To be annoyed at people who live in a London Borough but insist they don't (i.e Im in Surrey, Kent etc)

[Rosehip10]

As in people in places such as Richmond, Kingston (insisting they live in Surrey) or places such as Bromley (insisting they are in Kent).

These places may used to have in a different county but have been part of greater London and a London Borough since 1965.

Is is snobbery? They usually drone only about postal towns which also no longer exist.

@smellybelly1 I guess not but I feel like a Londoner until I remember it's hard to find a good chippy with proper "chippy" gravy lol.

gravy on chips 😧😉

@smellybelly1, I was born, grew up in, worked and still live in a London borough. I speak with a London (rather than Kent or Essex, say) accent and my pronunciation of certain words (like bath) is southern. Occasionally, when I say that I'm from London, I get asked where did I originally come from? Guess I'm not as 'London' as I thought .

I’ve lived in London for 30 years since my early 20s and don’t consider myself to be a Londoner or “from London”. I’m “from Yorkshire” and “live in London“.

@TheSecretJeven I get that too & then get told "i've never met a real Londoner". I don't we are any different than anyone else or that rare

My parents do this, it drives me pottty. I was born in London and grew up in London but if I dare say the L word I get told no we lived in Middlesex. I think it is some sort of embarrassment to them, god only knows why.

I think some of it is embarrassment at being thought to be associated with Cockneys, jellied eels or Pearly Kings which had been mostly left behind when people moved from Bethnal Green/Whitechapel or Poplar into the surrounding countryside, probably post WW2. To a lot of families, this would have been a step up socially.

DappledThings. This is very odd. We have lived here for 40 years and all correspondence states Kent. Of course since post codes it is probably not necessary. However, when filling in addresses on line it often asks for the county. In which case it is Kent.

I think the thing is most of us were taught the addresses of these areas way before the internet was there to tell us if the county was correct or historical. These things stick. Reason and logic and political boundaries be damned!

HappydaysArehere

Covered extensively upthread! Anyone who sends you anything that includes any county is not using the correct address. Multiple databases and online forms request it and are also out of date by at least 30 years.

I put N/a in county fields unless it's a mandatory dropdown them I put Kent but am annoyed by it.

And there is Surrey (Guildford, Esher, Cobham, Virginia Water, etc, etc) and there is Surrey (Staines, Redhill, Leatherhead and Woking has lots of deprived areas)

There were riots in the Park Barn area of Guildford a few years ago.

I just looked up my address on the Royal Mail postcode checker and it doesn't have the county, I didn't realise that the official address didn't include the counties anymore.

However, when I lived in Surrey, my postal address was for a town which is in Hampshire, even if you didn't technically need the county on there.

Also quite amusing where I live is the distinction people make (in quite a small town) between two parts of it. So I live on 1 Acacia Avenue, Town, Postcode. But friends down the road, who live in the same town, but in the "village" bit of it which people treat as if it is separate despite being about three streets away from where I live (and talk about moving from Town to Village if they move house), is 10 High Street, Village, Town, Postcode.

Any logic that renders Chas n Dave as not Londoners is inherently flawed. Of course Ponders end is London. Love those guys!

@smellybelly1 that's probably because they are British if they got citizenship.

@DappledThings It's often because the people who develop the systems are foreign. I remember emailing retailer a few years ago because I couldn't locate a store to do Click and Collect due to the strange way they listed their stores on their website. (I think they used Middlesex for stores in London and Hertfordshire.) I ended up having a conversation with some of their development team basically telling them to use the Royal Mail address format for UK addresses so people could actually locate their stores.

Noboby is from "London." They are from Hackney, Lambeth, Ealing, or any of the other villages subsumed in the Great Wen.

It is significant that the only sports teams called "London" are founded by exiles: London Scottish, London Irish and London Welsh in Rugby Union, and the RL franchise the London Broncos. (Can't move in Barnet for unbroken bucking horses.)

I live in Bromley. My postal address is Kent and my postcode starts BR not SE. We have no tube and until we get one ( and an SE postcode), I won't consider I live in London despite technically being in a London Borough.

Also the public services in Bromley are noticeably poorer than nearby in SE boroughs. In the London boroughs playgrounds are more prolific and better maintained, library and leisure services are better, there are children's centres still in existence, the list goes on... We don't even have a public toilet in the centre of Bromley any longer. That was closed down due to cuts. If you are in our most central park or our library and you or your child needs the loo you have to leave where you are and trek into the (privately owned) shopping centre. This is no joke when things are urgent! I realise this is off topic but I think it is pretty easy to tell when you are not properly part of London!

CleopatrasMum

And another one! My postal address is Kent. No it isn't. Nobody's is.

"London" is just a shorthand way of describing the geographical location in the UK, much as someone might say Edinburgh or Cardiff to give a broad idea, maybe drilling down to city/borough/ward etc later. Of course, this does create the impression that I live in the bits that tourists frequent, not the suburban part that it is the reality.

@CleopatrasMum your address is not Kent.

Surely it depends on who you're talking to? If a colleague from Newcastle asks if I live in London I'll say yes. Anyone familiar with London and I'll say I live in Bexley.

My colleagues outside London think of Kent as the coastal towns. I have no preference either way - I don't think either London or Kent sounds better/ posher etc.

Also the public services in Bromley are noticeably poorer than nearby in SE boroughs. In the London boroughs playgrounds are more prolific and better maintained, library and leisure services are better, there are children's centres still in existence, the list goes on... We don't even have a public toilet in the centre of Bromley any longer. That was closed down due to cuts. If you are in our most central park or our library and you or your child needs the loo you have to leave where you are and trek into the (privately owned) shopping centre. This is no joke when things are urgent! I realise this is off topic but I think it is pretty easy to tell when you are not properly part of London!

I’m in an outer borough and we have much better public services, newly refurbished playgrounds, etc than some of the nearby SW postcodes.

I think you’re confusing ‘having a shit council’ with ‘not being in London’.

I think you’re confusing ‘having a shit council’ with ‘not being in London’.

It was Bromley in the 80s that caused tube fares to rise massively on the premise that they didn't have a tube station.

Well I never knew that things had changed! I moved from Isleworth to Sussex and the DC love telling people they were born in London. I've been feeling a fraud as to me Middlesex was "just outside of London" and several miles away from my previous Chiswick address- W4, à proper London postcode.

Now I will let my children boast about being city kids with a clear conscience. Even though isleworth felt very leafy and suburban and not city-like.