London and surrounding area has become so unkempt

That’s actually a good answer.

It is SO interesting! Don't get me started 😂
Wales supplied the entire world with slate. The quarry thing is huge! There was the caban culture that sprung up in the isolation of places like Blaenau and Bethesda (which turned into relatively huge places in a very short space of time in the arse end of nowhere - bit like gold rush towns) where quarry workers viewed themselves as educated scholars rather than manual labourers and set up the first Welsh language university in Bangor. On the other side, there were the independent women who were left from weekend to weekend while DHs worked away on the galeriau.
Then there's the post-slate DIY culture when the quarries shut.
It affected the whole fabric of N Wales and still does.
I love it!

I think one thing to mention is the amount of transient ness in certain bits of London and why some areas have more of this than others - a huge amount of temporary housing, builders doing cheap and quick refreshes, cheaper end of market landlords dumping stuff, far more shared housing in many of the cheaper boroughs - it has all of the same issues as many of the other bigger city’s but on a much bigger scale, the costs of an area are often just as much if not more in more deprived areas , but without the level of council tax take both from business and domestically in the more wealthy areas .

Quarries make you feel Welsh? Interesting.

Wales is part of Britain, the concept of it being a country is really just to placate small minded nationalists. But I guess Britishness is things like
politeness and etiquette, queuing culture, tea drinking, pub social life, dry and sarcastic humour, self-deprecation, football, cricket, rugby, golf, Wimbledon, fish and chips, full English breakfast, Sunday roast, museums, BBC, crappy sandwiches, parks on a Sunday, country side, strong traditions, literature, English language, innovation….

i contacted my council to suggest they use the free resources from keep Britain tidy as it’s really a marked increase in the past 20 years or so. They said they were too busy with other campaigns! My eldest DS litterpicked around a north london borough for his Duke of Edinburgh and picked up an extraordinary amount of rubbish in a couple of hours. Some of The streets off the north circular are really bad - sometimes they have been cleaned then more mattresses and black bags and broken things are left again. It needs a national campaign and a renewed sense of civic responsibility.

Not at all! I just honestly can't see it. I'm welsh, so I have a strong welsh cultural identity and I can list off a pile the things that contribute to me feeling welsh:
The Welsh language
Singing/music
Poetry
Eisteddfod
Slate and quarries
Farming
Pubs
Cofiwch Dryweryn
Yma o Hyd

I could keep going...

What would be your answer for the same regarding of britishness?

I do get that - It’s one reason we moved from Bristol to Bath, the point where they had a big slide for a couple of days as entertainment down a very hilly park st for me was a step too far whilst the centre of the city was a scruffy mess - and I’m a centre left voter , but the mayor at that point was a real Corbyn type lefty and off his trolley!! Mind you I personally think reform councils spending £60k sticking union jacks up is just as bad or Boris Johnson when London mayor spending £100k for a website for a bridge that then didn’t happen - superfluous to actual needs spending it seems can be across the board and seems to come with either pure vanity or giving mates something to do

..and your view is saying London is unkept is racist?

Different cultural norms.

Ah the old British people have no culture cliche, a classic.

Some of the recycling bins do not have lids and stuff blows around everywhere on collection days especially plastic. Once there is already rubbish around, people are more likely to litter (human psychology).
Or the posh version:
A lot of people just focus on their individual liberty and forget they have a civic duty too and that the interaction between the two is the basis of a functioning democratic society?

That's really true.

Teenagers in our village know that if they get up to trouble, vandalise etc, there will very quickly be a picture (with a very limited attempt at obscuring their face) on the village Facebook page.
And people take ownership of their area as they benefit from it looking and feeling nice. I still work in London but I could never go back to living there, people seem somehow disconnected with their surroundings, walking around with heads in phones and rushing through their day.

Depending where you live though , the idea of ‘fripperies’ can vary

Absolutely, @Crikeyalmighty, and if they can manage festivals such as your own which give pleasure and don't make a loss that's all to the good

Unfortunately ours don't do that; they're much bigger on "art installations" which fall to bits after the first winter or never work at all - though very often commissioned from friends/relatives of council leaders - building cycle paths on routes which cyclists rarely use, allowing budgets allocated to various projects to disappear without anything to see for them and closing refuse disposal sites

As you rightly say the experience depands on where you live, but personally I'd like to see core services prioritised to the point where nothing could be spent until a decent level of provision was in place

Godd question.

I'd also add, what is the 'britishness' you think you've lost? Morris dancing? Fried breakfasts? The subjugation of other countries for their natural resources?

Where I live is almost always spotless. But then it's pretty standard to bump into locals who pick litter on their walk between our village and the nearest town. My DH being one of them. He thinks he's a weirdo but if that's the case, we live in a village full of weirdos. I know I can't walk past discarded cans or bottles on my dog walk without picking them up.

In cities you lose that collective responsibility and pride. It's always someone else's fault or problem to solve.

Must be them immigrunts. 🙄

There’s rubbish everywhere and a general feel of disrepair with a wafting smell of hopelessness and waste of every single description.

@CoffeeCantata @GoatsOfNavahoe having an alternative view is neither trying to shut down nor bullying.

As fun as it may be, shutting down discussion by implying racism doesn’t really work anymore.

This type of post is just a bullying attempt to shut down discussion.

It always involves a huge stretch and massive assumptions about the OP.

And I hate Reform.

Bill Bryson famously criticised Liverpool for having a litter problem in one of his books. I think there anti litter campaigns there because of this.

I regularly work in central London and it’s really dirty - just piles and piles of rubbish in the streets. It has to be a health hazard. It’s so embarrassing that tourists experience this.

It’s definitely much much dirtier, yes. People saying it isn’t are delusional. It’s more crowded, more dirty, and all round less pleasant.

The area I used to live in West London was pretty messy. Despite seeing lots of council staff cleaning up, people didn't seem to care and dropped rubbish etc.
We moved out to a Buckinghamshire village and when we go back to visit MIL it's pretty shocking, even our girls comment on it. Currently on her fairly average road there are 4 what looks like abandoned cars with bits missing, a sofa on a path, various baby toys, broken buggies etc, cans and bottles.

But our village where I have never seen a council cleaner/street sweeper etc, is super tidy in comparison. Regular local litter picks by volunteers as we know the council is useless out here.

I see this too.