Do people say this about other places?

[Schoolchoicesucks]

I was at a family birthday over the weekend and chatting to a friend of theirs I hadn't previously met.

They asked where I was from and when I said "Xxxx in north London", they immediately pulled a face and said "Oh, poor you, I'm in London all the time for work, hate it".

This isn't the first time someone's said similar to me - on a work related training course - held in central London - a couple of weeks ago, the trainer was talking to me and another attendee. There was a tube strike so we'd already talked about our disrupted journeys and where we'd travelled from, both of them started saying how much they "can't wait" to leave London at the end of the work day.

Do people ever say this about other places - you meet someone, ask where they're from and when they respond "Preston*" you immediately say "Oh I went there once, what a shithole, couldn't wait to leave it"?

(* Preston chosen at random, don't think I've ever been there. I'm sure it's perfectly lovely. Or has a mix of lovely and less lovely parts just like everywhere else. Including London).

Isn't it rude to be so negative about where someone lives? Why do people do this?

YABU - people say it all the time about loads of places
YANBU =people only say it about London

I love London and if I was a squillianaire I’d have a lovely house with a walled garden in Marylebone, Highgate or Hampstead Village. Perhaps a Mews house, I’m not greedy.

Yes people do do that. I went to uni near Preston and everyone said it was a shithole frequently. London gets most of it because people dislike large cities.

People aren’t talking about your neighbourhood but about the capital as a whole. So it’s not personal to where you live which is why they feel it isn’t rude.

It’s rude, regardless of whether it’s only said about London or not. You don’t just slag off where somebody lives! Not how I’d behave anyway.
I know what you mean though, OP. It does seem like London is fair game (fab city, by the way!).
I sometimes get it in the neck from Glaswegians - I’m in Edinburgh. The only logical explanation can be jealousy, which is probably true in your case too 😜

My mum lives in one of two villages close to each other and met a woman who lives in the other i think, this woman said "oh how tacky" when my mum said where she lived.

This is really not about places and whether they are "shit holes". It's about rude or forthright people and their very important opinions. 🥱

No place is all good or all bad, just as all the inhabitants are, or not.
I'm a northerner, and have many times been subject to similar inane comments. So predictable and lazy, imo.

Nope but as a Northerner who has lived in London for a decade I can tell you southerners mock our accents frequently, tell me I say words stupidly and often say ‘God I couldn’t live so far away from anywhere of any consequence, there’s nothing to do up there.’ Etc etc.

You just don’t hear it because you’re not northern. And that’s forgetting the generations of being treated as lower class and having less investment in northern areas leaving northerners feeling abandoned by the government and ignored by the capital.

Places are shitholes for different reasons, my Mother was from London and I lived there briefly in my twenties and really didn’t like it. DH went to school in London as commuted in from Surrey, Too many people, air felt bad, expensive, too many people on holiday bunging up places as they attempt to find where they are, people not as friendly

I am sure some may find my little Northern town a shithole, it’s quite poor and bits very run down. We have Reform councillors and there is nowt fancy round here but I really like it. I’m sure some would be offended by for instance a man on the tow path calling me lass a couple of weeks ago.

I think its a rude thing to say if you know someone is from there

There are plenty of places I find depressing and would probably think that about. I would never say it to someone from there though! And I don't find London depressing anyway 😁

I'm from North Essex and live in a really nice place. People all my life have been making stupid Essex girl comments to me and presuming I live in a flat in Ilford or something

I know of many places in Scotland that are routinely absolutely dismissed and pilloried and looked down on by people who have never ever visited.

Wales too. Everyone seems to think it’s one big shithole.

The museums there are amazing, I always recommend them to people. It doesn’t seem like a bad city at all to me but then when I lived in Oxford whilst doing my post doc I loved Cowley and thought the rest was overhyped so… Maybe it’s just what you’re used to and feel most comfortable with.

It's rude, but it's not uncommon. If I tell people from the south where I'm from (and have to explain it) I tend to get pitying comments about being 'so far from everything', ie from London
If I tell anyone localish they just grimace about the traffic from the one time they had to drive here!

A lot of southerners say this all the time about anywhere up north even if they have never been there.

Really annoys me, I’m from the South but visit the North alot.

I don’t know why you would even be bothered by someone else not liking London . I’m not from the uk I’m in Ireland but I’d imagine it just doesn’t suit some peoples lifestyle because of how large and busy it is. Plus unaffordable for a lot of people . In Ireland everywhere outside Dublin is “the country “ even if you live in a large town or a different city . A lot of people say they hate Dublin and wouldn’t live there. Some people genuinely hate big capital cities . Realistically you need privilege to be able to buy property in Dublin unless you have social housing. I think this results in open bashing of Dublin being acceptable .

Pah, try living in Dudley 🤣🤣🤣

I think it’s culture shock. London is so overwhelming if you’re not used to it. I love it, but I do understand why lots of people find it so painful. I can remember my DD being terrified in a big crowd at Covent Garden, and refused to move (she was 18!) She was scared that she’d bump into someone. I told her to just put her head down and walk and she said “I can’t! I’m too northern!” 😂

On the flip side, try being scouse. I don’t think there’s a single city in the UK that people are so quick to denigrate the place and its people.

Its rude, narrow minded and ignorant. But i guess its just a silly trope much like southerners saying its grim up north

So whys it full of tourists and 2nd homes?

I once told a southerner where I was from and they told me they'd been before and it was an absolute shit hole 🤷‍♀️

I was once told that slagging off London was different to slagging off anyone else's home town because it is the capital which means it "belongs" to everyone. I disagree and find it rude and I match that by saying, "Don't let us keep you."

What do you mean ‘nope’. That was my experience !
As to mocking Northerners accents. Never in my world in the South did anyone I know sit around mocking Northern accents.
We don’t talk about you particularly. Let alone laugh at your accent. I certainly don’t recognise your sentiment either about nothing to do up there. I think that is what you would like people to be saying. But they don’t.

And as to justifying disliking Southerners. It has nothing to do with poverty. There are rich and poor all over. Seriously.
I suspect it goes back further and stems from the appalling harrowing of the North. And Northerners have got into a sort of stuck record for complaining about the South. And do not seem able to get out of it.

I think it's because it's perceived as punching up

I agree. London is a proper international city - possibly the international city, it is the hub of many of the industries that make the UK tick as well as of UK politics, if you can make it in London you can make it anywhere, and all life is there. It so obviously is a fantastic buzzing place that provincial Pam or Pete having a pop is neither here nor there.

I've had it said to me about the town I grew up in. I only left a few years ago. I visit now and I can see why people said it.

Have you read the threads where people ask about leaving London? According to Londoners there's no culture anywhere else, everyone outside of the capitol is racist and there's no jobs. So the hatred goes both ways.

Even ignoring London there's a stated dislike for competitor cities. E.g. Oxford vs Cambridge, Glasgow v Edinburgh. Most of the time it's jocular.

That was your experience and I’m telling you MY experience which is that over the decade I’ve lived in the south people have done insulting impressions of my accent frequently and mocked it. You’re saying that never happens and that southerners don’t even think about us - when my experience shows the opposite. I wasn’t saying that what happened to you wasn’t true, I fully believe it, but your opinion of southerners attitudes to northerners is false for many as my experiences show.

Most southerners aren’t like that - like my DH and friends and colleagues. But many are and are extremely rude to and about northerners.

Yes, I imagine it does come from the harrying of the north and subsequent centuries of disgust for the north as the centre of industry (you only have to read Gaskell’s North and South so see the attitude circa 1800s) or the fact that regional accents weren’t featured on the BBC until the last decade.

It’s outdated and a grudge but it is most definitely upheld by people on both sides… and it’s the northerners that often face social disadvantage because of it.

Yes they do. I’ve seen and heard plenty of rude comments about the North from people in the South including comments about there being no culture and mocking their accents. It’s incredibly rude regardless of who is doing it and which town or city they are insulting. You are much more likely to notice it when people insult your particular city though.