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.

I presume when you say ‘hating on’, you mean ‘have a different opinion to me and I don’t tolerate other people’s opinions’?

I spent some of my happiest times living in various parts of London and it has always had an ‘edge’. I still go there regularly. But now that edge is a lot sharper. So yes, it has a lot of amazing culture and creativity, but there has been a massive change. There are a lot of muggings and drugs culture….the little road men strutting about. It’s gone beyond ‘diverse’ and is just a massive collection of people from everywhere who are wary of each other. Too much visible religion in what is apparently a secular country. It’s not racist to say that it doesn’t feel like the UK, because it’s not about the colour of skin, it’s about the actual culture of the place changing so quickly and London not feeling as it once did. Gangs of men from very different cultures loitering around. I was always safety conscious in London, but now I feel more like prey walking through some areas.
Even ‘nice’ areas like Chiswick are locking shop doors between customers. It is more lawless.

My feeling is that it's just too expensive. Average people can't afford to live there. People are either wealthy or in subsidised housing.

When I visited last month, central London just felt dull, which isn't how London should feel. Things didn't stay open late- London needs to sort that out. One of the world's major cities and things start closing early...

Because it’s filthy, dangerous and depressing.

Another classic of its type just dropped.

Doesn't mention a bottle of water which was honestly more useful when I visited London a couple of weeks ago.

Well that's where you're wrong, Im not here to change anyone's mind. All Im saying is London is getting a bad rap from those who have never visited it, or those that have only been in the touristy areas and those who left London as part of white flight 20 years ago and have never been back. Those people haven't seen proper London and are in no place to judge.

Farage doesn’t like London because on average Londoners don’t like him. Good for Londoners!

”Hating on”?

When did we stop using English properly?

I have also never come across this expression.

I wondered if it was something teenagers say.

When you say the cockney language, yes you're right they have pretty much all left and moved to Hornchurch and Canvey Island as part of white flight and good for them. London is a hot pot of different cultures, nationalities and religion along with with a majority of white english people and we all rub along nicely and we dont need people around us who dont value that, they can stick to Canvey Island with their own kind, much like yourself.
Where I am in London, 85% of my neighbours are white, some English, some French, Italian, south African etc and we all speak English maybe surprising to some in this thread. We are all just living our lives, working, bringing up our families. We have no Romanian beggars around us, yes there is homeless every where. Our streets are clean and nothing like the cesspit that it has been called

When you say the cockney language, yes you're right they have pretty much all left and moved to Hornchurch and Canvey Island as part of white flight and good for them. London is a hot pot of different cultures, nationalities and religion along with with a majority of white english people and we all rub along nicely and we dont need people around us who dont value that, they can stick to Canvey Island with their own kind, much like yourself.
Where I am in London, 85% of my neighbours are white, some English, some French, Italian, south African etc and we all speak English maybe surprising to some in this thread. We are all just living our lives, working, bringing up our families. We have no Romanian beggars around us, yes there is homeless every where. Our streets are clean and nothing like the cesspit that it has been called

I was thinking of this thread as I was out last night. Got the tube to meet friends in central London for dinner. The atmosphere was buzzing. Didn’t see a mugging. Saw groups of friends having fun. Of all ages. A Muslim woman with a hijab giggling with her black friend. A gay couple dressed up for some big night. People clutching programmes from various west end shows. People finishing their shifts at work. Some v glam and fashionable-looking young people wearing quite ‘racy’ outfits! A typical London on a Friday night.

I luckily saw no rats or stabbings. Sadly there was one man on the Tube who ‘looked’ homeless; I don’t know his situation of course. London like most places is not perfect. Far from it. But I see the diversity as a strength as it feels more welcoming of those who are ‘different’ than some places. And the bad stuff isn’t happening on a daily basis, so perhaps some perspective is needed.

Are you talking about cockney rhyming slang? Because my great grandma was born in the east end at the end of the 1800s and she didn't speak like that.

If you mean a strong east or sarf lahdan accent, plenty of that around.

I dont know which part of London you've been to but I certainly have not seen that in any part of London I have visited. I haven't seen rats in every street corner, maybe overflowing bins in some places not all. What places are you talking about then, can you give me some areas or are you just pulling these quotes off the Dailt Mail.
London may not be like Devon where I presume you are from, but Devon has its own set of problems too. There are not so nice places in Devon too, run down places, expensive houses, I can go on and on.

They love Sadiq Khan -fair swap

@Jamesblonde2 True. Every day I go in to central London for work I am devasated by the noticably low levels of cheery cockney chimney sweeps. It's a travesty.

I’ve lived here for decades. Married & divorced a Londoner, and am a mum to one too. I work for TfL, so I’m quite embedded. It is a great city, but it’s also dirty, it can be impolite, it’s fucking expensive and I can’t get decent fish and chips here for love nor money. I grew up semi rurally in the East Midlands. It’s also very lonely to live here. People think that’s surprising but if you are shy and single like me, it’s very hard to make friends and meet up socially.

I’m moving back home asap, after DD leaves home, but still commuting for work. I need a smaller, more friendly community. I’m never short of things to do here, but I need someone to do it with.

The crime, and the graffiti and the lack of courtesy gets on my nerves, but it’s not wholly the Mayor’s fault. It’s society post Brexit and post-pandemic, I think. Everyone out for themselves. I think the Mayor could do better on phone snatchers, knife crime and shoplifting but we need stronger laws to help the police too. I can’t say the police in my birth county are any great shakes either.

I grew up in a village in Hampshire. The largest place I grew up with was Southampton.

The UK to me is fields, small communities. It's not about ethnicity, I now work in teaching and love working with students of many backgrounds.... But The chaos of somewhere like London just strikes me as hell. It very much has it's own vibe, I didn't get the same feeling from Birmingham or Manchester. London is very much it's own thing and I don't like it

But, this is just me. I am just one person and my own perspective is just that. Earlier in my professional life I was offered the chance to work in London.... No way, it's not for me. I couldn't imagine anything worse.

Born in London and lived in London suburbs, worked in Central London.

The only time someone tried to was in Florence, Italy.

*pickpocket me

@Itsnottheheatitsthehumidity Masters Superfish in Waterloo. Thank me later.

My Mother was from London and I did live there for a while in my twenties. It was very much the era of no worries about over consumption and no guilt about your footprint in the mid 1990’s.

It has always been good for museums and galleries and unrivalled nationally for that but overall I think it has always been a bit of a shithole. It’s a place to go for culture but unless you are a museum curator and there every day then you are just jostling with too many elbows buying milk in the same stores that everyone else is up and down the country, unpacking the dishwasher and doing all that mundane stuff but paying £££ more for square footage you are doing your mundane stuff in.

I am mixed race and have always found it amusing how some white liberals bang on about multi culturalism being amazing. I do not care if a place is multicultural or a homogenous mass of the same sort of face.

I love going to London a couple of days a month for work, but there’s not enough money in the world to make me live there. I prefer fresh air, wildlife and countryside.

I don’t think people are wrong by saying that it’s changed though, I can massively see the difference in the place in the last 20 years - some good and some bad. I’m very wary of petty crime and the news around muggings isn’t great. It does feel like the Police have lost control.

Yeah, ok doll. I don't fit into any of those groups and I still think it's a dive 🤣🤣🤣🤣

It is more unfriendly though.

We have had a couple from London who WFH move up to our little Northern town. They live across the road from me, they are really unfriendly and avoid contact with everyone, total stereotype. But I live in an area where people say good morning to anyone.

I think people have a "grass is greener" view of things. Eg thinking australia is paradise by comparison.... meanwhile friends there have the exact same issues as here with affordability of housing and childcare.