Londoners have absolutely decimated my city

[CrushedOrange]

NC as really outing.
I'm a musician and over the years I have seen what was a steady stream of londoners turn into a flood this year.
I'm so gutted. I know everybody has the right to live here but it has pushed so many of my friends out, artists and other musicians. It pisses me off that the whole reason these londoners moved here, they are also destroying.
I'm lucky as my landlord is really decent and hasn't put my rent up in years, so I can afford to stay here. But now I'm considering just leaving because of the vibe factor. It makes me really sad. I still gig a few times a week but the crowd is different. I miss my community, but now everybody is scattered as everyone who was pushed out has gone to different places.
I'm considering just jumping ship and moving on myself but I don't know where to go.
Today some more londoners moved into the street...The whole street is full of scaffolding as they seem to really love doing home improvements 😅
I know I sound really bitter. I guess I am. I don't know whether to stay or go, and of I go, where to?

The thing is though, have a house and a garden if you grew up in London wasn’t a particularly wild state of being in the 80s, 90s as a Londoner, it meant there was some kind of community, I am unsure why it is being pitched as such a fantasy- it wasn’t unreasonable at all!

I’m obviously not speaking for anyone else here, but these shitty areas you refer to are our homes and communities. They’re not just a stop gap until the area is gentrified and you can properly enjoy it along with the rest of your avocado eating mates, or until you can profit from the property prices and move somewhere posher.

I’m glad you feel at home in London. Long may it continue. But you’re still not a Londoner.

I agree with the quoted post - after a childhood feeling I didn’t belong anywhere - with an English parent, an Italian one, and growing up in a third EU country - London is the one place where my lack of belonging doesn’t matter as so many people come from elsewhere.

And for that I love it.

If you feel at home in London then you absolutely do belong there. That’s one of the wonderful things about it, that you’ve got people from every social class, every financial group and every country in the world rubbing along, mostly, nicely alongside each other.

@WellySunHat if you meet someone from where you grew up for the first couple of decades do you deny all knowledge of it?

Yes and this is why I don’t say I’m a Brightonian. I have an older colleague who went to the school my DC go to, we were discussing the changes as it is a school that is quite desired now but when he went there it was a secondary modern that you went to if you didn’t pass your 11 plus. I am not offended if he states this fact, I feel part of a different Brighton that is not the same at all. I don’t recognise this trustafarian stuff, the only ones I know are in London. It is definitely more alternative, liberal and yes creative types, jobs of the parents at my DD’s junior school were writers of trashy tv programmes, TV production, Artists, Architects, lots of designers. They are interesting and intelligent people, not washed up Londoners that haven’t made it in London or the Home Counties. Nobody moves to Brighton from the Home Counties, they are true blue and just stay in the Home Counties. I wouldn’t be so scornful of people who live in the Home Counties though just old stereotypes that people if they’re old enough remember from the Good Life or something, not based on any reality!

Yes exactly, I went to a school akin to Grange Hill and it was reflective of the London I knew in the nineties - it was wealth diverse as anywhere in the UK.

You sound very possessive

@Goldenbear houses with large gardens are not essential for a good community. Of course many in London owned and still do own houses but has always been a compromise in terms of space.

You see people on here bemoaning the faxt the can't fford anything in London and react with horror if a flat or a less fashionble part of London is suggested.

Also London has always been an international city. It was founded by the Romans as a trading port.

Yes, all of this, but in Wales. The only thing they bring to the area is loud voices and complaints. They're all SO arrogant and entitled. Their behaviour is disgusting and they've destroyed the local communities.

I have nothing against English people in general, but these ones from Kent/Essex/Lahndahn, Sarfffend etc are a different breed.

The Romans?! They ain't real londoners - they can fuck right off

Yes, all of this, but in Wales. The only thing they bring to the area is loud voices and complaints. They're all SO arrogant and entitled. Their behaviour is disgusting and they've destroyed the local communities.

🙄

Sharpen those pitch forks

The thing is though, have a house and a garden if you grew up in London wasn’t a particularly wild state of being in the 80s, 90s as a Londoner,

I think an old school geography book referred to my bit of inner London as a “ghetto”! The vast majority of my neighbours were immigrants as I guess it was cheaper & not particularly desirable, there were some issues but I always felt safe. Most families had only one parent working normal jobs, my parents house was about 50k in the 80s & now would be 1.5m. My in laws place in Hackney is worth even more.

Not possessive. You can’t possess that place and anyone who thinks otherwise has missed the whole point of London.

Protective? Definitely.

I’m amused and puzzled by so many people insisting that everything was in perfect in their own little of corner of Wales/Scotland/England until those damned incomers arrive, who are apparently all arseholes. Yet none of the “natives” seemingly were? I find it hard to believe that everything was oh so perfect before the “incomers “ arrived.

It reminds me of when we had new builds built here and a path opened up which allowed people from other parts much easier access to the woodland that I live next to, which caused a lot of complaints. Yes there was more dog poo everywhere which I despise but I’d expect it with greater numbers visiting but we had quite a bit of poop lying around before the path was open so who was leaving it then? Only the sainted locals.

Not sure the person using it did either, to be fair, given it means ‘expressing opinions in a strong and forceful manner’; the ‘effective expression of opinions, usually in a few words’…

I think they may have meant ‘truculent’ (ie argumentative) which, let’s face it, covers pretty much everyone one MN 🤷🏻‍♀️

I think they may have meant ‘truculent’ (ie argumentative) which, let’s face it, covers pretty much everyone one MN

True dat!

It was pretty perfect though. There are assholes in every walk of life, but not like this. It's not just me who feels this way - have a chat to people like dental receptionists, GPs, local shop owners, farmers. They all have to deal with these people on a daily basis and they are all, without exception, absolutely awful. No, the Welsh locals did not treat people like this before they arrived.

But I was born in London. My parents moved away when I was five. I spent my formative years in the countryside. I returned at twenty and still live here thirty years later.

So am I a Londoner or not in your prescriptive rules?

They all have to deal with these people on a daily basis and they are all, without exception, absolutely awful.

I don’t buy for a minute that every single one is awful.That’s your prejudice and small mindedness talking.

I’m amazed and dismayed by how many people seemingly object to any “incomers” moving in. Unless you’re content to marry your cousin, places, whether cities or villages, do need new blood.

Nope, that's my actual experience.

I don't object to people moving here if they're decent humans. These ones aren't.

if I moved there tomorrow. It could be my home and my community and I could love it and feel tied to it, but there is not a soul in Glasgow who would consider me Glaswegian.

Nonsense. I’m Glaswegian and I’d consider you to be a Glaswegian if you lived here. Would you be Glaswegian in exactly the same sense that I am e.g born and bred here? No. But I’d still consider you to be one just by the virtue of living in our city. And at least you’d have put some effort in unlike me. I was born here. I didn’t have to do anything to achieve that “status” I got to take the lazy route just as all I had to do to achieve British citizenship was be born to two British parents. Others may not be British in the sense of being born here but, assuming that they now have citizenship, had to work to become British and take that ridiculous test. They’re British in a slightly different way from me but it’s no less valid and took a lot more effort.

I don't object to people moving here if they're decent humans. These ones aren't.”

I can hear the pitchforks rattling from here.

Londoners decimated my town but then the Iceni razed their walls to the ground, so swings and roundabouts I guess.

That’s just not true though, having grown up there, London wasn’t always compromised on space; a couple of friends lived in council flats more likely council homes if part of a family, the semi detached to period detached properties. It was really varied amongst my peer group.

London’s gentrification catapulted with its global city status which was more around deregulation and late 80s, in Only Fools and Horses there was lots of references about selling their Peckham flat to yuppies as prior to early 90s it was as above, it wasn’t really a place that was incredibly desirable to live in.