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?

To answer some of the people who jumped to criticise my first post:

• Public transport is awful: I truly believe that it is compared to what other big cities in Europe have in place. The tube is an old network, it is overcrowded, unbearable in parts in the summer, does not feel especially safe and is ridiculously expensive and plagued with frequent delays. That was my experience of 30 years of commuting to university and to various workplace in London. Apparently I must have been using it in a parallel universe because to everyone else it is a wonderful, Disney-like system. I also never felt safe on night buses or the night tube.

• The seaside town I live in: is actually in the South East and very well connected (fast trains to London and to all of Kent) with a thriving cultural life. I think it is rather arrogant to think that anywhere outside London is 'sleepy' or boring. There are many people from London who have settled here, as well as a friendly local population, including a lot of creatives who have been priced out of London and moved out for better art studio spaces and a cheaper cost of living.

I am sure London has a lot going for it and always will, especially if you have the money to afford it, but I think it has lost a lot of its individuality and 'coolness' over the past two decades and the opportunity to see interesting West End shows or art exhibitions for me is no longer worth putting up with high prices and poor quality of life. I

can still visit whenever I want to while enjoying a better life somewhere else...

I think you have misunderstood the meaning of eugenics.

Yea, it’s all kickin off where I am. Someone tutted(loudly) in Gail’s when there was no SF sourdough. It felt palpably edgy. I had to tell the nanny to grip the bugaboo tightly

Have you been living under a rock op? I left London 20 years ago and it hasn't changed much at all. What you're saying doesn't surprise me it was going on 20 years ago and before that.

As always with posts about London there are people who think Leicester Square/Oxford Street is London! Whereas Londoners wouldn't go near them unless absolutely necessary. The £££ for West End theatre... well tourists pay that mainly, I go to an occasional West End show (usually a transfer that I've missed) but there is so much amazing Theatre at a fraction of the cost outside the West End.

WRT teenagers and knife crime, it's mainly gang on gang and the rest is no worse than any other big city. My dd was walking alone to school from about 9 then getting a train from 11 and I never gave it a second thought. I would be much more worried about them being mowed down on a country lane if I lived in the middle of nowhere! I didn't hear of any of her friends being mugged, ever.

Previous no-go areas are now not, many places in the suburbs improved during Covid due to the shift to the local area. The villages (ie the bit you actually live in vs the whole city) have great communities IME, we know all our neighbours and we all help each other out. It's much like living anywhere else (apart from we have such good public transport)

lol I’ve lived and worked in London for 30 years. It’s the cleanest and safest I’ve ever known it.

Watch and weep

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=co54X683Ob8&t=17s&pp=ygUSTG9uZG9uIG1hcmNuIDE5NTBz

How do you cope with the worry about your kids drowning if you live by the sea?

I live and love London. However, there are some things that I agree are going downhill and that's litter! I do think it has a lot to do with council's cutting the funding. I try and keep my bit of the pavement clean, picking it up etc but the weekly street clean no longer happens. And I think since covid, there are more irresponsible dog owners who just don't care!

And I had to laugh about the stab vests. I don't know where this idea comes from, it does happen but honestly it is pretty rare, remember London is huge. London in my opinion is pretty safe but ever since we got this Mayor, the papers talk as if London is a war zone, I don't recognise that description at all. I think it's politically motivated and does our Capital a disservice. The UK needs London to thrive as it is the bank account like it or not for this nation. I once watched a popular Youtuber come to London to point out how it's dying, and he filmed near me. I was fuming as he was pointing out how everything was boarded up. Yes the bit he was at, the pub had recently closed down but if he had gone 2 minutes up the road, he would have come across a thriving high street with a gallery, independent cinema and a holland&barratt!!!!

I agree with you and what you describe is typical of how London is portrayed in some quarters. Most of us don't recognise that.

As for litter, that depends on the council. My local council is pretty good, where I lived up until last year it was even better.

I’ve lived in London on and off for thirty years. I went to the theatre a few weeks ago with my young daughters and had a wander around Leicester Square, Soho etc. It’s a shadow of its former self and it’s so sad to see. Oxford Circus looks dismal, dirty and bizarrely empty. Even ten years ago the big flagship stores were rammed with people. Now there’s almost nothing there. Same with Leicester Square, except a huge crowd of men dressed in black, chanting… it was very intimidating and it shocks me to remember how lively it was not so long ago, full of restaurants and bars and packed with people having fun. Everything’s so old, filthy and tired now.

I love to hear a Londoner be so frank about their own provinciality (I say that as someone who used to live in London)

I went back to Ealing a couple ago after living there about 25 years ago - I always thought it was really posh and naice back then, didn't feel like that any more. I hated living in London generally though, lived in a flat for a year in Ealing and didn't meet/know a single one of my neighbours. Much nicer living in a village in the beautiful countryside where I know all my neighbours and have lots of friends around.

I've certainly never regretted moving back out of London! I would never consider raising kids there.

Hmm I've loved in London my whole life (45 years!) and honestly I think you're remembering things wrongly. Oxford Circus and Leicester Square have always been horrible dirty dives. True Oxford Circus had Topshop but that was the only thing that wasn't crap

I’m not misremembering. I wasn’t saddened as much by the dirt and decay as I was by the general atmosphere of decline, and the fact that I felt so intimidated walking around. The people are different. It’s not the same city it used to be.

I live in Brixton. 25 years ago I lived in Kentish Town/Camden and people used to openly try to sell me drugs in the street. I also recall them trying to sell drugs to my 80 year old grandma and the Bishop in full regalia. From my perspective it's got quite a lot better.

I’ve lived in London for 20 years and simply don’t recognise most of the descriptions on here. My area, which is fairly central, feels safe and well maintained and there is a sense of community. I love raising my daughter here.

I’m honestly thinking of leaving Mumsnet as it seems recently to have been taken over by a subset of posters with a particular agenda which bears no relation to (at least my) reality. It’s really depressing.

I was in Belgravia at the weekend and I thought what's not to like?!

Agree Mumsnet has changed.

Mumsnet loves a regular London bashing thread....

The city is more or less the same. You on the other hand got old.

Yup, infested with Reform-voting provincial gammons who couldn’t make it in London in a million years, and deep down are eternally bitter and resentful about it

I always read these threads with interest because I live in London and don’t recognise the London of these threads at all. I love in a lovely part with a thriving high street full of shops, cafes, restaurants and bars. Lots of green space. Excellent schools and good quality housing.
Ok Oxford St is a dump but Khan seems to be trying to pedestrianise it and it could a different place in a year or two. I detest Khan but I’m behind this.

On the other hand, I think I’d die of boredom if I had to move to Guildford, something my husband suggests every few years.

London has improved beyond all recognition! It’s become so polished and lovely that it’s barely recognisable in places! I say that as a country person.

London is and will always be an incredible world city.

Nope. She's right. You are just unobservant.

I’m on the outskirts of London but travel in frequently. I don’t see this. Maybe you need to move to a different part of town.