To think London is in a major decline?

[Phannyphart]

I’ve lived in London (zone 2) for 10+ years. It’s always been pretty ‘real’ here but since the end of covid really everywhere just seems so, so awful.
Dog shit everywhere, spit everywhere, council owned parks closed and locked, people littering more than ever before. Get on a bus and it’s just people screaming in to a FaceTime on top volume, people blasting TikTok. Kids being stabbed in broad daylight, people shooting up heroin near the nearby primary school. The area has a lot going for it but it really seems wherever I go there is an awful decline.
Has anybody feeling the same actually moved out? Do you regret it?

Tbh Stoke Newington and Hackney were grim in the 70s onwards.

I know there must be some nice areas

Cannabis smells, especially when neighbours kid smokes it day and night right next to your bedroom 😭
As a non smoker it's genuinely offensive, smoke is bad as is but kind of airs out once its been smoked, but weed - they smoke it over hours every evening. Then wake and bake 😂 god I kind of feel awful as my friends and I used to smoke too as teens, god, the neighbours must have hated it!

We used to live next door to a couple who constantly smoked cannabis in their home and garden. Even when we kept the windows shut it leaked through the walls and our kids were inhaling it. Our clothes smelt of it.

It did not make them violent. As far as I could tell they spent most of their lives in semi comatose in bed, or on the sofa. They certainly did not work. Just lived off those who did.

It is a Class 2 restricted drug and those who buy it (as distinct from growing their own) are financing illegal drug dealing which exploits vulnerable youngsters and contributes to knife crime.

We also need to be honest about the cultural differences (IE litter dropping, sanitation) and start to educate communities in how we ‘operate’ in this country.

In the area where I live - roughly a 50/50 mix of people from ethnic minorities and white working class - I see people of both communities working to keep the area clean and organising litter picks etc. It's a slur to blame litter dropping, sanitation etc on "cultural differences". I see people from both communities anxious about the environment where we live, and about anti social behaviour.

@samarrange @Thepeopleversuswork

Well, I was around in the 60s and 70s but it's a long time since that level of fouling was considered acceptable. I would say for most of this century expecting to pick up after your dog has been the norm. That's fallen apart in the last couple of years.

I don't think its ever been considered "acceptable", its just one of those things and you get used to it. I actually feel like people are more considerate about this now than they were when I was a child. Area dependent of course.

Hawking phlegm in the street though is another level of evil. People do it absolutely casually. I'd almost prefer dogshit to that.

Now that stabbings are happening in broad daylight, on public transport where I could be with my young children, it makes me feel like it’s probably tome to start looking at other places to raise a family

Children are good here, they even try to do posters to tell adults about dog poo with their own campaign.

If only adults would buck up

Litter, dog poo and knife crime

It’s so depressing to here of another stabbing on a bus somewhere etc

Combination of economic failure, austerity, failure to protect british assets from overseas ownerhip and completely rampant immigration.

That's an absolutely reasonable objection, but it wasn't the OP's point that I replied to. The OP objected simply to people dealing cannabis openly. There's no smell from dealing it, and no way of knowing whether the people buying it will then go and smoke it considerately in private, or inconsiderately underneath your bedroom window.

There's not really any reason for seeing openness about buying cannabis as a problem in an area. The vast majority of people buying it aren't going to be made violent by it, or need to commit crime to fund it. They could legalise it tomorrow and it would be no different from anybody buying anything else.

It's less about different communities being more likely to litter etc and more about the fact that having insular communities living side mmby side erodes social cohesion and makes people from all gommunities generally less responsible for the things they share. For example in Japan where they have an extremely low immigration rate, everyone feels responsible as they feel part of the general culture. That's not to say Japan doesn't have issues as it certainly does, but it helps explain why people in the UK ate feeling less and less like they're part of the same culture.

I agree with Flyingtonight, it's not just London, it seems to be happening everywhere.

Giant potholes everywhere too.

And do ethnic shops not mean an area cannot be nice?

I want to pick up on the whole ethnic minorities argument. I live in Birmingham which most people will know has huge ethnic diversity, there are areas which are filthy dirty and it has no bearing on white, black or brown to be honest…it’s usually down to poverty. The poorer areas are grim, with high unemployment levels, high crime and generally a population that don’t give a shit about the area.

The suburb I live in is quite a high white population, and the town centre is dire-I’ve been up today and there were two drugged up individuals engaging in a fight which included spitting and then about 10 minutes later another bloke screaming and people outside McDonald’s!

Anyway the general decline is obvious in the 13 years I’ve lived here and the gap between the poor and the rich is growing.

@jokeynever I have personally witnessed a drug dealer called, came by car and two guys jumped him with machete and robbed him and stabbed him. 4pm 😅 I quickly legged it. He survived I heard.

All aspects of dealing suck. The people who end up smoking it suck, plus the drama that can occur. In true London fashion I see nothing, I mind my business 😶

I agree, knife crime which is huge now is primarily down to foreign criminality and is much more prevalent in some communities than others

It was shit well before Brexit so that really can’t be blamed for it

@suburburban yes youre right Stoke Newington had a terrible reputation in the 70s. But its very popular now, even without decent transport links, you're looking at 1.5million for a 3bed house and that's for a house near a crack den with someone using your doorstep as a toilet. No thanks.

This in a nutshell

It isn’t just an East London thing, it’s all over except for very small pockets

I agree. Unfortunately now Bristol is going the same way - massive increase in house prices which, it could be argued, have been fuelled by people from London moving to the area. All the creatives, artists, etc. are being priced out.

“There's not really any reason for seeing openness about buying cannabis as a problem in an area. The vast majority of people buying it aren't going to be made violent by it, or need to commit crime to fund it. They could legalise it tomorrow and it would be no different from anybody buying anything else.”

THIS is exactly the attitude that we need to fight. We live in a society which depends on the rule of law. Cannabis is a Class 2 drug and dealing it is against the law. If young people see that adults are happy to ignore the laws on cannabis why should they respect the laws on under age drinking, under age sex, littering, picking up dog shit, shop lifting or whatever?

If you don’t like the laws on cannabis fight to get the law changed.

Laws in a democratic country are a Menu Fixe. It’s not à la carte.

It is a Class 2 restricted drug and those who buy it (as distinct from growing their own) are financing illegal drug dealing which exploits vulnerable youngsters and contributes to knife crime.

Exactly & it’s often the same people who partake in a bit of a recreational drug use who complain about increased crime…

Hawking phlegm in the street though is another level of evil.

I remember "No spitting" signs when I was growing up (60s/70s). I imagine there was more of it back then, with respiratory diseases and so much more smoking.

That said, I had a cold/cough a couple of weeks back and I was walking along in the drizzle when a chunk of phlegm came up. I chose to spit it into a drain in the gutter rather than reach for a tissue or swallow it. 🤢 So, my apologies for that...

I grew up in a London Borough that is basically unrecognisable to me now and a shithole frankly. I moved out 20 years ago.

Some other parts of London have gone the other way and become trendy and gentrified.