London bashing

[CruCru]

Recently there seems to have been a spate of London bashing from friends and acquaintances who live elsewhere. I'm surprised that people think it is okay to totally slate the place that someone else lives just because it happens to be the capital.

I think London is awesome, possibly the bright centre of the universe but wouldn't dream of telling someone how ghastly, say, Lancashire is (I have never been to Lancashire, I am sure it is very nice, it is just an example).

AIBU?

poo My 2 bed flat sold for about that - obviously parts of London are more expensive than others. Are you sure you actually live in London?

yonwhalefish now I want to see your house. The one you posted is amazing- that living room is almost too big. Luckily I don't have the terrible problem of a too big living room. Nor do I have £2.8m so quite lucky all round really.

No pendeen I wasn't commenting one jot on racism and London and the correlation or not between the two. It was entirely factual (and not my opinion) in response to Youattheback who has said...

"Can someone please, PLEASE tell me how London isn't racist but the only BNP MP ever was voted in there?"
"Where else have they fielded an MP ? { chinscratch}"

Which is totally factually incorrect. There has never been a BNP MP in London and they fielded a candidate in about 50% of seats.and they get a lower percentage of the vote than many other parts of the country.

Happy to discuss whether London is more or less racist than other parts of the country if people want to (I hadn't previously commented on that aspect of the thread) though I have no idea how you measure that but would rather like to do it with the background of correct facts rather than let someone place a "fact" out there on the thread which is glaringly incorrect.

Personally as a mixed race family we have only experienced racism outside of London but that doesn't mean I don't think it doesn't exist in London. I like London because it is more multicultural than most other parts of Britain because thats very helpful when you have a mixed race child but thats more to do with self esteem and identity than racism IMO.

yonwhale - it's not sold yet though is it I reckon you could haggle it down a bit.

Kewcumber

Fair enough.

I am sorry to hear you have experienced racism and quite understand why you would feel more comfortable in a city.

We have a 2-bed terrace with garden in London, worth about £200k, certainly no more than that. It depends very very much on the area (we live in a not-so-desirable area in East London, not remotely comparable with Notting Hill). There's no point cherry-picking an expensive example and generalising about London from that.

I know it probably still seems a lot compared with what you'd pay for a similar house elsewhere, but often the areas with cheaper housing are also the ones with fewer jobs, so quite possibly we wouldn't be able to afford anything better anyway!

It fucks me off too. It's usually from people who don't know the place at all and just spout received bollocks wisdom about 'crime', 'thugs', 'slums', 'tube chaos', 'concrete jungles' and other tabloid rubbish. Sensible rational comments like 'I get the tube/bus all the time and have had my journeys disrupted on approximately 0.0007% of my entire London life' or 'cities have more biodiversity than a lot of the countryside' fall on deaf ears.

People also happily tell me to my face that they hate London, would never live here etc, and go into ill-informed detail as to why. I wouldn't dream of telling someone who chooses to live in another city/town, a village or the country that it was shite although IME a lot of it is and don't know why people feel that it's OK to slag off the place where I choose to live to me.

I am cracking down on ill-informed anti-London comments actually. I may jeopardise a few relationships.

I think it would be fair to say that London is more racially aware (if thats a term!) than in less multi-cultural areas - doesn't mean that people don't choose to be racist but there less pointing and using terms like chinky and paki unless people are meaning to be offensive.

Perhaps thats worse (that its intentional) but at least it makes it less common.

I don't like London. I lived there for 5 years. I still live in a large city - just not that large city. I dislike it because it takes a long time to get everywhere, it's too busy, there are people everywhere, and the streets are covered in old chewing gum.

I have lots of good friends who still live there and love it. Each to their own. the world would be a dull place if we were all the same.

Wow, where do you live? @PooPoo

In my area, a 2 bed flat costs 300k and I am in Zone 4!

In the area I grew up in, you wont get a house of any size or description for less than half a mil.

(in Zone 3 btw)

I didn't 'cherry pick' an area, just typed "london" into right move and looked for a 3 bed semi.

It does illustrate the point as to why people believe London property to be ridiculously expensive for what you get. Location etc blah.

200k is a lot for a two bed terrace. A two bed terrace with garden in my area would be less than 100k.

Well, where I am now - not a particularly posh area, but a nice suburb - the very cheapest 2 bed terrace would be around £400k, although there arevery few of them around.

4 bed houses are 700k and up. With garage, prob closer to 800k.

Oh I know it's still a lot compared to other areas! In my home town a similar house would be well under 100k. But if we lived in my home town, likely we would be unemployed and unable to afford any house at all :(

Definitely not arguing that London property is cheap, not by any stretch of the imagination! But the houses worth millions in smart areas of west London really have very little to do with the way the average London family lives. I work in the Kensington area, and while it's only an hour's commute from where I live, it's like a different world :(

OOooo what I wouldn't give to live in one of them posh houses though! SOme of the ones I looked at had lifts! And gyms! And pools!

YonWhaleFish

London isn't so expensive when you see this sort of awful over-pricing.

No wonder we Cornish can't afford to buy in our own county.

:(

that's an awful lot of dollar for not much space! That's due to second 'holiday' home buyers isn't it? The massively inflated prices?

I like London
I am glad to go home too though

Grew up in a dodgy bit of North London. Left 20 years ago after having the shit kicked out of me at a tube station. No one came to help. Some wanker actually stepped over me as I was lying on the ground.
London's probably great if you have money and can choose which area to live in. I'm happy in Scotland's capital.

Not saying where i live! I just moved actually from a desirable trendy area where a house like mine would have cost me around 400 at least. I only moved a few miles to a part which is less trendy and slightly further from the tube and saved over 100k!

Lover. Where abouts was that?

Actually no, considering i have garage and parkable drive it would have been even more then that! Just couldn't afford it.

I am surprised Londoners on this thread are defensive about London's reputation for crime and violence.
Come on, it does have a massively higher level than any other part of the country including other cities. You can't deny that.

I do however think London is amazing and very much enjoy visiting. I'm in the ''glad to get home'' camp too though but I think that counts for most people wherever they're from.

I don't know as i don't have the figures to hand but i suspect if you were to compare the crime population it might actually not be high at all. London is a very populated place after all.