To dislike Birmingham?

[redeoof]

I’ve worked in the city maybe 4 years now .. there really isn’t much appealing about it. I once overheard a woman on the train say she does guided tours for Manc, London and Birmingham - and Bham is a hard sell.

I’ve been coming into New Street station for years and there’s always been construction and it’s never seemed to progressed to anything.

I walk down New Street and actually feel unsafe. It’s depressing and dreary .. and it should be so much more

I am a born and bred Brummie and get very defensive and protective about the second city. Like others have said, it is in many ways no different to any other large city. It is a melting pot of people from all different walks of life. I wouldn't want to walk alone at night but it does have such a lot to offer. You do need to scratch beneath the surface to find the real gems

I love it. I’ve lived here all my life, been to other cities but I don’t love anywhere as much as Birmingham. I love how multi cultural it is, there’s so much to do, I think the people are really friendly and of course there’s some bad places but that happens in every city.

I have friends that live in Birmingham and quite enjoy it when I visit. They are within walking distance of one of the train stations that takes you to the city centre. Never felt unsafe. The library is amazing. The standard of driving is subpar though. When I eventually got off the congested M6 on my last visit I saw a few near misses. No one seems to look when pulling out onto roundabouts. It felt like a free for all.

Only if they say things such as "it doesn't feel like England".

And it's not too far from the Lake District. If you stayed there for a week, you could visit Lake Windermere, and get there and back on the same day.

@PrettyLittleRose I can already do that from where I live To be fair , Blackpool was fine until about 4.30pm then it seemed to get quite menacing, that might have just been my take on the vibe though.

Funnily enough I feel the same way about London.

I’d rather live in Birmingham than London any day of the week. You couldn’t pay me to move to London.

I've had 2 jobs where I've had to regularly visit Birmingham.

I hated it with the first job. In a cheap shit hotel away from the centre on my own and I did not feel safe walking back there after dark, even though I've lived in a couple of rough towns. Horrible multi lane roads to cross. I dreaded it.

2nd job more central by the Cathedral and that's okay, although it helps that I was always with colleagues.

Not a place I love though. Also have to visit Coventry now and the bits I've seen are a total dive away from the station. It had the world's saddest and most dodgy Christmas market last year.

Out of all the cities I have visited for work, Leeds has been my favourite.

And yet London is the city with the most murders.

You’re being utterly ridiculous.

I wonder if the people who "love Birmingham" have a form of Stockholm syndrome and don't realise what a good city is like.

I've lived in Manchester. Regularly go to London. Have had weekends away in different cities. Still think they are all pretty much the same in terms of nice and horrible areas

In my opinion and in my own personal taste I think the brummie accent is diabolical.

Is that any better for you?

Can you define what you mean by "chavvy"?

I've always understood that to be an offensive word used to express prejudice against the working classes. But a lot of people use it on here, whom I assume aren't just happily flaunting class prejudice? So maybe it has another meaning?

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/london-hotspots-knife-crime-newham-bromley-stabbing-b1297530.html

Sorry weren’t you saying you feel safer in London than Birmingham?

Every major city has crime. Get over yourself.

What is a good city then, in your opinion?

I'm not going to say London is perfect, it has it's issues and such horrible areas well. But you go to Central London and there's so much to do and so many things that brighten my spirits.

While overall violent crime (assaults, robberies, and sexual offences) is noticeably higher in Birmingham, the specific rate of homicides is a different story. Long-term data tracking from the House of Commons Library indicates that both regions alternate on who has the marginally higher per capita murder rate from year to year.

I don't think some people get how huge Birmingham is. While not as big as London it much bigger than anywhere else in the UK. Judging the city based on a visit to New Street is like judging london after a visit to Euston.

Birmingham is huge and has some very dodgy areas. Easy to avoid them though.

The Tube is fucking vile and, in my personal experience, nobody is ever helpful to visitors using it. They just want you to get out of their way.

The first time I ever visited London in my late teens, I asked a copper (yes they were on the street then back in the 90’s), for directions. He shrugged his shoulders and turned away from me. It left a sour taste that hasn’t been rectified in all my visits since.

I don’t feel safe in Central London at all.

Don’t get the same feeling in the likes of Manchester or Liverpool. Like Birmingham, the people there are friendly and I call them the ‘Brummies of the North’. So I feel I’d get help if I needed it in those cities and Brum.

I don’t believe all people in London are like that. I have friends who live there. But my experiences to date, don’t fill me with confidence that I’d get the same welcome as I would in other cities.

And I’m not going to sit here and listen to people trash Birmingham and say it has a high crime rate, when there are other cities that have higher or similar crime rates. And also other cities that also have shitty areas within them. That’s what big cities are like. ALL of them.

Budapest, Krakow, Dubai, Singapore. There are places in the world where you just don't have to deal with knife crime and it's actually safe to go out.

@redeoof what a rubbish post. If you don't like the city then don't go there - leave your job if entails you visiting this 'shit hole'.

You do know that you get good people and people where ever you go, just as you get good places and rubbish places/parts of the city. How many of the hoodie thugs from Birmingham are sitting here reading Mumsnet - none! But there will be other people who are from there and reading this and you are putting them and their home city down. You do seem like a nast person.

A lot of the people on here who say it's a shit hole have either visited and not liked what they've seen, which is fair enough. But op it sounds like you've seen very little. if the area you are from is full of people like you then I definitely wouldn't rate it.

I like Birmingham. It has a nice atmosphere and friendly people. Shopping is great and there is so much to do. I have never felt unsafe.

I prefer it to London, Manchester and Leeds.

Hate all the dossers and druggies milling around asking for money. It's always the women they ask never the men.

Birmingham has some nice theatres though.

Yes because that automatically makes you a racist. I've just said it so call me racist if it makes you feel morally superior.

Fair enough! I don’t agree with you but you’ve made me laugh anyway. How do you feel about the Black Country accent?