What’s the point in living in London?

[vandergahrd]

Do you ever wonder that? I live and have always lived in the “provinces”, near a nice city. You can have a very nice house and lifestyle here without working every hour of the clock.

My DD has just qualified as a GP in London, and her boyfriend is a city lawyer. Both of them work silly hours, and on paper have very healthy salaries.

However they just bought their first flat for £600k. Quite frankly it’s not nice. They have to be near enough work to commute quickly and London is so so expensive.

Her boyfriend especially works 9am-10pm most days. They hardly see each other, due to their hard work yet still don’t earn enough for a nice lifestyle.

What is the point unless your parents or family bought property 20 years ago in London.

Do hope you've not shared that little gem with your daughter.

For most people it's jobs first and foremost. There are 10x the jobs available in London than my area in my field. I'm not prepared to pay that much for property though so accept the trade off in living outside it.

Because there’s so much to do. Food, theatre, art, museums, free events, hidden pockets you’ve never been to before, parks, canals, beautiful buildings, melting pot of cultures...

There are downsides to living everywhere, and of course it’s stupid money for property. But if you’ve got the bug, nowhere quite compares.

Obviously as a doctor, your daughter could work pretty much anywhere. So she clearly wants to live in London, despite your misgivings

Maybe they enjoy their jobs? Maybe they enjoy the stimulation and personal achievement it brings them? Maybe they just don’t want to live in the provinces near a nice city with a nice house?
People are all different and want different things in life

Oh good, it must be days since we had a London-bashing thread.

Well, add another average commute to London from the suburbs (about 1h 20 mins) and your son in law would be out from 7.40 until 10.20, so I can see why they want to live centrally.

I live in the edge of London, work in the centre. Best of both worlds as far as I’m concerned.

I didn’t want to learn to drive so on a practical level living here just makes sense. In the mornings I can catch the tube halfway to work and then run through parks the rest of the way. At the weekends I have a 15 minute walk to my local, busy town centre, or I can go for long runs by the river. And there’s always something interesting going on.

I've met quite a number of non-white and/or non-British people who originally lived in London but moved to "the provinces". 100% of them said they experienced a noticeable increase in racism or xenophobia. No way would I want to live in a place surrounded by Brexit voters.

In fact I met such a person this week, and she was telling me how upset she was that when she moved out of London, she lost her sense of community as there was nobody else from her background nearby. She also found that it was difficult for her children.

We live and work in London. As a pp has suggested there are 10x the amount of job opportunities available than in the provinces. Plus for both me and my DH the work is a lot more interesting than working in the regional offices of our respective companies. You just don’t get nearly the same number of head offices elsewhere.

We also think it gives our daughter the best childhood and opportunities. If she wants to do an unpaid internship somewhere then she can live at home. My husband grew up in the shadows of Canary Wharf and always aspired to work there. We have both spoken at school career events in the provinces and kids in secondary schools just have no idea that careers outside the traditional teacher/doctor/lawyer etc exist. We can go to the science museum on a whim. She is surrounded by other cultures as the norm. The public transport is fantastic, and there are an incredible amount of sports/club facilities.

Yes it has its downsides. My mum gets very upset that I live in a tiny house compared to friends in other cities that have huge houses. But I would much much rather my small house in London than a large house in a suburb of another town.

Whenever you get a thread here like "I'm sick of people who don't drive", you just know they don't live in London. No Londoner would ever start such a thread. In fact I sometimes receive calls at work from people asking me where they can park near our building. Just get the tube FGS.

So dull and peevish. DD and BF have fabulous jobs. Is this just a bit of showing off?

luckily OP this is your issue.just accept that different people ( lots actually) love London. You don't. Your choice.

Seriously? If you really want to know why your daughter has chosen to live in London, why don't you just ask her?

Good point - maybe the OP was just having a stealth boast I've often noticed at work that certain people who commute from a long way out tend to have loud conversations on the phone about how they work in London, as if that's supposed to impress people. I've also noticed it when on holiday (in the UK) that people will have loud conversations in pubs about how their children went to London.

Oh fuck offfffff with competitive london bashing

MN is so fucking dull on this sometimes. Along with the competitive “who had the smallest wedding” threads. “Oh, I only wore a black bin bag and all my guests ate dry bread and water and if anyone spends more than that it’s an ostentatious waste of money”.

Shock horror different people like different things

I hope it was mouldy bread. Can't have anyone serving Tesco Finest now, can we?

Btw I used to go clubbing a lot in my late teens and early twenties, and got home by night bus. As a teenager I would've been bored AF if my parents had moved me out to the sticks.

Why - because London is absolutely AMAZING!

Oh good.. another London bashing thread.. how thrilling.

Maybe it's because the provinces can be so dull. Provincial even...

Can we stop with the ‘provinces’ please.

There are just as many ‘London is the centre of the universe and everywhere else is full of backward, uncultured yokels’ type threads, as there are ‘London’s polluted, busy & expensive’ threads.

Seriously, it’s tiresome at both ends of the scale.

And there are bloody LOADS of culturally diverse places outside of London. To suggest that there aren’t is just daft. Perhaps they aren’t tiny little chocolate box villages in the commuter belt (and that does need to change) but there are lots of thriving non-white communities in towns and cities all over the UK.

"Provinces" was written by the OP so we were quoting her.

You can live a life without a car in London, which in many towns and cities elsewhere in the country is very limiting.

Does it also not occur to anyone that millions of Londoners were born here and go back many generations here? Why would we move unless we had to, or hated living in a city? The only people I know who leave London are those who move to the country or abroad - I can't think of anyone who's moved to another lesser city.