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.

I'd miss my car

Bored of London
Bored of life

Everything that you need or want is in London and there is something different to do all the time

We even have beaches 😁

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

I mean, it’s not really for me to say is it? Definitionally/administratively, there is no ‘London’ as distinct from Greater London. The London Assembly covers all 33 boroughs; they all pay for the Mayor.

A Stuart-era purist might say it’s the square mile and nothing else. Those who insist on arbitrary postal service administrative decisions made by a bloke drawing a circle on a map in the 1850s, or the positioning of counties before 1965 to determine the ‘real London’ feel a bit desperate and illogical to me - using their logic, the boundaries of the City of London before the ‘suburbs’ were included should be the benchmark. Why would 1856 be the benchmark, and not 1700, for example?

Ultimately: does it matter that much, except to protect a sense of exclusivity by excluding some people who by all modern measures live in an administrative and geographical entity called London?

No it doesn't matter, but when people post about London I tend to assume that they are talking about central London rather than the outer suburbs, that's all.