London and surrounding area has become so unkempt

[GrubbyTowns]

Rubbish strewn everywhere. All the verges full of cans, takeout detritus.
London and the southeast generally just seems so unkempt to where it was a few years ago even.
Just came back from a trip to Liverpool and the contrast was incredible. A busy city but so clean!
Why is this?

I haven't called you racist at all. I pointed out that this story about London 'falling apart' is a Reform/far Right narrative.

What new identity is being imposed on you?

I live in Merton - we get bins collected every week (alternating general rubbish / paper vs all other recyclables), the council provides pop up tips and they are very good at dealing with flytipping reported on the fixmystreet app. But there is still so much rubbish about.

I also think you become a bit immune to it and stop seeing it - i always feel like it looks a lot worse after ive been to see my parents in their smallish rural town but I think its just because ive seen what clean really looks like.

The amount of flytipped mattresses, furniture, general waste is really disappointing and there is so much dog poo in the alleys and snickets. So disgusting - I cannot understand why people dont pick up after their dogs when kids are biking and scooting up and down the paths constantly.

One of the problems is the huge amount of takeaway rubbish. 30 years ago I don't think there was a costa on every corner giving out thousands of cups a year some of which get dumped. It's the same with all the chains.

I do litter picking - it's mcdonalds/kfc, redbull cans, monster energy drinks and coffee cups in the main that's the most common. We need to put a small 5p tax on the top ten most dropped items and it could be ring fenced for cleaning up.

On the plus side there used to be magnetic tape from car tape players glistening in the hedges of the UK and that's all gone!

@Dappy777 Rupert- is that you? If it’s that awful move to somewhere that suits you more if you can - and since when did flying union jacks outside your house become a normal thing to do ? , back in the days when there were fewer immigrants I don’t remember anyone doing this and I lived in a very working class mining town , so of course as its become something ‘some’ people do it’s become associated with a particular mindset/ viewpoint . We have loads of towns and villages round here where you see very few immigrants’ and few signs of statue smashing etc ( this by the way has little to do with any British culture - just bored scumbags ) - all still very British, Sunday lunch at pub, slightly grotty tea shop , branch of CoOp etc - O think you are wanting a culture and way of life that doesn’t really exist anymore in lots of places that have grown but it’s not down to anyone imposing anything on you , it’s simply change that has happened over the years. My great uncle who is 89 gets his knickers in a twist about smartphones and having to use apps and no longer having bank branches on every corner etc

You obviously didn't go in the part of Liverpool my relatives live in!

I wouldn't have counted Brighton as SE

Yeah where there's rubbish there's vermin. But some residential areas seem clean and well kept.

As my post about a dirty seaside town has had comments, I will say that it is Margate that is dirty.

I used to live in Margate and I agree that parts of it are run down and grubby. Like many seaside towns though , Margate has suffered from multiple shop closures (apart from the trendy bit near the Turner to attract the tourists.)
There is a lot of poverty in the area and many people struggled before the COL rises-also low wages for seasonal jobs and zero contracts.
I think that when some people are struggling, they care less about their environment and the more prosperous, older DFL's are fighting a losing battle against this backdrop.
The rental market is insanely expensive although I realise that this is an issue shared by many seaside towns and that just adds to the problem!

Forgot to add that the rubbish, glass bottles, wrappers, dirty nappies etc cover the beach by the end of a summer's day thanks to the day trippers who don't think it matters as they don't live there.
Thank God for the tireless local cleaners who restore the sands to a pristine condition ( before the next onslaught begins...)

And then you told me I was implying it was due to a Muslim mayor.

It’s your way of closing down any discussion you don’t like. You do it all the time.

It was a bizarre take. No one mentioned the mayor or his religion.

You do it all the time

Eh? What?! No idea what you're talking about there. Perhaps you could link to where I've done that before?

Again, I wasn't implying that you were doing any such thing. I was referencing the stream of misinformation about London/lawlessness that is often levelled at Sadik Khan, because he is Muslim.

Not you.

I do think saying specifically London though nearly always has a ‘we hate London slant’ - I went shopping in Kingston the other week and then popped to Wimbledon-both were busy and yes whilst not mint condition spick and span were perfectly fine and nice and lively , no different at all to other UK city’s I’ve been to recently, both north and south - now I love Liverpool and well done to it if it was looking great but I’ve also been when it’s level of spick and span was no different to anywhere else if it’s size - I’ve been to London on days where I think , goodness this looks clean and tidy and other times I think blimey this looks a bit grim, it can be all kinds of things, level of business and volume of tourists, councils annual budget running low, weather, wind, birds opening bags , landlords dumping shit .it really isn’t just a London thin— same situation by the way in Amsterdam, Düsseldorf, Rome, Vienna - even when we lived in Copenhagen it had days it looked much cleaner than others -

I agree with all of this, GrubbyTowns, except the bit about the council budgets

It's certainly the whine which they trot out to explain every failure, but isn't convincing when there's always the money for whatever pointless vanity projects they prefer to lash ££££ on

And please don't anyone point out that such-and-such is "ringfenced" ... it's public money, so if it's needed more for core, statutory issues than fripperies then un-ringfence it

Typo

Depending where you live though , the idea of ‘fripperies’ can vary - here in Bath we had a year when the council did away with our usual comedy festival/book festival/ food festival etc and a lot of locals moaned like mad as they have tourist dependent businesses or work for similar - and it’s this frippery stuff that attracts people throughout the year -I can see though if you live somewhere that isn’t like this then yes the ‘nice to haves’ are somewhat secondary to bins, parks, general upkeep , social care -

I see this too.

The area I used to live in West London was pretty messy. Despite seeing lots of council staff cleaning up, people didn't seem to care and dropped rubbish etc.
We moved out to a Buckinghamshire village and when we go back to visit MIL it's pretty shocking, even our girls comment on it. Currently on her fairly average road there are 4 what looks like abandoned cars with bits missing, a sofa on a path, various baby toys, broken buggies etc, cans and bottles.

But our village where I have never seen a council cleaner/street sweeper etc, is super tidy in comparison. Regular local litter picks by volunteers as we know the council is useless out here.

It’s definitely much much dirtier, yes. People saying it isn’t are delusional. It’s more crowded, more dirty, and all round less pleasant.

I regularly work in central London and it’s really dirty - just piles and piles of rubbish in the streets. It has to be a health hazard. It’s so embarrassing that tourists experience this.

Bill Bryson famously criticised Liverpool for having a litter problem in one of his books. I think there anti litter campaigns there because of this.

This type of post is just a bullying attempt to shut down discussion.

It always involves a huge stretch and massive assumptions about the OP.

And I hate Reform.

As fun as it may be, shutting down discussion by implying racism doesn’t really work anymore.

@CoffeeCantata @GoatsOfNavahoe having an alternative view is neither trying to shut down nor bullying.