.,,to think that the increasing White Flight from our Cities is a very worrying development?

[theplodder]

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/9831912/I-feel-like-a-stranger-where-I-live.html

And that we are getting further away from being an integrated multicultural society year by year as separate communities live in their own way with nothing in common?

I don't think this is a bad article per se. It is the journalist's personal experience and one that many [not all] Londoners might share.

A feeling of being strangers in their own area, perhaps one they also grew up in which has changed beyond recognition.

However I agree with the posters who say the danger is in extrapolation, ie the Muslim man in my local shop ignores me when I go to the counter to pay, therefore all Muslim men are rude and dismissive of women.

Also, when she says Muslim, I assume she means Asian? Not all Muslims are Asian, I know a good couple of white Muslims...

And vice versa, not all Asian people are Muslims...

And by 'Londoners' I mean white and black. Black being for example those of Caribbean ancestry whose grandparents emigrated to Britain in the late 40s and 50s.

If we move out of London it will be because we can no longer afford to live here (quite near Acton actually) or if DP ever loses his job.

adeucalione

i understand what she is saying, and sometimes I feel the same when I go to playgroup and its exclusively Polish

However. her wording is racist and for me, inflammatory
Her wording for me indicates a very bad feeling around Muslims. she could have worded it better IMO

so whatever validity she might have, is lost.... as I read a racist twat

and she is ignoring the fact that Acton High Street is 10 minutes away from Chiswick High road which is as white and middle class as you can get, and as I said Acton is becoming more gentrified its just that the High Street is, and always has been, pants!

FGM is the worst, read an article about it and was in floods of tears

I did wonder how she knew they were all Muslim, maybe they were wearing a badge or something. My children look and are white British, they are also muslim.

Part of the issue with people moving out of London is simply house prices. There have been enough debates on here about how London will end up with only wealthy people and people in social housing because no one else can afford to live here.

In Acton (W3) a budget of £300K buys you a flat (max 3 beds but probably 2 bed).

In High Wycombe it gets you at least 3 bed house.

I don't live in london but it seems to me that the cost of living is driving people away, we've been conditioned as a society to live 1 family per house, 1 bedroom per child etc whereas immigrants come from societies which have far less living space per person so are happier to live more people per house therefore decreasing their living costs and more able to stay in central london??

I can say as a white Muslim living in London, that it could potentially be a problem. Where I live there are certain nationalities that refuse to integrate and who don't respect British customs and social etiquette. Hence why so many whites are leaving to move out to Surrey and Sussex to name a few places. What with the gang and knife crime in this area I don't want to bring up my kids here when they reach teenage years because of the types who are at school and advocate gangsta rap/wearing pants round your ass. My kids are mixed with a few nationalities and while I want them to have a rich cultural outlook and have friends of all backgrounds like I do, I'm well aware there are disadvantages to this. I mean mostly the gangsta culture that dominates inner city schools here and the unfortunate hardline religious views that crop up from time to time at our local places of worship. Dh who is North African but British born agrees but doesn't know whether to move or to stay. This is my experience anyway but I think unless people learn English properly, integrate themselves and their families and learn social norms, the white flight issue will become a standard thing.

I think people need to be able to debate immigration; it needs to be a mainstream issue because otherwise it's parties like BNP or UKIP who control the debate.

The writer is perfectly entitled to her opinion, it's one view ( and remember it's in The Daily Telegraph.)

"It is quite apparent though, that our DCs were in the minority as white British in their primary school and this is in the leafy 'burbs.' Nothing wrong with that but I am not entirely comfortable that they are effectively a minority group. "

I know. I really massively struggled with this too, but I am over it. anyway my DC are half Latino anyway, so I need to shut the fxxk up!!!

and when I leave London I get bored by the lack of diversity, and the endless parades of scone and tea cosy shops

AND its all down to money, if you send your child to school in Kew/Chswick its WASP central

Yes DDs school is really diverse and I live in a multicultural area- I would die of boredom in one of those suffocating, affluent market towns, which always seem to be held up as some kind of ideal. I love cities.

Exactly fromparistoberlin, the alternative is the predominantly white British communities of towns outside London.

Which is fine and horses for courses and all that.

But I actually enjoy living in an ethnically diverse area of south east London with it's halal butchers and Polish delicatessans.

However it is a good cultural mix and I think that is the key.

I wouldn't really want to live in an area which was predominantly Asian or Eastern European with mostly shops or services specifically catering for these communities.

Because I would feel like an outsider.

And I speak as someone who is an immigrant originally and not British born.

But I think London is a different 'country' to the rest of England.

I have always loved London and wanted to live here. It's ethnic diversity massively appealed to me and while I enjoy visiting and travelling outside of London I have never aspired to live there.

Depends whereabouts in the city you live though. I thought my part was great when I first moved here but things have gotten to me a lot now. Particularly religious views around here as well as going to the local shop to top electricity up and the terrible English spoken by the owners, who are pretty rude as it is. I'm originally from Sussex and while I don't enjoy the quiet and lack of culture and diversity, I sure as hell appreciate getting away from London to go there to visit family.

I haven't read the article. I live in an area of Greater London that has become progressively Asian (and in the last 10 years more Muslim) in the 20 years we've been here. In fact when we were looking to move prior to DD's birth the estate agent, rather than ask us why we wanted to move, said very casually 'Oh yeah, all the whites are moving out of xxxxx...'

Like Tiggy, we don't have any non-halal butchers beyond Lidl and Tesco Extra, all the local restaurants are Indian (or chicken shops - I think someone once calculated our area has more chicken shops per head of population than anywhere in the UK!) and any time any venue of size closes down it reopens as an Asian wedding venue. The cinema shows the main releases and loads of Bollywood films. We have 4 cake shops selling egg free cakes, you have to order in a 'trad' cake if you want it. DD is one of 2 white children in her year.

But the reasons we moved here are the reasons we stay. Lovely green areas, great neighbours, really quick & convenient commute into the City, 10 minutes drive from the countryside, lovely big houses for your money (although our neighbours don't get why we have restored the original fireplace & other fixtures instead of making it all nice and plastic modern like theirs!) and really good schools.

Funnily enough my SIL who lives 5 miles down the road in a white MC enclave keeps asking us when we're going to move, why we keep living here, don't we feel weird being the only white people when we go to the local cinema and why don't we go elsewhere to see a film (WTAF?) and suchlike. So that mentality definitely exists.

The only time it's bothered me is when DD was small and I was looking for mum friends, as I felt very isolated. I joined the NM meet a mum thing and all the messages for this area were from Muslim mothers who were looking exclusively for other Muslim women to meet. That did make me feel a bit meh. I had precisely no responses to my message and didn't meet other mothers til DD started nursery and school.

I must say though, going back to the article, my experience of Muslim shopkeepers couldn't be more different. I have to stop them from pressing sweets on DD every time I go in and I regularly get addressed as 'sister'. Lots of eye contact. We are now getting loads of Eastern Europeans moving into the area - funnily enough I went into the newsagents a few weeks ago and there was a new (Asian) guy on the till. When I went to pay he gave me a funny look and asked 'where are you from?' I said Liverpool, thinking he meant my accent, and he went mad with excitement. A real live English person! He'd moved over from Germany a month before and apparently I was the first one he'd met....:) And my lovely Anglo-Asian neighbour was muttering to me over the fence about all these Eastern European immigrants coming over here and opening their own shops and not mixing...:)

The only thing i have to point out is that i've met many Muslims of various racial backgrounds who actually describe themselves as 'White' in real life & in surveys / censuses too.... so maybe the data isn't exactly correct?

lovecat I think you are in a similar area to me!

I like to sometimes go to the white middle class enclave at weekends (should my tea cosy and scented soaps stock be running low) but then I also like to go to the other local high street and buy pound shop cack and ethnic foods

Its horses for courses, and I think you can't choose to live in a major capital city and not accept there will be a mix

I also laugh (bitterly) at the clash between the white EE and the second/third generation blacks and asians- they flipping hate each other

and lets face it white middle class enclaves are all over London, for the wealthier

Second paragraph, "even the [...] Indian takeaway [is] Halal"

That doesn't seem particularly massively odd to me, certainly not justifying an "even".

Story here also:

www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f475a4a8-4a15-11e2-a7b1-00144feab49a.html

I wonder if London will follow the trend of Detroit.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_profile_of_Detroit#Data_Chart

1.5 million whites, 0.3 million non-whites in 1950

Today, 75,000 whites (probably less by now), 0.64 million non-whites.

It's actually only since 2000, when the white population had fallen to 10%, that the non-whites began to follow suit - this following 50 years of decline in the white population.

I would suggest that demographic trends in London will continue - white British will leave, and the government intends to replace these with new immigrants.

Eventually this will no longer be sustainable and the city will go into decline.

I certainly won't be spending a million pounds for a 500 sq ft flat in Chelsea.....

follow suit and leave, that is.

"But I think London is a different 'country' to the rest of England."

Exactly, and makes a nonsense of:

".,,to think that the increasing White Flight from our Cities is a very worrying development?"

Hmn. I think she's talking bollocks about Acton, an area I know quite well.

And this: "In the Nineties, when I arrived, this part of Acton was a traditional working-class area" If by traditional she means white, no it wasn't.

Plus, you know, indigenous white people are part of the segregation. The article has an odd logic. It says the white people have gone. It tacitly blames the immigrants for the state of play, which she says is faintly hostile separatism, not recognising her own faint hostility and generalising. But it is hard to integrate with people who don't live in your area.

Her airy reference to racism is irritating too-part of why we are where we are now is because of the deeply antagonistic reaction immigrants coming here faced in the 40s-60s. That stuff isn't exactly over, either.

And a lot of this is about economics, not race/culture/religion. Rising house prices mean people often cash in, moving away to larger homes with gardens etc, or are forced to move to afford any housing. The existing social housing or poor quality private housing is filled by more recent immigrants. Twas ever thus, in London.