to think that there is the UK and then there is London?

[Bogeyface]

These are generalisations based on MN, personal experience and friends btw, so they probably wont stand up to scrutiny!

Seems to me that London is a different world! In London you pay £20ph for a cleaner, other people paint your lounge, you put private education above having a nice home, half an hour on a train is "around the corner" and 2 hours on the train can still have you in the same town.

And then you get non London, which means £10ph is pushing it for a cleaner (she had better be good!), you paint your own lounge, you move to get a good state school or supplement a crappy school with home ed, half an hour in a train gets you to the next town and 2 hours gets you to the seaside!

Absolutely not a criticism of Londoners or their lives, I adore London and wish I could afford to live there! But I do feel that there is a wide gulf of "normal" between Londoners and the rest of us! I sometimes think it should be classified like The Vatican, a country within a country! Might work taxwise for Londoners, thinking about it!

AIBU?

There's a wide gulf in London tbh. Not everyone in London is loaded by any stretch, there are some really poor areas. It's weird area where there's not a lot of distance between two wildly different sets of people.

gets popcorn, sits back

(sorry, did not realise the twitter convention of asterisking an action would embolden it)

I think YABU.

You are talking about how rich people in London live, most Londoners are not rich and don't live in the way you describe.

I live in London and I can be at the seaside in less than 2 hours.

I'm not sure. I've never even been to "that London" so don't know what the reality is like .

Maybe you are right though, as it always amazes me how far people are happy to commute to their London jobs (on MN that is).

I don't know anyone in RL with a commute longer than 45 mins each way.

Erm, I'm in London. It's a tenner for a cleaner round here, everyone I know painted their own lounge, no one can afford private education, and I can be at the seaside in under 2 hours.
Don't confuse London and Chelsea please. As MoG said, London's big, so it's even harder to generalise about it than about other places.

I totally agree that there is a massive gulf in London, but it is disappearing because of the cost of living, so London is becoming a place for only the very rich, or rather, those that are wealthier than the rest of the country.

I am not slagging anyone off!

I dont want a bun fight! I was just musing, which in hindsight isnt a good thing to do on AIBU!

What she said ^

Although I did get someone to paint my lounge.

Private education and a house - Hahahaha. If only we could get a house.

Yeah but what do you do about it. I really don't know. Our jobs are here, as are friends and family. Everyone says 'Leave London!' but it's never that simple is it. It depresses me OP!

I hated London when I worked in it (for several years) - but was only an hour by train to home (by the sea). I used to more or less breathe out after we left East Croydon and you could begin to see trees between the buildings. Yes, London has loads of things to do and see, but it's such an artificial, manmade environment - not my thing at all. Nowadays I live in the middle of rural nowhere, Ireland, and I love it - but you could say that Dublin is a different country from the rest of Ireland - and to a far greater extent than London is different from most of the UK. Out here, we don't have mainline gas, nor a sewerage system, no deliveries from supermarkets ,nor delivery food. I think most of the UK has access to those, no?

I live in London and believe me there is a massive gulf between the 'posh' part of London and the rest of it (where I live).

Where I live, most cleaners/gardeners/handy men etc are foreign and earn the most paltry (well below NMW) cash in hand money. Many 'employers' take the piss royally and treat them like shit (again just my view).

The gulf isn't closing at all...if anything it's widening all the time.

YANBU. Whenever I visit friends in other parts of the country I get housing-envy... but I'd still far rather live here than anywhere else. All my friends, work and opportunities, culture and leisure - I'm from the north west and there wasn't anything like the same in terms of chances to have different experiences. Granted it's expensive and in some parts dirty, highly unequal; but I wouldn't swap it.

I think London is like a love affair. At least I get that from friends who live there, they can see the bad bits, they hate the bad bits, but they would still rather be in London than anywhere else. It seems to have seduced them!

I know people outside London who have longer than a 45 hour commute. If you rely on public transport and have to get 2 buses for example, it is easy to get above 45 minutes.

so London is becoming a place for only the very rich, or rather, those that are wealthier than the rest of the country

It really really isn't.

I know it wasn't your intention bogeyface, but this is going to turn into a London bashing thread. The bashers typically being people who have never lived here, only having visited.

Grennie Firstly, I think you meant 45 minutes not hours, at least I hope you did! :o

Secondly, I can drive from my house to the town hospital in 8 -12 minutes depending on the time of day. It takes 45 minutes if the buses are running on time, but everyone allows a good hour because usually they are not. If I was a nurse who couldnt drive then my commute would be (home to bus stop, bus to work) over an hour, to go 4 miles.

I would never leave London. I hate it but I can't leave as it's so vibrant, such a useful place to live - it's not at all only for wealthy people. sure it makes it easier - but I live here with DS and we do so many things for free - all the museums, for example - and so many shows and events every weekend.
I don't have to drive anywhere so no car to run. I think I did get someone to paint my (rented, yes) flat - and yes my commute currently takes 45-55 mins and people tell me it's so close, just up the road.

But I love London and tis so very diverse you cannot compare London to the rest of the country - it's a microcosm of the country all smushed together in about 20 small towns joined up.

Bogey may have a point there - there are fast ways to commute and slow ways. Buses in rush hour - not so good, for instance. It's really not a bad place to live.

having read the thread I see ^ what Bogey was saying. I have to venture to hospitals for work outside main London - into zone 6, or surrey, or kent etc. I am always panicking because the transport links at the other end of my train journey might stitch me up. I once waited 40 mins for a bus to a hospital from the train station I arrived at, missing a meeting I had - but no other means of transport in sight.
At least in London there are always multiple routes to get to places.

I suppose I just feel that expectations are so at odds with the rest of the country that it might as well be a different county on its own.

The idea that you could walk less than a few hundred yards to get a train that will take you to (what is for me) the next but one town, for the same price as it costs (in my town) got go 2 miles is a fantasy!

I am not saying its wrong I would live in London in a heartbeat if I could afford it, just that those expectations only seem to exist in London. But then, you pay in terms of the cost of living. Its a bit like Monaco which is French but not France. London is English but not England iykwim.

I grew up in the middle of London. Council flat, mother was a cleaner, parents did the decorating, mother made clothes because buying wasn't an option.

I see the same here, there's Chile and there's Santiago. One family lost a few billion dollars in the 2008 crash and hardly noticed, yet others are paíd £150 Per. Month for 14 hour days of menial work, 6 or 7 days a week. And the percepción is that all Santiagans are loaded.

And in Panamá we were told that when people say Panamá they mean Panama City. Plenty of less Well off people there too. And Caracas.

I just left London.

Most people sleep in their lounge due to high housing costs meaning overcrowding is the norm. My old neighbours really envied the fact I got my own bedroom when we moved.

An hour is perfectly reasonable each way to work. What is not reasonable is imitating an oxygen starved Sardine to get there. It takes longer if you have to get the bus because you can't afford the train fare.

Fruit and veg is cheap and everyone uses exotic spices from the local ethnic supermarket in their cooking. Mums stand around scratching their heads from time to time chatting to the neighbours over what to do with the £2 box of 30 mangoes you all just bought at 4pm on Saturday, that will be gone off by Monday if you can't find room in the freezer or make chutney out of them. The street markets are rivalled by no other city in the world.

No one wears their shoes in the house, not because they are terribly house proud but because the pavements are covered in dog poo (or at least you hope it's dog poo!). By the same token you need a dark coat if you travel on public transport (good luck finding a parking space, much less affording it if you don't).

Asking for directions just isn't something you do when visiting a new area, because noone is likely to speak English. Visiting an area you last visited 5 years ago can be very strange as it will look totally different due to becoming a regeneration zone.

The museums and parks are free and fantastic. There is always a free course or exhibition or activity or show to go/see/do.

There are broadband blackspots though in some of the most unlikely locations (the Isle of Dogs, just down the road from canary wharf for instance) that rival those found in mid Wales.

People have dinner parties, and drinks in private homes as nobody can afford to go to the pub any more. (Even if they can, chances are their local has been converted into a Betting Shop by now anyway). Working hours are so long that really only school children have decent social lives.

I miss London .

I used To have an hour's commute, when I was persuaded To leave London but still worked there. That was when the trains home weren't delayed. 2 hours was frequent but luckily I only had a couple of four hour journeys in five years. That was Pre DCs so it only meant I missed dinner on Those days. I did look for work locally but even taking into account rail fair I still couldn't afford the drop in salary.

so London is becoming a place for only the very rich, or rather, those that are wealthier than the rest of the country.

I will open the can of worms, because I can.

I see a different sort of London, one where true locals are outpriced and their areas are taken over by immigrants on HB. The likes of Plumstead, Woolwich, Thamesmead, Abbey Wood are on my doorstep.

Now I shall sit back with the popcorn.

You're talking class. Not location. That wealthy people congregate in the south east is a coincidence.