London

[User452734838]

I was in London earlier this week and it was manic. Everyone rushing around, tubes packed, people rushing down escalators when the tubes are 2 mins apart. Road noise, Sirens everywhere, People getting trains home at 7.30pm to commute an hour, people stood up on this train. As someone who only visits now and again on business it left me shattered and I was only there a day!

Is this just something you get used to in London? Is late working the norm? Travelling for what seems like hours either way to do a job?

It did feel alive though! Is this part of the attraction or is it a case of being born there and knowing nothing else?

I was glad to get back up North where the pace of life is so much less frenetic. We do have to put up with the awful weather though! It was definitely warmer in London 😂

I am a Londoner. I won't claim to being an afficionado of the creative industry but look how many films are now made in the studios around London - both Hollywood and Bollywood. Again, the correction to the £ has really helped this.

As far as talent goes - I don't see why it should be so much more difficult for creative talent from Australia or Guyana to come here than it is for creative talent from Bulgaria and Romania.

We have 3 million more EU citizens living in the UK than we have Brits living in EU. This disparity says alot about the attractivenesa of London. There is no reason why this shouldn't continue - it's just that they will need a work permit (just like people from non EU countries, and just like it was before 1997 or whenever we agreed to free movement).

I've lived there. I wouldn't now, and when I visit, there's definitely bits I avoid. Parts of London are wonderful and the energy can be compelling for a while but you couldn't pay me to live there now.

I like to visit, if only to remind myself why I don't want to ever bloody live there again!

Ah, nice to see that you have the grand disdain for the plight of the little folk who will lose their homes, livelihoods and food in "the corrections" and "adjustments".

Oh, to be so cushioned against the sharp bits of history.

That readjustment in sterling is already costing most families dear in the weekly shop - but I guess someone, somewhere is making a bit of a profit (though I wonder how long that will continue with tarriffs for exports and no less disposable income for the internal market).

And the lovely idea of the streets of London being lined with cheap housing is a dream built on the desire for some people to lose their homes - but let's skip over the darker side to that dream of pennies from heaven because ... London home-owners deserve to be homeless, yeah?
Selfish bastards!!

Right now, there are people who can't afford food. That's going to get worse. Personally, I can't bring myself to wave that away as a "little readjustment" in the value of sterling.

But I guess you don't notice the foodbanks in your bit of London.

It takes me an hour to get to work
That’s a walk through a lovely wooded park where I can see herons by a pond, geese, ducks etc
Then I walk along a river for a bit, along a pavement for 15 mins, past a huge stately home and back into another park where I quite often see horses.

I cross a main road and I’m at work

Where do I live? Zone 1/2 SW London. I work in the end...
Battersea park, Pimlico, past Buck palace, through green park

Not all commutes mean your face in an armpit
On the days I can’t walk, or the weather is awful, I get a bus that takes the same route in about 45 mins

London was pretty creative long before we joined the EU. No reason why this should suddenly change

It's already happening. Anyone involved in film/TV knows that Brexit has seen massive changes already.

I think it'll become even more Global... attracting the best people from all over the world

I admire your optimism.

I have more concern for regenerating manufacturing in places like Coventry and elsewhere than I hae for very wealthy German bankers going back to Frankfurter. If imported food continues to be a price issue - it will force us to buy more domestically - good for the little people in agriculture.

All of the above will create and sustain jobs in the UK (thus funding the NHS).

Kent is producing some excellent sparkling wine. Open a bottle of that rather than Champagne or Prosecco. It's greener too!

I used to work in London, and found it hellish.

Then I moved to Tokyo, and saw sights like this.

uk.video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=mcafee&p=tokyo+rush+hour+train#id=1&vid=bf47036fae6bafed86cbf9023d2cb688&action=click

London is nowhere near as bad. I read recently that of the 50 busiest railway stations in the world, 46 are in Japan, including the top 26.

FuckIt and Rosa Yes - the parakeets seem to be a South London thing. I'm waiting for them to be spotted on the other side of the Thames.

Might be easier to watch on youtube.

www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=54&v=pRBLnth4oSg

I miss London sooooo much.

Wouldn't you agree that creating jobs in the UK delivers more to the NHS than spending our €120B creating jobs mainly in Germany?

I'm sure they are in Green Park too.

BadLad I'm desperate to visit Tokyo.

I like the fact that London has so many parks and commons, where anyone can go and spend time.

I grew up in the countryside and we used to get told off by farmers and gamekeepers if we went for a walk along a designated public path. We couldn't play in the field behind our house because the gamekeeper warned my parents he'd shoot us! And the path my school's cross-country run took was blocked (illegally) by the local farmer so often that games lessons were moved to the afternoon so that teachers could run the course ahead of us, unblocking it.

Honestly, it was like being at sea: countryside, countryside everywhere - but none of it to actually go in! Just for looking at (and remembering that you don't own it).

It's really made me appreciate the fact that there are public spaces you have free access to in London.

I love London. My mother's family are from Lewisham way and it is very handy to go and stay. I live up north now in a vibrant and culturally diverse city and enjoy being patronised by friends who moved to Surrey

Melody , that 120bn is context dependent - on people having jobs, on being able to construct a manufacturing industry, on being able to replace the sectors we lose, etc., etc.

It has exactly the same status as the 350m for the NHS.

I'm expecting Aron Banks - and his odd, untraceable little friends - to bankroll a bus with that on it any day now.

part of it has been the intangible element of the London 'vibe': tolerant, welcoming, a global world city, socially liberal

This was the case in the 1960's and even in the 1950s with waves of immigrants largely welcomed and integrated (far, far better than cities like Paris and Brussels I might add). There is no reason why his shouldn't continue if we level the playing field for people from Lesotho and Lithuania)

Also, why should it be so much easier for people from 27 white, prosperous countries to live and work here? Wouldn't the global vibe of London become even more diverse if we levelled the playing field?

Which city, willstart ?

I love cities. I sometimes think that Heidegger wouldn't have gone so wrong, or perhaps just less wrong, if he had been a little more city-centric in his writing.

that 120bn is context dependent
Not sure what that means. The fact of this figure is that we UK spends this much more (€120B every year) funding jobs in countries that contribute nothing to the NHS. There is absolutely nothing we buy from them that we couldn't make here. Not one thing.

Melody Again with the disregard for the little people caught in the wheels of events.

"Levelling the playing field" - you make it sound as though we widened access, when what we've done is told a whole load of people who were already here that they are unwelcome (and are going to stop the free movement we had, rather than widen it).

That is the opposite of giving out a "We're Open" vibe.

How on earth can you perform the mental contortions that equate closing access with becoming more welcoming? Thou art truly the veritable gymnast of conceptual contortion and the epitome of equivocation.

Born and bred in London.

Lived just outside Cambridge and Leicester for a bit and had to wait 20 mins for a bus. Fuck that. The locals said I got lucky.

Though I do think there’s something idillic living and bringing children up in suburbia or rural but we’ll cross that bridge when it comes

Melody - as Tatiana has pointed out - we buy because we don't make.

You can't rustle up a manufacturing industry like a set of Dr Oetker packet-based muffins. It takes more than water, an egg and an oven. It takes buildings, materials, training, and trade deals. Which take time. And investment.

And no-one is investing here at the moment. It's not a good bet. Because the returns on that investment are never going to compete - globally - with investments in other parts of the developing world, the second world, and the EU.

I lived for eleven years in London, almost 8 of which in Mile End/Bow which is in zone 2. It was definitely a mad, wonderful place to live but like some pp have said, we built up a strong community there in a block of flats. On the outside (before all the regentrification) it didn't look like much, just a housing estate, but it was full of so many lovely people and cafes. I still miss my neighbour's. I only saw one incident in all that time in the supposedly rough streets of central east London and felt safe walking at night. Just remembered the brilliant Scottish couple who lived a couple of doors down! We've just moved to another big city in UK and really pleasantly surprised by the experience. I think I dream of a rural existence but love the openness, acceptance and options of things to do in a city

That is the opposite of giving out a "We're Open" vibe

We're open (actually far more open than Germany, France or Belgium) to uncontrollable access for people from 27 predominantly white prosperpus nations. What's global about that?

Ask amy of the little people (especially unskilled labourers in construction) what impact this has had. Here's a comment from another thread from someone in the know

We are also seeing a gradual decline in the use of cheap, european labour that has caused us issues in the construction industry. I think this is probably more to do with the falling value of the £ vs the €. So £300 a week was enough to pay digs and send a good whack home. Now the whack going home isn't worth as much so the european gangmasters aren't getting away with paying £50 a day for a skill set worth at least £120. Which makes more work available for us. Who can charge a reasonable rate to pay our lads a reasonable wage

I am all for the little people.

Anyway. No more.

I like the fact that, even though I live in an unglamorous bit of London, I can still get my palm read by an Indian tarot reader, get a blessing from an African shaman, buy vintage clothes and rose petal jam along with my food shopping.

We’re north of the river (West London) and have parakeets.