Is London a crime infested shithole?

How can you say you’re a true whatever when you weren’t born or brought up somewhere? Your upbringing/ childhood is a huge, formative part of what you are.

No I'm not angsty
I just think you're talking bollocks.

You seem a bit angsty about it @BIWI, & it clearly matters to you. I guess some attach a real identity to London?

I wasn't 'born and bred' (whatever that means).

Is that a really complicated term?

Agree! You're either south of the river or north of the river, end of.

zones Are bollocks. They’re just invented by tfl. South London wasn’t even in zones 20 years ago.

real Londoners don’t talk zones 🤨

My BIL and his family live in London, they have multiple stories about phones being stolen and he moved my back door keys because he thought it was unsafe for them to be in the door. I know nobody locally (I live in a naice area of the NE) who has had their phone stolen. I certainly don't think London is a hotbed of serious crime but I do think there is a lot of petty crime that locals are inured to. Maybe it's because you are more likely to be walking or using public transport round London with things like phones out though, I drive everywhere at home so petty thieves don't have much chance to steal stuff.

But why not? What difference does it make that I was born in the North East? I moved further South when only 3 years old, and then to London in my 20s. I never lived in any of those places longer than I have lived here.

I wasn't 'born and bred' (whatever that means).

Personally I find it very creepy being in rural areas where no one would hear you scream!

The countryside is wasted on me, I hate the idea of a tranquil walk in the woods alone or having no neighbours!

To be a Londoner born and bred you need to be born in London surely. For extra safety within Zone 2.

I call myself a Londoner, having lived here 25+ years, but I'm not a true Londoner like my nan, who was born within the sound of the Bow Bells, or my daughter, who was born in east London.

But I'll be a Londoner til the day I die.

Fuck me, I even support a London football team

I don’t get it 😆

I would definitely class you as a Londoner just not a true Londoner. I don’t think being born & bred is better, it’s just different.

@lovealieinortwo given that I've lived here for twice as long as I lived previously, I definitely claim that I'm a Londoner.

Fuck me, I even support a London football team.

I’ve lived in London all my adult life. I’ve never been a victim of a crime. A lot of people live in London, so of course there are more crimes. I definitely don’t consider it a dangerous place. Personally I find it very creepy being in rural areas where no one would hear you scream!

I imagine a true Londoner is born and brought up in a London Borough.

I was born (before 1964) and brought up in a post-1964 London Borough. I consider myself to belong to Kent, not London.

The late Len Goodman grew up in the same borough, but he had what I would consider a proper old East End accent, not at all the accent for that borough.

Then he did WDYTYA and it turned out his family originated in Bethnal Green/Spitalfields - exactly where I would expect for someone with that accent.

You are clutching at straws. John Warboys was one black cab driver out of an estimated 60,000 operating in the capital pre-2009 when he was jailed.

London has a population of 10million. Parts of the city like Westminster have high levels of crime because of high volume of visitors, but the area of the UK with the most crime per capita is actually Cleveland in the north East.

And, as PP have said, Epsom's in Surrey not London, and using a heinous sexual crime against a young woman to stoke a thread is pretty despicable.

@SalmonOnFinnCrisp

Sadiq's solve for phone thefts is a yellow line...

You still haven't said what you mean by this. I'm not the only poster who has asked you to explain. And it's a genuine question - I really don't understand what you mean.

That’s what I would imagine! 😆

I think it is, it’s just a different experience imo. If you met someone now from where you did grow up would you fess up or deny all knowledge? 😆

As I said if I moved to Cornwall or Manchester or anywhere else can I claim to be from there?

Absolutely not. I've been here 25 years. I'll need to have been here 25,000 years before I'm seen as Cornish.

@ BIWI Yep - we've met and talked about it but I didn't want to be explicit because I didn't think you had.

What utter bollocks.

Epsom is Surrey FFS.

God's own county?

Of course she does.

It's interesting isn't it @BIWI, My DH is from your County and came to London aged 21 too. He very much thinks of himself as a product of that County - through and through.