Please tell me why anyone would want to live in London

[Lloyd46]

I love London to visit, but I am glad to leave. Please tell me why anyone would pay extashionate prices to live in an over crowded, expensive place, why not live on the out skirts and pop in and out when you feel like it?

it's safe for my children to play out on the streets without having to worry about dealers hanging around or fighting spilling on to the streets and I don't have to spend my time looking out for needles if I take them to the play park.
I think you've been watching too much Blade Runner!
As I said before, most of us lead perfectly ordinary, quiet family lives if we CHOOSE to. I don't buy into the competitive parenting thing Although DD is at a zine 2 independent. DH and I both had London childhoods, we don't see any need for tutoring, improving activities or perfect homework.
DS has ASD and it has been amazing living here for the number of clubs and activities etc for disabled people and access to support.

Competitive parenting depends where you live and who you mix with. And the kind of school you send your DC to.

Don't see much of it in Lewisham, that I've noticed anyway.

Because as a black person with mixed children it can prove tricky living in a place were no one looks like you or or children

it's safe for my children to play out on the streets without having to worry about dealers hanging around or fighting spilling on to the streets and I don't have to spend my time looking out for needles if I take them to the play park.

*my friend lives in Margate they have really bad issues with drugs she dosent like to live by the sea side and is loosing her daughter to it there is also zero work in the winter

I think I might start a thread titled 'Pleaae tell me why anyone would want to live in Scotland' and go on about how Scottish people are all really tight and alcoholics and all live on deep fried Mars bars.

It's general attitudes and the fact that I find children stay children a lot longer in other places. I grew up having to be very aware of safety around the stabbing of teens as it was a genuine problem and it's just not something even on the radar where I am now and I prefer that.

a quick look at the crime statistics will show that London is not even remotely the most dangerous place in the UK.

we left London for a little holiday on the coast (SE) and it was downright scary. Empty streets, men loitering looking threatening, and an all round feeling of a depressed place.

London has some grit, but not danger, and it certainly never feels depressed.

No idea if it's the same elsewhere.

I don't think so.

There are a couple of Ofsted outstanding schools here that are reputed to have such parents (as well as some good schools), but we've got a lovely community school. Mixed backgrounds ethnically and economically. Great head teacher. Relaxed but have a vision.

If your child is crying doing homework, that's a problem.

I've never in my life had to worry about a drug dealer on the street or needles in playgrounds. There are dodgy areas everywhere and not in most of London. Neither have I ever come across a gang or needed to discuss gang cultural. I know it exists but that's not an essential part of a London childhood.

Competitive parenting, yes I agree, it's rampant and a big downside.

Conversely I grew up in a small Surrey town which was full of competitive parenting (mostly competitive mothering, as the father's all worked in the City), and you couldn't go anywhere as either the traffic was too dangerous or the area was deemed to be full of crime (more likely, just poorer people and maybe, gasp, a non-white person to stare at!)

My area of London is hugely chilled out in comparison - the competitive types have moved out to SW London or the Home Counties and most parents left are quietly ambitious and supportive of their kids.

This is just my personal experience of course, but I feel growing up in London made me grow up less fast than people I know who grew up in the country or the suburbs/small towns. Though I guess it depends how you measure that. I was quite mature in the sense I was doing things (like youth theatre) to pursue my career ambitions from a very young age.

Most people I know who grew up in more rural areas seemed to experiment with alcohol and sex at a younger age, for lack of anything better to do. When I hear people talking about spending their teen years at house parties or hanging around bus shelters and in fields with cider, or experimenting with drugs, I think of that as being more of a rural/suburban thing. Amongst my friends who grew up here, none of us really did any of that until university age.

I've never in my life seen a dealer or needles in London. I have seen them in various places outside of London. I guess I know some areas near where I live where you can tell from the smell that's where people go to smoke weed. But honestly apart from 'The Groucho Club' or 'the BAFTAs after-party' I don't have the slightest clue where anyone would go to score. It's certainly not something you'd just trip over.

My husband grew up in Belfast

We're people would rountinly disappear if you went down the wrong street you could be knee capped his mate when he was 14 got a flat tyre down near a notiours Protestant area and he was never seen again no trace of him never left dh

Belfast was awash with guns and even now there estates you wouldn't want to be stuck as a teenager of the wrong coumminty London is walk in the park I never even seen a gun or had to deal with any no go areas when I was growing up nor ds

I grew up in Honour Oak so I know Lewisham. There wasn't any competitive parenting in the 80's though😅. I agree it's my experience at an ofsted outstanding school in an area where there were 60 children who didn't have a primary school place in my son's year. Everyone was competitive. The constant talk of secondary schools started in year 1 along with the tutoring. Just on that basis, it feels better here. And I had literally never lived outside the M25 until the age of 42!!

I find it odd that Londoners can be simultaneously attacked for living in a privileged bubble divorced from the real life problems that face the rest of the country and for exposing their children to a den of deprivation where they probably have to dodge bullets on the way to school.

Fwiw my dd is only in year 1 but I have yet to hear her describe anything as babyish. She's currently watching a little people dvd belonging to her little sister "because she likes it". She doesn't seem to be growing up any faster than any other 5 year old.

Longestlurker, you are obviously bringing her up wrong, if she lives in London your dd should be out mugging old ladies and shoplifting by the age of 5

I have lived in London for my whole life. I've never been offered drugs on the street and have never been a victim of crime. I currently live in a prolific part of London, which gets a terrible press but is actually amazing to live in. Again, no offers of drugs or crime!

On the other hand, whilst visiting friends in a beautiful seaside town in the South West, I saw 4 people collecting and drinking their methadone in the local Boots. I was in there for 5 minutes.

No judgement. Just my personal experiences. Oh and you can horse ride in London too.

I left London 4.5years ago and not a day goes by that I don't regret it. When I return it feels like I'm entering back into an elicit love affair, I specifically go without children or husband and carve out hours for me and the city.

There is nowhere like it on earth and most of my favorite humans live there which makes it even more enticing.

Littleprincess, I totally agree. I'm in my 40's and have no idea and never had any idea where to get drugs. My eldest is 14 and other than being a dab hand getting round carnaby street and navigating the sweet department of Selfridges I certainly wouldn't say he's very grown up. His interests are still mainly playing football with his friends. He loves fashion like many other 14 year olds but drinking, sex and drugs are so far from his radar at the moment. And, like 14 year olds all over the country with involved and sensible parents he isn't wandering any streets of an evening to even begin to get into nighttime trouble. If he's out in the evening it's at a party where he's dropped and picked up and where we've confirmed parents are going to be in attendance or at someone's house where again there will be an adult. I'm fairly sure that's not much different to children anywhere else

I've lived here for 25 years and my only experience of crime has been getting my bike nicked in 1997. And the only place I've seen used needles lying around is Hastings.

I live in central London and there are things that I hate here, but high crime isn't one of them.

I live in London because it is a world city and not in the least parochial.

I genuinely do not understand why anyone would want to live anywhere but London (in the UK)

It's where I was born and grew up.

Its all about the diversity of London. I grew up there then my Mother (who grew up in Somerset) insisted we move. Since then I have lived witin easy commuting distance and work in Central London.
When I visit relatives in in the South West I am appalled by some of their narrow views and reluctance to accept anyone or anything slightly different.
Anyway they are happy being who they are and living where they are and the same goes for me.
As to crime, I have seen more drug dealing on the street outside of London than I have ever seen in London.

I've never seen needles anywhere other than a hospital, but I do clearly remember the bloke who used to stand outside Brixton tube every night saying 'hash weed, hash weed'

Does no one else remember him?! Must have been early 2000s?

That said, I grew up in Somerset, and the ice cream man used to deal Class As, and parked up outside the school to do it, so it is absurd to suggest it it a London thing

I remember him Spare, I used to pass him on my way to work experience in maybe 2000/2001?

To be fair, if you want to find drugs, you will. But that's the same as pretty much anywhere. As a teenager there was some teen-on-teen crime, particularly towards the lads, but then my 19yo cousin was the victim of a 'targeted' hit and run in rural Australia so I'm not sure that violent crime is exclusive to London or indeed the U.K.

No one's saying it's perfect, but it's closer to perfect in terms of tolerance and culture than a great deal of the rest of the country.