London is no longer an English city

[Leafyhouse]

Said by John Cleese (he of Monty Python fame), recently. Link to story is here:

www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-48451384

What do other people think? I do see London's diversity as being its great strength, but maybe it's just because I live in the London bubble - and maybe the view from the rest of the country is utter horror that the capital seems to be becoming increasingly disconnected from the country. Both economically and culturally. Hence the Brexit vote - Remain in a sea of Leave.

What's the view from others?

BTW the Manchester Metro link in the last decade has had 3 new lines open and has a 4th under construction.

Wigan North Western Station has 1.5 million users a year btw.

Roughly about the same as Enfield Lock.

Zipee
Your simplistic 'comparisons' are nearly worthless. If you are talking about say public transport, you need to be comparing journeys of say 15 miles to get from 'housing' areas to the city centre or probably more importantly 15 miles out to somewhere say 5 miles out, so better representing where people live and work.
Outside Greater London, many such hypothetical journeys are simply not possible or have 4 buses a day if you are lucky.

Howwudu Here is the source for your link www.centreforcities.org/press/austerity-hit-cities-twice-as-hard-as-the-rest-of-britain/. It explicitly excludes London from the north south divide on funding.

zipper None of that is catching up with the growth in London though. Imagine if the U.K. was China? All the infrastructure that would have been put in to the regional cities? Of course it would mean Wigan would become a dormitory town of hundreds of 40 storey high rises linked by fast train to Manchester and the people in all those nice gentile villages around Manchester could expect to be swallowed up. There is of course a happy medium but it isn’t even close. Sadly I don’t think many Brits and especially our politicians have a clue about the scale of the competitive threat from economies that are putting in the investment.......

victim mentality
Really? So are the cross party MPs who have formed a committee to deal with social mobility issues in some parts of the UK also suffering from that too? What about Liverpool? They were branded by Boris Johnson as having a victim mentality. When we ask for a fair deal we are called whingers. You sound like a Thatcherite to me!

I find the lack of cultural cohesion in London horrifying and depressing. There are people living in London who come from all over the world and yet they by and large refuse to mix together. It’s such a waste. I grew up in a very diverse country where there were a lot of migrants and a the culture was very rich and dynamic as a result. I was quite surprised by what I found when I moved to London as a result. In answer to your question, London is a city with English pockets.

This is an excellent article, yes London does need to sell itself to the rest of the country and get past these trite generalisations that have been so evident on this thread that are feeding resentment www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/20/london-uk-economy-decentralisation

BogglesGoggles I assume the city you lived in was not in Asia then.... I know there is hate and division in the U.K. at the moment, it is scary but I saw worse in the way of institutionalised racism living in Hong Kong and China. In fact I interact with all sorts of cultures on a daily basis at work and leisure, it is one of the benefits of living in London but then I grew up enjoying the contact with Asian culture in a northern city. I suppose that wasn’t “English” either though......

They are simplistic comparisons, they are on passenger numbers and prove my point about mass transit systems needing mass population and high population density to work.

Manchester has the Metrolink and an effective bus service from the city centre to the suburbs and other towns.

Strawman about social mobility, also an appeal to authority. Social mobility is a UK wide issue.

You do have a victim attitude, you complain that Wigan doesn't have national museums, but the Wigan Museum of Life manages about 40,000 visitors a year as far as I can see.

You complain that the children have less access to museums and art galleries in London, but a simple google finds a shed load of free well funded museums and art galleries within an hour of you

You complain that the public transport networks are underfunded and should be more like London's, yet London funds its public transport its self ( from GLA funds), and the numbers for usage in just one London station dwarf that of a Manchester metro link which as seen three new lines and one offshoot built in the last ten years ( and that has a fourth to come) .

You are making inaccurate comparisons.

Another good article - the UK has nine of the ten poorest regions in Northern Europe and just one, London, in the richest. Th reasons?

^Poor skills among a sizeable chunk of the workforce*
Weak infrastructure and a lack of affordable housing
And the centralisation of political and commercial power in London

www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/the-uk-has-9-out-of-the-10-poorest-regions-in-northern-europe/06/06/

I can’t grasp your motive Zipee. You condemn me as having a victim mentality. This is a serious issue and my arguments are very well evidenced. What is you motive? Thatcher wanted the ‘managed decline’ of Liverpool in the 1980s. It nearly happened until Michael Hesletine intervened. Is this your approach? Areas outside London are a drain on your lifestyle and should be left to decline. I am just trying to get to the nub of your argument...

There are people living in London who come from all over the world and yet they by and large refuse to mix together

Do they?

I mean, I don't want to go all 'some of my best friends are black' or anything, but off the top of my head my household and I (who are all white and British-born) 'mix' with people who are from or who have backgrounds in Greece, Israel, Germany, Hong Kong, China, the Caribbean, Ghana, Nigeria, Jamaica, Iran, Spain, the US, Canada, Belgium, Australia, New Zealand...

Anecdotal, sure, but so is your post.

I can add Korea, France, Holland , Poland, Ethiopia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Thailand, Italy to that list.

You may have pockets like New Malden where a particular community has settled because they can have shops and restaurants etc that are part of their culture but that does not mean they don’t work in other parts of London or that there are not plenty of English neighbours and visitors who enjoy that culture too. I am not sure how long Koreans have been settling in New Malden but as I mentioned upthread Ealing has had a Polish community since the Second World War and the curry houses in Brick Lane have been there decades along with the bagel shops of previous waves of immigration. Now it is being taken over by English hipsters! But I expect Copper resents them too......

Lots of strawmen there again.

What I'm saying is that you aren't making accurate comparisons or factual ones.

London does not suck up more resources than it should - in fact it is a net contributor ( one of 3 regions that is) to the economy. It pays more tax than the next 30 other cities added together!

Your comparisons are inaccurate, you think that London kids are better off due to their proximety to national museums but you are near museums, but these national museums would not achieve the numbers that visit it outside of London and you too can visit them for free.

You want similar public transport but don't have the population or population density to support it.

Cuts have effected London councils as much as anywhere else.

Zipee You have called me a straw man, an idiot and you have said I have a victim mentality.
You won’t accept that local councils are underfunded and their facilities are at risk of closing forever. A family like mine would receive £2000 pa less than the same sized family in London. Those are the facts. There is wealth everywhere and poverty everywhere but some regions have been really badly treated and I don’t apologise for arguing their cause.

A straw man is the arguments you are making, I'm not calling you one.

Council funding has fallen in London too, lots of facilities have closed. Your North West region gets about the same funding as London (according to the information you have linked to).

You do have a victim mentality, no matter how much someone points out that actually on your doorstep you do have a range of free, funded opportunities, or that there has been investment its not good enough and not fair because another area gets (slightly) more, but far less than what it contributes.

Ok.

Here, there are 7 free museums on Liverpool, pllus the Tate Liverpool and Lady Liver Galllery.

www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/

There are loads in Manchester too.

But no, you are deprived cause you don't have national museums in Wigan

I said OK Zipee. You really don’t have to keep slagging Wigan off.

*Howwudyou” You put up a straw man that you were called a straw man....

Straw man

an intentionally misrepresented proposition that is set up because it is easier to defeat than an opponent's real argument.
"her familiar procedure of creating a straw man by exaggerating their approach

You really don’t have to keep slagging Wigan off. And another one... I haven’t seen anyone slag Wigan off..... Just point out that it isn’t quite as simple as the London is rich / Wigan is poor as a result stereotype you have sought to promulgate....

This isn’t so much a scarecrow as a whole field of scarecrows!

There are people living in London who come from all over the world and yet they by and large refuse to mix together

Do they?

I mean, I don't want to go all 'some of my best friends are black' or anything, but off the top of my head my household and I (who are all white and British-born) 'mix' with people who are from or who have backgrounds in Greece, Israel, Germany, Hong Kong, China, the Caribbean, Ghana, Nigeria, Jamaica, Iran, Spain, the US, Canada, Belgium, Australia, New Zealand.

I'm going out to a concert tonight.Off the top of my head our party includes four people born in Britain, two born in China, one in Sweden, two in Iran, one in South Africa, one in Greece, one in Ireland.Don't think we will refuse to mix!

That’s fine Emilyontmoor.

Just passed the Mandarin Oriental flying the flags of Britain, the EU and the Hong Kong SAR. Poignant today and very English surely to be celebrating those connections.

I too live in London. Recently went to the West End and was totally chocked how it's changed for the worst! Leicester Square is full of asian run shops, which still sell souvenirs, but play asian music and stink of incense. Piccadilly Circus is no better. This is just awful and in no way represents England.
Haven't been to the Centre of London for few years (we live in Zone 3) and was absolutely shocked at the change.