To ask if London living is all that?

[nellyolsenscurl]

Inspired by a thread where posters are saying things like 'unless you live in London you couldn't possibly understand the benefits' and 'London living is one of the best things a child could have' (paraphrased, but you get the poi t). One poster said that her dd's friend didn't have a bedroom, she had a bed in the hallway but this is worth it for London life etc.

I've visited and yes it does seem amazing, but I was surprised at how busy the underground was at rush hour, I didn't think public transport was that cheap and in some parts the signs about knife crime/murder was daunting. Obviously as well extortionate house prices/rents mean more likelihood of living in a smaller place.

So London Livers (TM) please tell me about the great things (and any negatives) In my dreams when my dc leave the nest I will buy a lift conversion in Neal's Yard with those lovely coloured facades 😬

We may well spend a lot on London transport and the tube drivers are on a starting salary of about £50k, but we have one of the most expensive publc transport systems of a capital city. It costs about £10 a day return just to get from where I live in London to the centre and back at peak hours

why can't they spend an equal amount between some of the biggest cities in the UK

Exactly, if northern England had similar investment to London/SE, they could build an underground high speed railway from Liverpool to Hull, taking in Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield. If the south east can have Crossrail, the north should have something similar.

And yes, I know that London generates more taxation, but that's because the majority of the investment, jobs and opportunities have been prioritised in the south for decades.

It certainly never feels like high spend out here - 1930s stations, pot holes all over, good 20 mins walk to a tube station, rare buses, nothing like the cycling facilities of central London - you could argue the suburbs get the worst of it. The undergrond in London is not exactly state of the art and costs a fortune. We could start with not giving free bus travel to children in London if we needed to save costs and spend more in say Cornwall or Cumbria instead.

Agreed @Barbara.

@ifailed. I read it on Tom forth we never tried, it is an informative piece with a full range of sources that back it up.

@Xenia. Leeds has all that and shitty public transport, so no tram or anything.

They cancelled a tram project in Leeds instead doing the jubilee line refit.
We pay £2.80 whereas it's even £1.50 in London, the government also shown on the tom forth site gives rail subsidies primarily to the south east.

@ifailed. You're also wrong the government does fund tfl, they'd at so themselves. You don't generate enough money that pays for the many billions in projects London gets. Hey cancelled the further electrification of northern railway lines, especially Leeds to Manchester, however had enough for crossrail?

It's about £5.10 from my house to London one way with a big walk or cycle ride first or driving down and parking at the tube. I know Leeds as I have a sibling there and am from Newcastle myself which by the way got that Metro which is much more efficient and posher than vast tranches of the London underground. So good is the metro my mother used to park her car near it and zip into Newcastle for shopping.

I would certainliy cancel HS2 too. At trhe moment I would prefer to see us scrapping all these expensive projects. We need to be cutting right back until we get our spending under control. We are still spending much more than we take in and it cannot go on.

Agreed we need to cut hs2, honestly it's a vanity project.

The fair was an average fair btw

I agree the metro is good but again hasn't had the investment that London has had.

I'd cancel HS2 because I can't see if doing anything except further widening the area that people will commute to London from.

It will do fuck all for Northern England except bring a load of highly paid city workers up here who have sold a London flat and expect to be able to buy a 5 bed period detached for the same money.

There'll be no more jobs or hospital or school places, no more mass transit to get in and out of Leeds, and no more travel between the cities here. If you've got the money, it will probably be quicker to get from Leeds to Manchester if you go via London on HS2 than chance your arm on the M62 or Northern Fail and it's non existent train service.

Agreed, it's all for the benefit of big old London again.
What us northerners really bloody want is to be connected to our neighbours. We want hull, Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool to be easy to reach on a quick and easy service that actually runs with trains that are modern.

We want to be able to get to our towns and cities with modern trains not big old diesel trains that have 2 carriages but serve some big towns.

If you've got the money, it will probably be quicker to get from Leeds to Manchester if you go via London on HS2 than chance your arm on the M62 or Northern Fail and it's non existent train service

TransPennine Express do 4 services an hour to Manchester from Leeds. I do it regularly and it takes 49 minutes. It’s a really good service.

Northern are utter crap, but there’s other options!

Janni01 TfL receives no government funding for operational costs, it's all paid for out of income & it is projected to make a small profit in 2018/19. They do receive a capital grant towards cross rail, but fund 60% of that themselves.

There are many rail infrastructure projects around the being funded centrally: Edinburgh-Glasgow , Derby re-signalling,Transpennine, Great Western electrification etc. There should be more & I'd certainly agree that the funds for the vanity HS2 project could be better invested elsewhere in the country.

We could all have a lively debate about where investment should go, OP's question was what do people who live in London like about the place, and public transport is one of the popular services identified.

Mandarine there are other parts of historic Liverpool with amazing old buildings and so much history, cavern club, liver building, docks etc not to mention the lovely sea side bits. I'm a Manc and even I can say that, (city rivalries). Also its been less rainy up here than down south this summer. Wild fires and everything. The shopping bit yes is basically a Westfield type thing but

I know what you're saying about the chain stores and car parks but loads of the London individual high streets (if you're looking at London as more of a collection of towns). Costa and Starbucks are always packed in Greenwich, so is Nandos and M&S food, all chains. People like them whether South Londonites or simpletons from Stoke 🤣
Of course London has probably more interesting shops and hip coffee places. I just think it's a bit narrow minded to think that no where else does and thinking that Liverpool boils down to a Westfield shopping centre proves that really. Not trying to be funny, but also not everyone has the money to live like the Beckhams and only go to instagrammable coffee shops and stuff, sometimes you have to go to Home Bargains (guarantee you'd love it there, a Wonderland of bargains!) on their way to work in their bland northern town (heh) for cat food and dettol.
And it's the Irish sea IN lpool the North Sea is the other side of the country heheeh

Was trying to say yes the shopping bit in Lpool (Liverpool One its called, they don't claim it as the city centre its an actual seperate shopping centre) is a bit glass fronted sleek Westfield but they have been waiting a bloody long time for some investment in the city and they're rightfully pleased that they have something clean and bright and modern to show off. Anyone would think there's a bit of a discrepancy in funding and investment between North and south east in this country, maybe I'm just imagining it

I like Liverpool. I think I could happily live there. Am I going to up sticks and move there? No, any more than i would expect someone happily settled there to move here. But perhaps I should start a thread to ask how on earth people manage there? Weirdly Londoners get it both ways - privileged wankers disconnected from the struggles of real life on the one hand. Poor buggers living in one room in a crime infested shithole full of heroin needles on the other. Neither is completely deniable, it's true, but it rather suggests that neither are absolutely true.

But perhaps I should start a thread to ask how on earth people manage there?

Did you not see the famed “how on earth don’t people in the north go mad” thread from someone who might have had to move there? Utterly bewildering! I’ll see if it’s still around.

To be fair there's loads of threads asking about moving up north and is there anything to do and stuff. Weirdly we get loads of people on our local Facebook groups asking about doing the BIG MOVE up north, what gigantic house can they get for £600,000, what is there to do, is everyone an illiterate brexiteer?,(tbh they're usually moving to this area for the grammar schools, bringing their kids up here in Yr 3 or 4 and paying thousands that they've made in selling SE property out in tutoring so they get in. Kids born and brought up here from poorer families can't keep up really. But that's a totally seperate issue.)

I loved living in London, but I'd imagine a lot of the benefits may be similar in any big city. I loved the fact you can get anywhere easily without a car, the amount of things to do and the many free or inexpensive things to do with kids (obviously there are some of the most inflated, overpriced things too , I loved the architecture, the restaurants, bars, parks, art galleries, south bank, cafes, great shops. I really miss it. Where I live now it's difficult to find things to do with DD without always spending money, apart from the summer when you can go to the beach etc.

We used to live in Greenwich, so used to nip on the DLR to feed the animals at Mudchute Farm, go to the many events and festivals locally, go to the Science Museum and the Natural History... there was always something interesting and cheap to do.

I’d never leave. British Museum member, kids love the natural history museum, science museum, the royal observatory, the proms, we go to the theatre loads, the ballet, the southbank, there are loads of things on for free and the Christmas activities are amazing!

If you live here and don’t make the most of it, you are missing out and probably should live somewhere else because what’s the point.

I lived in London for 10 years pre-kids and loved the culture, the diversity and the social life. I struggled with the lack of all of that when we moved out.

Now, with dcs, I’m not so sure, although we have plenty of friends raising dc in London who love it.

I worry that mine are growing up with a ‘small town’ mentality, and try to address that by visiting fairly often to try and expose them to different experiences. However, I can’t see me letting my 12 yo have the freedom in London that he has here, and I would worry about crime.

I personally would hate to live in London or the SE in general as I hate crowds and traffic and love mountains and hills and moorland.

However, I can see why people do like it - if you're into art galleries, bars and hustle and bustle it is far better than any other place in the UK. I live in a small northern city now and have done everything there is to do there a million times.

Also, I grew up here so I know the places to go, have literally no fear of getting the train alone, can see what it has to offer etc. Plus we are in zone 5 so we have the best of both worlds, plenty of green space.

I have friends from outside London who are terrified to do anything “oh no I could never get there, how could I possibly get a train??? On my OWN??!” It’s very tiresome.

To address the London is great for the young and childless point, you rediscover all the things you loved as a kid when you have your own kids here.

Tower of London is the same when I was a child as it is now. That first trip to Buckingham Palace! Discovering Covent Garden market, or going to Camden and seeing all the shops! Going to a carol concert at St Paul’s or Launch Pad at the Science Museum! They are all the little things that make a difference to a persons life experience.

Jacques. Well quite. It's quite tempting to do the same now that dh's health is making London life less easy than it used to be, but I don't pretend it's anything other than London privilege (and house price divide in particular) that's giving me these options, rather than an inherently superior Northern quality of life (much as it pains me to admit as a Northerner!). The country is politically divided though. I think it's natural to worry about these things if you're actually thinking of moving somewhere outside of your own bubble. I'd be nervous about how I'd fit in in the home counties too.

Firstly, of course it’s the Irish Sea. I do apologise .

I do realise Liverpool has the Albert Dock area too and the ferry and I totally get it has its own unique history as a city. And yes, we were taken to Home Bargains (I think in a town called Wallasey where the wind was literally Arctic)! I guess I was responding to the pp who was asking, “What can you get in London that you can’t get in Sheffield?” I think some people who have never lived in London just think of it as Oxford Street and maybe Buckingham Palace or something and this is how they can ask such a question. I mean somewhere like Stratford is probably comparable to most other city centres in terms of facilities (maybe not character). Or Angel Islington? Or Wimbledon, Richmond, Kensington, Notting Hill, Ealing, Hampstead, Muswell Hill, Putney, Kingston, Clapham, etc, etc. And each of these places has its own vibe. As I say, I’m not British. Anywhere else I would be “that Spanish woman” but in London people don’t register me as “foreign” because Its kind if the norm are and even if you’re British, chances are you weren’t born here. I’ve lived in Brixton, Hackney, Chelsea and now am in the Putney / Barnes / Fulham zone, but I do think London is different because it’s a world city with a different atmosphere and outlook. Really you can only compare it to New York or Paris or other world capitals. Madrid is a wonderful city in so many ways, but it doesn’t have the diversity of London.