, many of the shops have closed and there's a rampant drug problem. I don't recognise the picture of a well maintained southeast town a pp painted at all. But equally, I grew up in South London and went back to that area recently and could have cried with how completely shitty it is now - derelict buildings, boarded up shops and an atmosphere of barely suppressed violence. If you wanted to buy a house there the price tag would be as likely to put you in intensive care as the knife crime though, so go figure.

My DS recently sent me photos from his trips to Madrid and Barcelona and it all looked so clean you could almost eat off the pavements. So I do think it's a UK thing, either in terms of what's happening or what's being done to mitigate the effects of it.

@Beowulfa having lived in several different areas of London, it has amazed me how the council respond to fly tipping differently based on area.

In a couple of areas I lived there was junk everywhere. A report to the council would go nowhere.

In the more expensive areas… rarely any junk, if there was it was removed. A tree on our street was removed, and they replanted it immediately. New bins were requested and appeared within weeks.

It made me heavily query the decision making process at the council!

The amount of dogs is excessive, the spike since covid is resulting in so much fouling. I hope that once these new owners realise the work, expense and inconvenience of dog ownership especially in the city, they are not tempted to repeat the experience. I seethe inside every time I see another dog t**d or discarded poo bag. Imagine if it was a human defecating in the street! But somehow because it’s dogs we have to put up with it 😡

Horses for courses, I can see some will be put off. Is where you live pretty @Whammyyammy ? Not being sarky just interested

I’ve lived in London for a very long time and it certainly wasn’t better when I was younger. I moved here in the 70s and it was quite run down. There were a lot of empty properties, you couldn’t get a decent coffee for love or money out of Soho, public transport was abysmal particularly buses, as were parks and green spaces. Most rental properties didn’t have central heating or other amenities we now see as essential. Housing is expensive so I can see the problems for the younger generation but the area where I live in Zone 2 has seen change for the positive as many other areas of London have.

Yes, the councils are strapped for cash because of years of austerity but I blame the dog shit and rubbish on lazy people who can’t be bothered to pick up after themselves and their animals. Only yesterday I walked behind someone who was shedding the wrapper from his cigarette packet as he walked and dropping it all along the street. There always have been people who don’t value their environment and they always will be.