To be finding London increasingly grubby?

[Notcontent]

Ok, this is not a London bashing thread. I actually love lots of things about living in London. And I am lucky enough to live in quite a nice area. BUT… I am not British so recently my parents were visiting from another country. Because of the pandemic, there has been quite a long gap since their last visit. We went for a walk and they commented on a few things and I guess I was seeing things through their eyes.

There seems to be dog poo everywhere - more than ever before. Maybe because everyone got dogs during the pandemic. There is litter everywhere. In my street there are houses that cost a lot of money but many people just dump their rubbish at the front and don’t seem to care. Very few people sweep the front of their houses - the only people who do seem to be older people. The council has no money so is not maintaining anything or doing any cleaning. I could go on…

Is it just me?

If you think London is filthy you should see Glasgow!

I traveled though Paris, Rome, Milan and London about a year and a half ago. Give me London any day, especially the railway stations. In Paris I smelled shit, piss and skunk simultaneously.

Yes London is dirty, but i was shocked at the state of Paris, Brussels and Rome!

Agree its the case in loads of the UK.
Grimy graffitied dirty cities but even in the suburbs and villages there's a mess - councils hugely reducing maintenance so hedgerows are all overgrown, pavements are splitting with weeds coming through etc.

Loads more dogs bought over lockdown = dog crap and dog poo bags everywhere particularly in nice walking areas.

Public toilets are repulsively grim compared to other countries.

Possibly anecdotal but people seem to spend a fortune on decorating inside their houses but not care what the outside looks like for some reason. My neighbours hoover every day and spent a fortune on new furniture during lcokdown but have never mowed the lawn, lets their dogs just crap all over their garden and has left three huge pumpkins outside their door, presumably (as they did last year) for the next month until they disintegrate and rot away rather than taking 30 secs to chuck them in the food waste bin.

Dog dirt and dog pee - often full width of pavements.

I counted more than 60 dogs in the town centre where my daughter lives in the space of 15 minute stroll.

I try my best to avoid it with the pushchair and I hate the thought of the pushchair going back inside their home.

People should toilet their dogs on their own property - like my mother did.

I was in London a while back. Such an expensive area, but the smell, and mess everywhere was just gross.

I work in retail. The customer toilets are something to behold. Shit smeared everywhere, on the walls, doors, used toilet paper thrown on the floor, some people even miss the toilet pan, presumably when crouching on the seats, which incidentally get broken and have to be replaced on a very regular basis. Sometimes it's very reminiscent of the open pit French service station facilities of yesteryear.

The women are worse than the men.

It gets worse every year. It's disgusting.

Little wonder the streets are filthy too with these attitudes☹️

There's definitely much more dog poo now, I assumed it was because of the increase in dog ownership in the pandemic. Really annoying when you have a buggy as there often isn't enough pavement space to dodge it (especially with all the increased tables and signs cluttering up the pavement too). Other UK cities don't seem to be much better though.

Litter is less of a problem in my part of London, we're in a busy bit of zone 1 where we have daily street sweepers employed by the council so anything gets cleaned up quickly.

Same in Glasgow, I feel like it's gotten so grubby. Probably doesn't help that there are less people about (ignoring COP26) so it's a lot more obvious. The whole city just needs a good power wash.

I've been to lots of dirtier places. Paris for example. Some service stations in France absolutely filthy. Shocking dirty hotels. We were going to buy property in the Costa Blanca dog shit absolutely everywhere. Hollywood/LA filthy.

Most places could do with a jolly good clean.

I'm near a small town in Yorkshire. In my area we all keep the pavement in front of out house clean and weed free, if our neighbors are unable to do theirs, we do it for them. We also have a volunteer litter picking group and a group who plant flowers in public spaces. We do fundraising events for this.
Although I live on a popular dog walking route, I've only come across one lot of dog poo in the last year. Someone had let their dog shit at the top of my driveway.
Most of us take pride in our area and take responsibility for keeping it clean. The council don't have the money to do it so we do it ourselves.

It's just as bad in Herts. I hate it certain parts the litter is aborant

I was actually in london the weekend for the first time for a few years, and I was thinking how clean it was. Admittedly this was early in the morning after the street cleaners had been out, but there was no litter anywhere in sight.

I am an outlier as I don't find London that bad. My area of London has clean streets and pavements and the rubbish and recycling are collected weekly. Neighbours' gardens are neat and tidy.

Maybe it's a question of expectations?

We’ve just moved out of London - the houses and windows on main roads in London often look filthy because of the air pollution.

Fly tipping was terrible in our area of London, but to be fair to them the council always cleared it very quickly.

Dog mess will presumably be because of all the new dog owners, many of whom clearly haven’t got a clue and are antisocial.

Graffiti seems to be cleaned up quickly in London too. To be honest, after travelling in New Delhi I thought to myself how immaculate London looked on my return!

The not cleaning the front step thing may be because of a more transient population and lots of renters. In London there’s a big culture of just leaving items you no longer want on your front step or wall, for people to take, which I’d never seen before I moved to London, but which can make streets look cluttered and untidy.

canyoutoleratethis
This is an issue that needs no money spent on it. It's all about attitude and civic pride.
Why waste council money on clearing up when if it wasn't dropped, pooped, or sprayed in the first place it wouldn't be necessary. Put your litter in a bin, collect up the dog poo,and don't graffiti, it's just social responsibility.
I'd rather my council tax was spent on more essential services and resources than ones that only exist through bad decisions and actions.

I find London the same as ever, but I went to Brighton recently and felt very sorry indeed for the residents, with overflowing bins everywhere. I hope that has been resolved now or else they will presumably have a big rodent problem.

There’s no need for litter or dog mess but how do you change poor attitudes.

I know a couple of people who have been fined for not cleaning up after their dog, but the sizeable minority (I hope it’s a minority) who drop litter aren’t caught. If the council can’t afford street cleaners they certainly can’t afford litter wardens.

There’s no need for litter or dog mess but how do you change poor attitudes.
End decades of austerity and other race-to-the-bottom policies, increase taxation on the rich and corporations, and close loopholes, invest in social housing that’s fit for purpose, end BTL landlords and second homes that leave communities empty, create more positions for dog wardens, increase litter bins and dog poo bins, invest in education, the arts, communities, green spaces, the environment – invest invest invest to create social equality and communities where no one can buy themselves out of poo and litter fines (fine the rich, yes, but penalise them in other ways – social embarrassment? Make it an absolute no-no for Cressida to leave her dog poo bag on a tree on her country walk), and everyone benefits from community improvements instead of just the “naice” streets.

Or maybe I’m a big hippie.

Dog shit is a huge problem. Fines arent a real sanction as no one is ever caught. Where I live people seem to think that if its 6 inches off the path through the local woodland they dont have to pick up, its everywhere and it's disgusting. If your dog needs a poo you shouldnt be allowing them off lead until they've done it and you've picked up, if they are running off out of close eyesight you just can't see where they've gone.

@Valeriane. I compared Copenhagen yes, but take Bristol or Manchester then, same shit, different cities. I actually find most areas of London not too bad , other UK cities I think are worse. I think part of the problem is deliberate austerity, meaning councils have no money for anything totally non essential or doesn’t ‘make’ money , another part is due to a percentage of the population who are totally feral thick shits who don’t give a monkeys about surroundings for them or others— it’s a twin headed problem. I do agree though about some other city’s too , as people mentioned Paris and Brussels— bloody dirty places too.

The amount of litter shocked me recently in the uk.
Visited my parents in a regular small town ( that I grew up in), and the amount of crap on the verges of dual carriageways was astounding. There is an out of town Mac Donald’s now and people must go there, get a take away, drive a few hundred metres down the road and just hurl the whole contents of their car out of the window.
My parents just shrugged now and said ‘ it’s normal’. Huh, no it’s not.

Haven’t been to London for ages, but every time I’ve been into Manchester city centre this year I’ve been struck by how rundown, grimy and grim it is. Like when I first moved here 25 years ago, it’s got an unloved, depressing feeling about it, and it’s really sad because it had improved so much and it feels as though all that progress has been lost now. It’s clearly the result of budget cuts in the Council- no money for street cleaning, graffiti removal, etc. And it isn’t helped by what seems to be a massive increase in huge hordes of drunken teenagers and football fans, even in the middle of a Saturday afternoon.

@Valeriane

People arent seriously comparing London to Copenhagen are they? London is a mega city of over 9 million people. Copenhagen is home to less than 800,000 people.

London sees shit loads of people passing through in transit, millions every day.
Copenhagen is primarily home to local people who will naturally have a much bigger sense of responsibility towards the place.

And I don't see how you can blame the Tories for this. If you want to talk absolutely disgusting public and restaurant toilets, France takes the biscuit.

No but there's other comparable cities in the UK which are just as filthy. As I said earlier, it's not a London problem, it's a problem in the country in general.

Austerity, Tory governments, council cuts, lack of investment in public services and a layer of people in the country with poor attitude and behaviour all contributes.

Don’t go to Paris OP, you’ll be swimming in dog poop and litter with the added bonus of graffiti everywhere! 😄

London's always been pretty filthy tbf And the British do love their dog shit.