Why is everyone hating on London

[greenwichvillage]

Recently a lot posts I read on social media is about how much people hate London. Its has been called all sorts of names - cesspit, dirty, crime ridden and the foreigners have taken over. They don't recognise London anymore and they are glad they have moved to whiter areas with cheaper housing.

For context, I have lived here all my life, lived in North West London and now live in Southwest London. I admit there are parts of London that have deteriorated, equally there part parts of London that are really nice. Yes it is expensive to live in and properties are expensive but that does not make it a cesspit.

I love living where I am and I love all that London has to offer. I'm not English but I am British and I'm not white and I feel really safe here in London. Yes there are problems with crime, but there is crime everywhere.

I have been to other areas in the UK and really none of it appeals to me, I have been to beautiful country side and small towns and cities and tbh I would get bored after two days there. But I would never go as far as insulting it which people seem to do quite a lot with London.

I think Farage/ Reform and Tommy have a lot to answer for.

yes very true

I’ve never lived in London, but lived in a commuter town until my late 30’s.
I loved visiting and exploring London, but was always glad to get back on the train to home. I found it to be an exhilarating, exhausting, liberating and fascinating city however.

Now, in my mid 50’s and not in best of health, I’ve opted for a quieter life. Manchester and Liverpool are my nearest cities and whilst I don’t feel the same vibe as London, they offer good fixes of city life ( for me).

I suppose OP, you would be bored anywhere else. London is like its own country ; vibrant, diverse, exciting!

Property prices no doubt vary In London, but only 30 mins from where I am living, we are talking footballers wives lifestyle and house prices to match!

When DP and I visited London last summer, we loved it and was strangely sad to leave.

I love living in London and I hate crowds. For the most part people who say they hate London because of the crowds / dirtiness don't know London at all.
OBVIOUSLY if you spend your time here in Oxford Street, Leicester Sq and Madame Tussauds you're going to get the impression that it's a dirty, busy shit hole but nobody from London really spends any time in those areas.
And there really isnt much crime. Sure compared to the Scottish Highlands there most probably is, but it's one of the safest capital cities in the world. And that public transport is bloody brilliant. I love that I hardly need to use my car.
And it's an absolute myth that Londoners are unfriendly or rude.
When I was pregnant (and wore a badge so people didn't have the is she or isn't she) I never stood on my commute once. Every day someone got up to give me a seat.
But if you stop right at the top of the escalator at Victoria station to sort out your suitcases then yes you'll poss people off. Because they can't stop they're on an escalator! And they see the same ridiculous crap every day, so patience wears a bit thin.

Also, racists really don't like seeing people they believe are beneath them live lives that are financially unattainable to them. It makes them froth at the mouth.

And do you go out on the streets cleaning and tidying-no ? You pay your council tax exactly the same as people in Cantebury and Liverpool - but you get loads of Gov money too unlike the rest of the country
edit -in fact you probably pay less council tax than people in Liverpool

London hating has been a phenomenon for many years (seen many threads on here about it over many years) but the hard right are now tactically juicing it to stoke division.

There's always been a tendency of some people to turn London into a totem for things they don't understand and are frightened of. Some of it is racism and people being uncomfortable with the idea that people from all over the world (generally) rub along together. Some of it is hatred of a supposed "metropolitan elite" and a suspicion that there's a cabal of upper middle class types who control the rest of the country through their networks. Some of it is just anxious and slightly timid people who haven't left their home town/region very much and have a wildly distorted view of what London is like and imagine there is a mugger with a knife on every street corner despite the fact that knife crime is actually lower than it has been for many years.

The Trump/Farage/Robinson tendency has cannily identified that there's capital to be made in identifying London as a hellhole and they have turned this into a running narrative.

I do think its rude, hypocritical and prejudiced for people who have been somewhere a handful of times to describe it as a cesspit. It's also very noticeable that these words are rarely applied to other large UK cities which by and large have the same, or worse, problems with crime/deprivation. If anyone described Birmingham, Glasgow, Manchester, Leeds or Cardiff as a "cesspit" on here they would rightly be torn a new one. But somehow because its London anything goes.

Honestly I don't really care what people outside London think of London. I've lived here happily for 30 years and will probably never leave. Anyone who wants to come here is welcome, anyone who thinks its a "cesspit" can stay where they are and keep their bigotry.

I love London, I love the people - diverse and accepting, I never feel as though I’m weird in London.

I don’t live there but I’ve always had family that do so I visit. Personally, I wouldn’t want to live in such a busy city but I do love to visit.

As an outsider I wouldn't have thought London had a large Muslim population.
I assumed that it was mostly white, then black people.
I'd associate Birmingham, Leicester, and Bradford with a Muslim populations.
Not that it matters, or is it mainly the mayor that people dislike?
Muslim communities makes up 6% of the UK population, a tiny percentage.

I hate London. I hate crowds of people, I hate shops, I hate traffic. Nothing to do with foreigners and phone thieves - that's just the icing on the cake as to why I don't go there unless dragged kicking and screaming. Most of my family love it and think I am dead boring.

Maybe its because i'm a londoner

In all seriousness, I love being a londoner. But there are big problems down to sadiq khan 😭, hes a terrible terrible mayor. I'm a life long leftie but I briefly contemplating voting for the opposition in the last election (but she was also shite)

All hes done is raise capital for city hall with ulez and 20mph zones - literally everything else is going to shit because of him

No rent controls, no universal food help during school holidays, a struggle for school places for disabled children, schools closing down, crime is INSANE

But its not as bad as people make out. Some are just jealous they cant afford to live here.

Best city in the world, imo, despite the mayor x

How is he meant to come up with extra school places?

So you're against having clean air and safer streets for pedestrians. I hardly use my car in London now as it is far easier using public transport.

By investing money into boroughs to fund their special needs education provisions

Some bits of London are awful, I've lived in Catford, Peckham, Lewisham, Deptford - all a bit run down, lots of graffiti everywhere, people on drink/drugs asking for money outside the shops etc. High streets full of empty shops! Where are the nice bits of London that you've lived in?

The places we go regularly that are actually nice - Blackheath, Hither Green, Nunhead, Dulwich are a bit village - like which is ironic.

No, i'm against how difficult it is to drive around london, especially for the disabled who cant just hop on a bike

Plus, the many other problems that I mentioned.

Do people think that special needs provision is better in other parts of the country??

London schools outperform the rest of the country by quite a large amount too.

The housing is terrible for the price you pay for it and there is a lot of crime. Theres a lot more space where I am now and fewer people which is nice but then I am older and appreciate that now whereas when I was younger I wanted to be in the city. London will never be over but it’s not to everyone’s taste all of the time and that’s fine too.

And he organised free school meals for all the primary kids in London. I think that's pretty amazing personally. I really like Khan.

It’s because it’s a Reform sponsored narrative intended to trash any area where large numbers of immigrants live.

Things that the far right hate:

• the arts
• multiculturalism
• ‘forriners’
• labour voters
• Muslims
• traffic calming measures

Which is why they hate London, as it has plenty of these things.

Have you ever spent a Saturday night in Blackpool? Or Hull, or Grimsby or Dartford? Or large parts of South Wales or Merseyside?

There are definitely some run down bits of London but they are no worse than a lot of the high streets of large parts of the UK. There are pockets of deprivation in some parts of the UK which are far worse than anything you will see in London.

I have no problem with people pointing out that there are some bits of London which are grotty but why is it acceptable to say the town is a "cesspit" because it's got some boarded up shops and homeless people when if you said the same about other towns you would be shot down as being a snob or a bigot.

It's the double standards which are so irritating. Someone goes up to London for a day out, sees some gum on the pavement and some crackheads and immediately its a "cesspool". Then they go back to their worn out market town and write screeds of hostile copy about how filthy and dirty London is.

As others have said, it’s all right wing propaganda curtesy of Trump, Farage, AKA Tommy Robinson. It has its faults, of course it does. It’s far too expensive and phone snatching is rife (certainly where I live). But it’s utter bullshit that there are “no go areas”. Yes there are lots of areas where particular ethnic groups have created a community. As they have in many other towns and cities in the UK and other countries.
I’ve lived there my entire adult life. My kids are Londoners. Their schools are incredibly diverse their friendship groups contain kids from all types of backgrounds. So do I.
i love the fact that I can pop to the shop at ANY time of day, and any day of the year. That I can buy ingredients for any recipe I like. My kids have got the whole city at their disposal for activities etc that they want to do and they can get themselves there and back. We go to gigs and shows regularly.
I can absolutely understand why it’s not for everyone. But a cesspit it most certainly isn’t.

I dont, I think its not perfect anywhere, but i am speaking about london.

there's many problems in london, including poor housing, poor police funding and other things, and it all just makes me frustrated.

I recognise that sadiq isnt personally responsible for sen funding as it comes from the government, which he should be lobbying on behalf of londoners, but it is frustrating

Well I live in Lewisham and I love it here. Peckham is also a completely different place to what it was in the 90s. Full on gentrified if you like that sort of thing ( I don't personally) seems like you're in SE London, so what about Crystal Palace? Greenwich? Beckenham Place Park? I agree the places you mentioned are nice too.

It's an incredible city but it's so expensive and so crowded and so built up. It's fabulous to visit, it's a pain in the arse to live in.

Of course it's fine to not like London. It's just that some people seem to think it's ok to slag it off and say how awful it is. I bet you'd think it was pretty rude if people did that to your area