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 Preston

I mean more to live in, rather than visit. Like on here if someone says they are relocating here and where is a nice place to live people are a bit ewww.

The tourists and second homes are not in Glasgow or Greenock or Paisley or Inverclyde.

I'm from the northwest and everyone from the south makes a face when I say where I'm from and says something like "I think I changed trains there once". Some places are just considered not very nice by a lot of people. A lot of northerners dislike London, a lot of southerners think the north is all grim.

I’m from New Jersey, known since the 70s as the armpit of America. An English acquaintance described it to me as the Birmingham of America which made a change.

Im from Luton literally no one even people from there have ever said anything nice about it 😂😂😂

You should try being a Northerner living in London. I get comments like that relatively frequently. People seem to think you live in a cave and dont get fresh bread or garlic in the North.

I think it’s great that some people are immediately rude about your home town. It tells you everything you need to know about them. Rude, ill-mannered, thoughtless and egotistical. You can then avoid them for ever more.

London is too big for people to perceive a remark like that as personal.

If they said ‘oh you’re from Dollis Hill? What a shithole’, that would be rude.

I used to have a friend who once stated quite aggressively that everyone from the south of the U.K. was a snob. She was from Leeds, and we were all living in Oman at the time.
Dh is a Londoner, born and bred, I am from ‘general’ southeast. I said, ‘So do you think dh and I are snobs, then?’
’No!’
’Well then.’

But I know she still thought all southerners were snobs. She had some sort of massive chip on her shoulder.

This ⬆️ Precisely.

You’ve you’ve seriously never heard anyone being rude about the north? Never heard the awful tropes about people from, for example, Liverpool?

How very London centric of you!

To be fair, she has presumably never heard anything about 'Essex girls', and Essex is pretty much London, according to some

Yes.
Oldham.
The only reason people have been is if their team played Oldham Athletic.
The good thing about Oldham is that it has good links to motorways and transport away.

It’s definitely rude to say but I think people do say it about other places , I hear it a lot about Birmingham

Now Birmingham did scare me a bit. Occasionally I’d have to get a connecting train through there to Oxford and it meant walking from new street to moor street. That underpass was terrifying as a solo female.

DD's friend said it about Paris! Central London is fabulous. I love its energy. As a vibrant city with the best museums, shops, culture, food, architecture, fashion etc. I don't think anywhere else in the UK can match it. But... there are grotty bits, and of course it depends on your own experience (stuffy tubes, etc). I hate to hear people say it's a shit hole - so ignorant. We should all be proud of our capital city. I bet other nations don't say that about their capitals. It's just inverted snobbery, IMO. Of course it hasn't got everything, (seaside, moorland) but as a city it has fantastic parks and so much else.

This definitely wasn't intended as a north/south competitive/bashing thread. I am not from London and that's clear from my accent. Maybe I should have used Guildford instead of Preston in the OP (I've never been to Guildford either).

I didn't take offence or start reconsidering my life choices because a randomer told me they don't like London. As a PP said, it's useful info that the person is a bit of a twat or has no filter. I just find it a strange response and a bit rude, wondered what others thought and if it was unique to London, which it doesn't seem to entirely be.

That wouldn’t have worked tbh because Guildford is lovely.

My older brother moved to London in the mid Eighties from near Hull and got a lot of sympathy about the minors’ strikes and queries as to how his family were coping. He had a lot of SWP friends.

There were no pits in Hull; our father was a comfortable capitalist pig and my brother was educated at public school and didn’t have a local accent. A minority of people are insular wherever you go.

Yes, I've live in London and multiple places near and far over the years. Currently, in East Anglia, I get 'That's a bit far out isn't it? Bet the public transport is rubbish'.

Five years ago I lived in the suburb near another UK city and got 'God, I bet that's a bit rough, isn' it?'.

My sister currently lives in a bog-standard south-east town and gets 'Bet there's not much to do for work there'.

A friend of mine lives in a gorgeous leafy, tiny village in Norfolk and gets 'Bet your kids are bored stiff and you feel like a taxi service'.

It's boring – just ignore it, or say 'No, actually, I don't feel that way.' Or if they are really rude say 'You don't live there, so why do you care?'

My family are from South Shields, one of the things I love when I go up, is that my feet barely hit the ground & someone calls me 'pet'. 💕

@Schoolchoicesucks no, it's not just London. It's international too. I LOVED living in London. I moved out to buy a house, buying alone I just couldn't afford to buy something I found acceptable in London. In some ways I wish I'd settled for something I could afford & stayed. I miss living there!

yes it's rude of people to make those comments, but when they do, just think of people like me who envy you living in London.

EDIT: just seen you don't live in London. I misremembered your OP. I need more coffee.

I come from Grace Dent's neck of the woods and I can confirm that quite a lot of it falls into that category. Visitors think it's lovely only because they're passing through.

People say it about other places but I find it really f**king rude to be honest.

It's the sort of think horrible, rude people do.

I was once gobsmacked when someone asked my friend where she lived and when she said 'Streatham', this ignorant woman said 'Oh that's a shithole, isn't it?'

Whether it is or not isn't the point - good people just don't insult people's homes like that.