To hate this Kind of sneering attitude to places outside London

[wasonthelist]

"many things in life would be better and cheaper if we all just gave up and moved to that six-bed detached in Ashby De La Zouch. But could you really subsist in a place where the height of culinary pleasure is unlimited smarties on your ice cream at the local carvery?"

I am not sure if the author, Caroline Mginn, who wrote that in Time Out -
a) Really believes that Ashby has such limited culinary offerings (it doesn't)?
b) Thought she was preaching to the converted and no-one outside London would read it?

If that's the case I'm terribly sorry, but I must say that my explicitly non-gendered classes have been amazing and I've never found that elsewhere. Maybe this is a sign london is shit and you're all running around asking each other's pronouns and enacting safe space policies everywhere else. If that's the case - soz.

pipbin

It's mainly to do with being "different" I suppose - I am half English, half Italian and grew up in a 3rd European country - dh's family is from India though he came here when he was 10. So yes the dc do go to a very cosmopolitan school where they do not stand out at all - they are part of things and not seen as different because everyone is different.

Our street is also very mixed in terms of nationality so the same applies there.

Things like that more than places of worship as we are not religious. Though I am sure that does impact a lot of people.

separated and Xena I live in an absolutely beautiful small town in the north where we train and develop the people who make all that cutting-edge theatre, dance, and art that you are so superior about seeing. We train 'em and make 'em. You simply consume.

Where do you live fog if you can say, it sounds lovely.

Jogging on the Cornish coastal path also sounds lovely.

Sigh.

And bokid you don't seriously think that the lifestyle yku describe is unique to London? It sounds like s fairly normal week for me, except that I also own a large 5 bedroom house, and can afford to travel wherever I like - even London! - but can come home and breathe fresh air.

This thread is pathetic

Fog - well then thanks! I wasn't trying to be a knob, sorry if I came across that way but sometimes as someone who is from London, and has left, and come back, it gets tiring having people constantly banging on about all the reasons that London is shite.

I love visiting London and do so a couple of times a month, have lived there at various times, and in different bits of it. But what pisses me off is the assumption that all the cutting edge "culture" only happens in lo don. Where I live I have seen and still see major international artists (I doubt you've heard of Goat Island or Station house Opera) and saw other artists before they were famous (have you done a workshop with Akram Khan?) And a new show of that sort every week. I think so-called cultural Londoners can be complacent about London and ignorant of what's happening elsewhere.

But people like me get the last laugh really - big houses in the centre of town rather than Zone 4 suburbia, walk everywhere rather than awful crowded slow transport, local events, and we can afford to enjoy London, and go home to fresh air.

What is serious about this debate, whatever tbe joke of the original satire about ADLZ is that there is a serious and inequitable as well as iniquitous imbalance of funding - of all sorts - between Lindon and the rest of the country, especially the North, where museums are being closed, while the ROH continues on with direct subsidy of millions. There is no sense in which the National Theatre, for example, is in any way national. Particularly in comparison with the National Theatre's if Wales and Scotland, which have taken a far more equitable approach to the concept of "national".

Fog I think we're probably on the same side here. I don't think that this stuff doesn't exist outside of London, at all. I just think that the sheer volume makes it a lot easier, for me, to see and do the stuff I want to see at the times I want to see and do it. Again, apologies for coming across as a knob.

I've lived outside of London and loved it and done loads of great stuff but it was rarely easy enough to just throw my coat on and see something on a whim. I came back here because for the sector I'm in, the jobs are concentrated here for the most part. But I'll stop digging.

But you're right - the funding situation is a mess, and seriously needs addressing.

Separated - I think the rest of the country was laughing at the assumption that dance classes outside London invariably enforce rigid gender-based dancing, rather than at the idea that those outré metropolitans can lead AND follow at the same class.

Exactly that. It was the 'gender neutral' but that made me chuckle.

Pretty sure I've already addressed that it is a specifically gender neutral studio, with a safe space policy, and that sets it aside. I never wanted to be a cunt about London, I was never sneering at the world outside of London but the dance school that has given me the confidence and sisterhood I have lacked all my life is important to me. I hope I'm mistaken and this does exist elsewhere. Sorry. [VIDEO REMOVED BY MNHQ to protect third party at poster's request] From about 9.58 onwards explains why I care so much. Again, sorry if I sounded like a london wanker but this shit matters and is not as common as I wish it were.

Sorry, but you are a bit of a "London wanker" to assume that a dance studio like Irreverent Dance only exists in London. It sounds like the various studios I've danced at all over the place. At one, I shared a ballet class with a dancer with Downs. At another, an obvious transwoman (who was a nuisance but not because of her sex/gender dysmorphia - she was disruptive for all sorts of reasons). All welcomed (and the transwoman tolerated in spite of behaviour which should have had her chucked out for safety reasons). All inclusive - any adult ballet class one goes to is tolerant; most good teachers want you to work with the body you have.

I've looked at the details of that studio, and if they're putting very heavy dancers on pointe with only a couple of hours of ballet technique per week, they are doing something very unsafe, and potentially downright dangerous. Not good.

We have this thing in London called irony. A lot of people here seem to be missing it.

"I am not sure if the author, Caroline Mginn, who wrote that in Time Out -
a) Really believes that Ashby has such limited culinary offerings (it doesn't)?
b) Thought she was preaching to the converted and no-one outside London would read it?"

Get a grip!!

Fog.. your attitude is exactly the sort that gets people from London so defensive. Also your preposterous statement that your northern city produces the stuff we merely consume is totally erroneous.

You mean to say your city produces more actors, directors, playwrights, dancers, choreographers etc than the RADA, Central school, Guildhall, Rose Bruford, e15, webber Douglas, Mount view, the poor school etc? That more artists are trained than at the Slade, Central St Martins, The Royal Academy and the other art schools? That more new theatre is produced than at the fringe theaters of the dolnmar, Algeria, trycicle and about ten more? That it hhas as vibrant a music scene as you would find in lots of London boroughs? That it has more prestigious places to train than the ones named above?

Don't think so. The schoolsolicitor med above are some of the most prestigious internationally and competition to get in is fierce.

So now your point has been disproven, back to the provinces with you, you slack jawed yokel.

Fog, I'm a musician, teacher and performer. Do you still think I "only consume"? Kindly get your facts straight before you dare to lecture me.

I wouldn't live in the North if you paid me. I don't even care to visit it, frankly. I mean, for starters it's full of people like you who are apparently too dim not to assume.

I don't know which dull provincial town you live in, but it's fairly safe to assume it isn't a patch on London for all the things you claim to produce.

Twice a week theatre?
Several dinners out in a week?

I live in london but i don't live like this. I work in Central London but after work i don't visit galleries and Restaurants. I just pop into Tesco after work!

I still llove London and i enjoyed it before children but nowdays i don't live the London life in the same way. Most of my friends -whith children- don't either.

I thought that Fog was being a bit of an arse to Separated, but then I read your post Xenia and hands down you win twunt of the thread

laq, don't think many people with kids live that kind of lifestyle, even the ones in London (well unless they had a nanny).

I did a lot of it pre children and now mine are older ( one out completely, one at uni, one year 11) I do a lot more.

Lots of Londoners though preen over the "culture" but never really go.

When it comes it restaurants there just is a wider range of food from different cultures, near me we have Ethopian, Braziliian, Polish, Caribbean. Afghan, Phillipino and many more as well as your common/garden Chinese, Indian, Chicken, Pizza. This is not zone 1 either, so lets be honest when you compare the cullinary choice there is just simply more in London by nature of it being more diverse and much larger than any other city in the U.K. Lots of other cities are diverse yes, but not as many cultures/backgrounds as London has.

Also the writer of the article was trying to be funny I think, but as has been said on here before, the snotty attitude of many non-Londoners towards someone else's home is just as bad as the snotty attitude going out.

I'm originally from the North East, I love going back, but I can see why people are attracted London. The economic opportunities are greater, there is a lot more on offer in terms of entertainment. My sister's kids were desperate to get here having exhausted a lot of the opportuinities and things to do in Durham and Newcastle by the age of about 19.

There are arguments for staying out too, property is insanely expensive, its crowded, drinks are expensive and it can be very lonely, especially at the beginning.

Am I allowed to smugly preen over having the best of both worlds? Work in London but live in proper farming country that's near enough to go to the theatre/museums/gigs/ballet/opera a few times a month?

Ahh... in my opinion, it's safe to let Londoners believe what they want. After all, if I convince them how wonderful the Scottish countryside is, they might want to come live here.

Nope, everything outside of London is a backwater. Don't leave London - it's not worth it

Has anyone actually said that though infife? We've almost all said that there is plenty to life outside London.

DH is from the Scottish Borders, its stunning, quiet and has amazing history. But we're city folk and would struggle in the country full time, just like country folk might struggle in the city. Horses for courses and all that.

Hang on, the line in that article is not great but it's obviously exaggerated for comic effect - lazy, yeah, but...

There are definitely some shit parts of Britain. Biggish towns where the mere idea that you might like a particularly nice coffee is looked down on. I haven't been everywhere in the UK but I know there are places where the food is uniformly much crapper than it needs to be given we live in the 21st century.

Not that that London is the be-all-and-end-all, but let's be honest!

I don't know which dull provincial town you live in, but it's fairly safe to assume it isn't a patch on London for all the things you claim to produce.

Anyone who uses the term provincial or the provinces to describe anywhere that isn't London can keep themselves in London as far as I'm concerned. The rest of the country doesn't want you.

I remember Brian Sewell talking about an art exhibition that was in somewhere like Birmingham or Newcastle. His complaint was that it was all very lovely but what is the point of having it there when most of the country live too far away.

I grew up in London and there were certainly some very uninspiring bits of it in the 90's. The saving grace was that you could easily escape to another bit of London.

They have probably improved now, but then so have other parts of the U.K.

You can certainly find very provincial attitudes in London. People who assume that all of London is like Oxford Street and people who assume that nothing interesting happens outside London have a lot in common.

Derelict, there are some god foresaken places in London, lots in the West End too! China Town in paticular can be really hit and miss, you almost have to know what you are looking for. I don't have any experience of anyone in the rest of the country looking down on people for liking coffee.

Pipbin, I think the poster who described things as provincial was responding to another who used the term "London Wanker", there has been a lot of negative things said about Londoners on here, and this gets people behaving defensively.