To be deeply disappointed in John Cleese

[drspouse]

I have no idea if this is typical but he just tweeted that London isn't an English city any more
What is it then pray tell? What's not English about it??

@SuziQ10 I'm from Enfield, Edmonton specifically. An area besieged by stabbings and shootings atm. What are the advantages and benefits of multiculturalism in your area? Because there don't seem to be any in mine.

@LateVictorian

I think you’re right - more and more people are taking the law into their own hands as they don’t have faith in the police any longer. I understand the temptation... but where will it end?

@Eliza9919 I work locally to you. Yep. I see what you're saying.

The benefits are when people from different cultures DO integrate, work, live good responsible lives. I love that my grandparents on one side came here from abroad (to work) and we contribute to society and now have a very mixed social circle, not just their own nationality by a long shot. Take no benefits or subsidised housing. I love the multicultural food (hey I like Kervan in Edmonton) that England probably never had before becoming diverse. This city is exciting! A lot of positive influence. But yeah a lot of problems go with that.. especially Edmonton and surrounding.

Obviously in Edmonton we witness a lot of unemployment, overcrowded housing, large families with no income, high violence, drug and general crime levels (saw someone get stabbed on Tuesday morning last week in ponders end) and yeah I think it's difficult in schools, in hospitals, for police etc with a lot of people not even speaking basic English. It makes my job very hard and seems unnecessary. I hate to say it but a lot of people here come to milk the system dry. I could never ever say that in RL.

According to the last census about 82% of the UK population identified as white British. Of the greater London population it was about 44%. A huge discrepancy.

I agree that several parts of the UK not just London don't feel English anymore.

My late Grandmother was born and bred in an area in the North. Her family had lived in and around the area for 100s of years. But during her lifetime it changed massively and it made her very sad and insecure. A lot of the local shops that she had visited all her life changed hands and no longer catered for her needs. And the area started to look shabby and run down. We went to her GP once and she was the only woman without a face covering. She said that she felt like a stranger in her own home town.

To her multiculturalism and diversity was not a good thing.

@Eliza9919

I think the benefits of multiculturalism are perhaps experienced more by the middle class.

If you’re middle class, you can afford these exciting new restaurants. There is less competition for your job. You can have a cheap cleaner, a cheap nanny, and you live in a nice neighbourhood so don’t live with the social tensions that some of us do. We’re in Camden. My DD is shunned and excluded at school as she’s Christian, and most of her classmates aren’t. She sits alone at lunchtime as she’s told that eating lunch with her is like eating with a dog.

These are real problems that are hurting good and decent people. We’re not onto nothing here, and causing problems for the sake of it! I just wish we could talk openly about it instead of being shouted down as racist or xenophobic. I’m neither.

Not tight at all Isabella.

And agree with your thoughts to some extent

Sorry not right

Cleese was talking about Central London - specifically, in one tweet, the King's Rd in Chelsea. He wasn't talking about Edmonton, Brick Lane or Lewisham. That's why I don't think he was thinking about race so much as culture and a huge increase in foreign nationals, mostly from Europe.

London's housing crisis is directly related to Thatcher's right to buy. I know of a 3 bed ex council flat in Battersea, which once would have housed a family, a postman or a bus-driver. Now it's owned by a Russian couple who live in Bulgaria, and the tenants rent by the room and are academics or business people from Europe. A nice little investment for them. Under Boris, many new build flats were bought off-plan by Chinese investors.

A lot of properties in Chelsea and Kensington are now in foreign hands, which goes some way to explain why the King's Rd feels different now.

I think the benefits of multiculturalism are perhaps experienced more by the middle class. If you’re middle class, you can afford these exciting new restaurants. There is less competition for your job. You can have a cheap cleaner, a cheap nanny, and you live in a nice neighbourhood so don’t live with the social tensions that some of us do.

How very true.

suziqI lived in Edmonton before I left London. Iove Kervan. We don't get Turkish food as good where we are! But yes, the violence, stabbings etc made it difficult to justify bringing up sons there. The problem is that there are enclaves of London. If you live in the trendy expensive parts, even places like Walthamstow which although cheaper are trendier then multiculturalism is great. If you live and work in places like Edmonton, then there is no multiculturalism really. There are ethnic groups who live with people of the same ethnic groups, don't speak to each other and live very hard lives, trying to scrape by in one of the most expensive and overcrowded cities in the world.

“There are also many negatives and we can't talk about them.”

Of course you can! People do it all the time!

I agree with SuzyQ10. No, you can’t “do it all the time”. I said this earlier in the thread, but I work in higher education and I absolutely cannot speak frankly about my own questions around diversity and inclusion. You certainly could not comfortably admit to voting for Brexit and have a sensible conversation about it. Honestly I am amazed that anyone thinks we openly debate these issues on a regular basis - or rather, I suspect that if you DO believe this you’ve already swallowed the diversity/inclusivity line hook, line and sinker. We do not have proper discussions about these topics and when anyone tries to they are quickly labelled “racist, Nazi or fascist”. It happens here in mumsnet all the time! Certainly in my line of work you have to be seen as constantly welcoming diversity or you can’t get a seat at the table.

Btw - London's exam results are way better than in the rest of the country, better than grammar schools in the Home Counties. There was an initiative called The London Challenge. There's some evidence that bi-lingual pupils from an immigrant background have been influential in raising the overall standard.

I think you put your case very eloquently @IsabellaLinton. I’m so sorry your daughter is having such a rotten experience at school, it’s not right.

@IsabellaLinton

Exactly. It's the right-on Guardian reader type's idea of 'vibrant multiculturalism'. That new vegetarian Turkish cafe, the hunky Spanish tech guy in the office, Magda the Polish nanny who is an absolute treasure, as is her husband Jacek who mows the lawn every other week - British workers are just so demanding you know!

And 9 times out of 10, these people won't live in the 'vibrant' neigbourhoods they profess to admire, but in well-to-do suburbs surrounded by mostly white middle class Brits just like themselves.

An ex colleague of mine moved to north London from Romania. She was an Anglophile and very excited to be moving to a city she loved from everything she had read about it, had very high expectations. . She told me she was so shocked by the reality that she asked the person who had collected her from Heathrow : " are you sure this is London?"

I can't wait to move out, it has changed beyond recognition in the last 30 years and not for the better

As a long-time lurker, I've been prompted to make my first ever comment on Mumsnet out of sheer disgust at this thread, and especially this comment.

Firstly, this is an old news story which showed Mr Cleese's true ignorant and most probably racist colours; To paraphrase, he talked about walking down a street in London and not seeing any English people. To which, rightly, people questioned, how - on face value - he could tell they weren't English people. They were right. He couldn't tell whether or not they were English people. He had looked at their faces, registered the fact that they were non-white, and therefore discounted any possibility that they could be English, because of course English people - people born and bred in England with English values - cannot be anything other than white.

Your Romanian colleague, is I'm afraid to say, extremely ignorant, rude, and racist. Her "high expectations" were of people being a specific colour/looking a certain way? I am presuming that, on landing, she took one look around her at the airport and saw many non-white people. Perhaps non-white people who were speaking different languages other than English. She had no way of knowing whether these people might have been born in England and could also speak perfect English alongside other languages.

I come from an area of London that in the main non-white - with a large section of the population whose heritage hails from one particular place. This area is prosperous, well-educated, multiple home ownership etc. The majority of people I went to school with were non-white (myself included). We are English people. We are born and bred in England with full appreciation of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs - no more or less than a White English person. We all speak perfect English and many speak multiple languages. We all went to Russell Group universities and have well-paying professional jobs. Our parents and relatives all speak English, (alongside multiple other languages) and are higher than average taxpayers.

It could have been any of my friends that your Romanian colleague saw at the airport. English people with English values, as defined above. But not white, and in that moment, maybe not speaking English. Her prejudice is clear and so is yours, judging by your comment by how London has changed beyond recognition.

If you, and all those other bigoted people commenting on this thread opened your eyes, you would see that born and bred Londoners - otherwise known as English people - may look physically different to what they have looked like in the past, but have the same outlook on life as any white English person has before then.

I have never met a born and bred non-white Englander who doesn't display those English values outlined above and clearly a high proportion of people cannot distinguish between immigrants and born and bred non-white Englanders. Disgraceful.

I do think the immigration situation has had an impact on housing as there are less affordable properties and more people buying properties pushing prices up.

The newcomers have been given social or council housing making it harder for people already here if they need this.

@IsabellaLinton

You are 100% bang on about the middle class bit. I could of not said it better my self.

I've noticed a lot of the Left seem to be white middle class folk.

I've seen more people of mixed races and ethnicities voting for UKIP and Brexit.

is he not allowed an opinion?

even though he is becoming a bit of a rancorous old chap, always banging on about his wives. I bet none were as pleasant as Connie.

@hilbobaggins

Thanks Baggins

When I studied in Japan, I only came across two English-speakers the whole year I was there. They’re keen to preserve their unique culture
To the point they now don’t have enough young people to pay for the super aged population.

In the UK, it's housebuilders holding onto land and releasing houses at a rate deliberately designed to push prices upwards
The rate at which house-builders release homes is most often dictated by planning conditions so as not to put pressure on local services all at once.

I do think the immigration situation has had an impact on housing as there are less affordable properties and more people buying properties pushing prices up.

There has been a shortage of affordable properties as far back as I remember.

The newcomers have been given social or council housing making it harder for people already here if they need this.
Less than 5% of social housing goes to “newcomers”. Most do not qualify. Where social housing is granted it tends to be the homes nobody else wants.

@Thymeout the immigrants you are talking about in the London challenge are a world away from those in places like Edmonton. It's an entirely different set of people/circumstances.

He's right. It's hard to imagine another country that would so comprehensively yield its cultural identity.

Not all cultures are created equal. We have a huge problem in our neighbourhood with Somalians (I'm sure this post will be deleted in due course).

@AlaskanOilBaron

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-48353960

This was interesting and I mentioned it earlier in the thread. Of course BBC made it sound like everyone else's fault.

I totally agree HelpMeFindAName.

My cousins children are mixed race in a very white area & it worries me the racism they'll face growing up.