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.

Agree op. Pointless

I agree bibbitybobbityyhat

I agree that threads about London vs the rest of the UK only have contributions from posters who love London (and go to galleries, museums, the theatre, opera etc all the time), or posters who hate London.

I grew up in Greater London, and worked in London when I first left school. First in the City, then in the West End. I then moved to Yorkshire, so I have had a foot in both camps.

I have just returned from a very enjoyable weekend in London – a place I love to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there. Yes there are lots of parks, but I live in a rural area where I have no need of parks. We don’t have the scramble for school places that many Londoners do. Yes there are lots of museums/galleries/theatres in London, but we also have them – not in the same quantity granted, but not the dearth that many Londoners would have us to believe.

How many people in London actually go to art galleries/museums/the theatre/the opera as often as they would have us believe anyway? I don't really want city life, and there is nothing wrong with that. Many city dwellers don't enjoy the rural lifestyle, and again, there is nothing wrong with that. But please let us stop sneering at each other's lifestyle preferences.

To marry well and earn well. If he is successful in his career he’ll be earning very well in ten years time. Likewise in ten years time she could look into moving into private practice and earning a decent amount.

For me, it's because I grew up here and I love the liveliness, the culture, the history, the public transport system (for the most part). Also, in our case we're members of a culture where it's hard to find non-traditional communities that we'd fit in with outside London.

Schools are good, and when our kids are teenagers, we won't have to give them lifts everywhere because they can use frequent, extensive public transport and stuff like that.

But I can see why people wouldn't want to move here now from elsewhere - it's only through inheritance on my side we've been able to work up to buying a family sized home.

You don't have to work crazy hours to be in London, that's a matter of your field - both DH and I have decent careers that we can work 9-5 at and leave behind us outside working hours.

A lot of mates who grew up in smaller places hated them when they were teenagers but appreciated growing up there in retrospect, and I'd totally agree London is not everyone's cup of tea and that's fine.

I will concede to the enviable public transport system. Last autumn we were scuppered by the weekly Northern Rail train strikes.

How many people in London actually go to art galleries/museums/the theatre/the opera as often as they would have us believe anyway? I don't really want city life, and there is nothing wrong with that. Many city dwellers don't enjoy the rural lifestyle, and again, there is nothing wrong with that. But please let us stop sneering at each other's lifestyle preferences.

I agree with your premise, but I don’t think it’s as two-way as you suggest. No one is starting ‘London is amazing, how can anyone live anywhere else?’ threads at a wearying rate.

When someone starts an entire goady thread to criticise where you live and questioning that there can be any joy in living there, people will get defensive. And the London-bashing schtick on Mumsnet is so constant and so tired, I’m not surprised some people react as they do.

@IamPickleRick we moved to the Hertfordshire commuter area before moving very far away and there wasn't any noticeable racism, we just stood out a bit more. Where we are now is far worse. Of course there's racism everywhere but we feel like we blend in more in London and just feel ultimately more at home there.

I'm very biased though I grew up in London and loved it! Camden palais was a rite of passage, as was the dodgy warehouses in Kings Cross - it amazes me how gentifried it is now.

There are those who are in London but not living in London- no-one lives south of the river, they just exist or survive.

Yes, there is a lot to do in London. And the transportation is excellent. I am visually impaired, and I depend on very good transportation and getting to places easily.

TapasForTwo your call to stop sneering is somewhat undermined by your use, twice in your post, of what Londoners ‘would have us believe’.

On a thread set up to dis London living.

Londoners either live in Londin because they have actively chosen to stay or move there, or need to be there for work or family reasons. Just like people who live elsewhere. It isn’t about concocting some fantasy for others to believe

It's really fun.

HTH

Hotpot I have read far too many threads on MN to know that alot of sneering does indeed happen. Maybe not on this thread though. And I am originally from Greater London.

That’s true tapas.

Plus, ‘London’ has expanded so much in the last 50 years that a significant proportion of folk in the swinging metropolis are well into suburbia and doing 45min+ commutes to their London offices. Let’s not pretend that everyone living in London is a Zone 1 culture vulture.

"Let’s not pretend that everyone living in London is a Zone 1 culture vulture."

And I am a bit of a culture vulture

The thing about living in London is how angry it seems to make certain people that I’ve made that choice. I totally get that not everyone wants to live there - not everyone is the same.

However, from time to time people get really quite aggressive about it. “But HOW can you want to live in London?!?” “Wouldn’t you be HAPPIER living somewhere BIGGER outside London?!?!?” “I just don’t know how you can STAND IT!!!”

It’s not just that they hate London but they hate that it exists and that anyone chooses to live there. If I were to do the same to someone living in Hampshire, they would (rightly) think me incredibly rude.

Tapas “have read far too many threads on MN to know that alot of sneering does indeed happen.”

Yes, but you issue a call to arms against sneering in a post which contains sneering

Everyone lives in or out of anywhere for their own reasons. Presumably non culture culture residents have other reasons.

My reasons are:
Work
Huge range of cultural and other opportunities, many free
Transport network
I love it.

More jobs. Easy access to most/all services. Great public transport links? One of the most beautiful cities in the world? The diversity, night life and opportunities?

And for me London is my safe place. It’s where I grew up and where I returned to after a violent and quite frankly Nasty marriage. It’s where my parents ashes are and my brother is buried.

London is home for me. There are many other cities but the bottom line is this is where I feel comfortable.

Agree, Hotpot

Mine are:

All my hard-built support systems are here.
Work in a head office role, so good to live somewhere with competition for my skills where I can negotiate better pay/flexible working.
Love having the choice to nip into a museum/attraction for a few hours/ do a little bit of it without having to do the whole thing because we won’t get to do it again.
Nipping into the NPG on the rare occasions I get a break at lunch - quiet and soothing.
Able to adequately feed DS1’s epic obsessions really easily: incl Great Fire of London, English monarchs, football, dinosaurs
Great opportunities for my kids overall
Family live abroad long-haul and want it to be as easy as possible for them to visit.

I’m Zone 6 - 20 minutes on the train to central London and a 20-30 minute drive to some pretty great countryside. At the weekends we can decide between staying home, nipping into the centre for a morning/afternoon, or going for a muddy walk. Best of all worlds for me.

What is considered "London" nowadays? I grew up in what is now zone 5, but don't consider it London - my address was town name, Surrey, so I wouldn't consider zone 6 as London either. When I think of London I think of zones 1 and 2, and the rest as Greater London.

So has the perception of what is London changed?

I live in Shoreditch, I genuinely can’t imagine wanting to live anywhere else.

I moved to London when I was 18 and rented a little windowless room in a house share, I’m now 31 and buying a nice flat.

Things I like
Loads of things to do, many of them free.
My commute, I work in canary wharf so I’m really close to work.
Safety this might seem an odd one, but London in general and the area I live is a very safe place to be gay, I don’t experience a great deal of homophobia here.
Entertainment, I have loads of bars, clubs etc where I can safely be myself.
Lots of opportunities for my son, we rarely have to walk/tube more than twenty minutes to find something fun and free.
The schools locally are very good.
The nursery’s are fantastic and numerous.
All of my friends live in the area or a quick tube ride away, so I always have people to socialise with when I’m not on daddy duty.

The postal counties are a bit of an anomaly and haven’t been in use since 1996 or so, and were only ever used for the convenience of Royal Mail sorting systems. As an immigrant (here 15 years) I find it curious how people cleave to the old postal system for geographic identity.

To me, London changes. For some, a distinction between central and Greater London seems terribly important. For me, when I was in zone 2 London was London, and there were different bits with different identities and characters. I don’t think that’s changed now I’m in Zone 6, to be honest. I wonder if having a Mayor of London and the GLA - and the administrative function that covers all 33 boroughs, has made a difference in terms of people’s sense of ‘belonging’ to London whether they’re in Hackney or Hounslow.

What's the point of living in London?

Well, it's my home.

Is that a good enough answer?

Thank you for the explanation Jassy. So anything up to and including zone 6 is now London, and not Greater London?

I left the London area in 1980, so clearly I haven't moved with the times

I still don't say I am from London though.

I ended up in London by accident, and after 20 years have extensive roots here so don't want to move. I'd have been happy with a smaller city tbh - I used to go to the theatre once or twice a week, and at uni that was easy because I could just rock up to the one of three options that took my fancy. Now there are 200 choices but I have to Plan in advance as they'll be sold out. Ditto taking the kids to museum exhibitions - great to have so much choice, less great when they want to see something but it sold out a month ago so it may as well not exist.

I do love London's transport (mostly), but the fact that I could still get about in a wheelchair or with a buggy, but other cities can rival it. So while I picked London way back when because of its much lower homophobia (having stones thrown at you for holding hands with your girlfriend tends to put you off a town), I admit other places now might be better for young adults, seeing the struggles young grads are having in finding places to live compared to me. The range of jobs is probably going to be the clincher for some time, though.