To be fed up of mnetters behaving as if everywhere outside London is the third world

[continuallychargingmyphone]

Ok an exaggeration but only a slight one

I live up north. We have a John Lewis here and everything.

At 8pm that is.

To be honest I see London as being more third world than North. All the acid attacks, stabbing, 1/4 of the population born outside the EU. Yes there are nice parts but they are for millionaires and very few MNetters live in those areas.

So not true. So much of London has social housing side by side some of the most expensive housing. People aren’t randomly stabbed in the street, the vast vast majority are gang related and given the millions of people on London the stabbings barely even make a dent in the day to day lives of most people. It’s so far from third world.

Sofizzy
I’m a Londoner and heard the fragrant Evan Davis saying this on PM. I thought the same thing, it was very odd - hiding from the world’s media in a village hall in the midlands

Nice to see obvious irony flying over people's heads.

It really is time for me to send me whippets to bed.

No John Lewis, waitrose or ocado deliveries where I live, basically a horrifiying wasteland by mumsnet standards

FannyFanackerpants71

I have no answer to that, but you are wonderful!

All you booths fans do know they sell on Amazon prime now & a selection of their goods can be delivered to my London door within an hour

We have a John Lewis here and everything. there is t a decent northern John Lewis though.

I particularly liked the thread the other day discussing the shit schools and wall to wall racism everywhere outside the London postcode areas.

We do have Deliveroo, Costa, taxis, etc. It's the north, not 1952

We don’t have deliveroo No takeaways
We don’t have costa within 40 minutes.
There is 1 taxi driver, he only does evenings and weekends by appointment.

This is a large village with a population of 2000. Nearest town is about 8 miles. No taxi service there really either.

spam not only is that a TAAT, it is also a massive misrepresentation.

@continuallychargingmyphone

When I told my Mom some of the little differences between the UK and US (mostly to do with food), she no joke said "But I thought England was a first world country..."

If that helps at all? 😂

@TeacupDrama

Almost correct except the G&T kids are profoundly gifted and everyone's husband plays with a local football team has an outing hobby.

To be honest I see London as being more third world than North. All the acid attacks, stabbing, 1/4 of the population born outside the EU. Yes there are nice parts but they are for millionaires and very few MNetters live in those areas
Undoubtedly written by a person who has never been to London & who sees Tommy Robinson as a freedom fighter.

I love London, there's so much common land and green space. It's very easy to make friends and it's light. If i go somewhere rural on holiday I'm terrified because it's so, so dark at night. A lot of hedges for serial killers to lurk behind.

It’s the other way round. When I was moving from the south west to London there seemed no barrier to non Londoners criticising London. But the other way round is seen as extremely rude

That's so true MrsT.

no one lives in a fairly nice area 3 miles from town centre with average children going to an average school and being average or maybe good at maths but less than average with spelling and earns 30-45K a year and are doing ok nothing fancy but quite comfortable and their DH has good and occasional bad moments but their marriage is fine and so are their kids and they quite like MIL who they see with kids every few weeks

Of course they do, but these people have got no re reason to grumble or show off about it.

People who slag off London don't spend long enough time there to understand the charm of it - they don't understand it. Or they lived here and prefer it rural, or they lived here and burnt out/had enough.

Central London is fascinating, it's where all the old stuff to look at is - walk around the (empty) city at the weekend and see bits of Roman Britain, secret gardens, tiny atmospheric passages. I travel through this area most days and have short walks around on my way to work. If you're a tourist this is a really tiring day out - it's busy, people try to cram too much in. I know, because I do that when I visit other cities. But that's not the same experience as actually living here.

This is then surrounded by a series of villages - each small area, mostly not even a third of a mile from the next village is where people live. This is the part my MIL didn't get - she thought it was all one long dodgy street - in her mind it was like the Old Kent road or Tottenham Court Road - major thoroughfares.

So in my village (30 seconds away) are a church, butchers, greengrocers, a children's book shop, laundrette, post office, iron mongers, library, a small supermarket (M and S food), a chippie/Indian and Chinese restaurant. Now apart from the last few it sounds like the 1950's

Until you actually live here it just doesn't resonate. Before I lived here when I was property hunting I was all about 'how long to get to the centre' (14 minutes) - it was only when I looked at flats I noticed the useful shops/pubs off the main roads, usually clustered around train stations or close by to them.

Everything you need is in these villages, play groups, primary schools, cafes.

On a very basic, day to day LIVING level London is just like everywhere I've ever lived (I've lived literally every part of the country) - it just doesn't look like that from the outside.

costacoffeecup 😆

There's pros and cons to everything.People can choose what's right for them.

What I don't get is the idea that life beyond the m25 is somehow a poor wasteland full of uneducated thugs with crap schools, no culture and must be a generally ghastly experience.
Then again, I also think most MNetters probably live in normal towns and villages, there's a lot of middle income people in nice areas with nice schools. They probably like their DH, wouldn't LTB because he didn't have time to have the washing out and have nice kids with a mix of strengths and weaknesses. They probably wear normal clothes, shop in the local Tesco or sainsburies and don't spend their contemplating their Ocado order in the latest Boden/Hush outfit whilst their husband has an important and demanding job.

That summary is spot on Laurie.

My children went to an outstanding primary that’s five minutes walk from our house. My dd now goes to an outstanding state secondary that’s less than 2 km away. She could have gone to a “good” one five minutes walk away but the other was a better fit. There’s a beautiful huge park 1 km away another 2 km away. Our doctor is literally across the road, dentist the same. The river Thames with forest and a footpath and totally un built up all down one side is ten minutes walk. On the other side are three or four lovely old pubs next to each other with outside seating overlooking the Thames. At the end of my road is a tube station and shopping street with an M&S, TK Maxx, banks, coffee shops. We are less than one km from a well known theatre which my friend brings her children to from outside London each year to see panto, a cinema ten minutes walk the other way. It’s a fab area to live yet I have routinely seen it as an area that is dismissed as dirty, grey and miserable on here and posters warned they wouldn’t be able to walk round at night etc which is just utter nonsense. The time I am always aware of just how much a community our “village” is is on Halloween when huge efforts are made decorating houses etc. We all just stay in our own “village/area” and see the same faces to say hello to, all do a rough regular circuit, tons of pumpkins outside and people getting involved and parents standing chatting while their kids knock on doors. People who call it a dump and a crap hole having never lived here just don’t really understand how it’s actually set up.

London is alright for a day or two, I'm there at least once a month with work. You couldn't pay me enough to live there though. Plus parts of it are more third world than anywhere else in the UK especially with recent goings on.

Laurie describes it well; a series of villages. I’d call my area more of a small town (Walthamstow), but it has a very local feel indeed, infact when we moved here people would ask where we ‘came from’ (in London) not something I’d experienced before.

@Lauriefairycake that's exactly why I left London.

I realised that my whole life was spent locally. Local shops, local parks, cinema, little theatre etc. I was paying a huge premium for living in London and probably went in a couple of times a year.

I could live as I was doing in any decent town or city.

So I sold my 1.5 bed flat and bought a house initially in Bristol then later a bigger one up North.