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?

It’s fucking depressing reading some of these comments in 2019. We’ve been around long enough, lived together long enough and close enough and done enough damage to each other over the centuries to know now that this is just bullshit. Who gives a fiddlers fuck if there are more non English speakers in London than there used to be? Why does it matter? what are you afraid of?

You can see unpleasant behaviour in every town or city in the Country

You can be small minded and rude and unpleasant. You can be non racist and open minded and rude and unpleasant.
I’ll take the latter.

nancy I used to live there and I visit a lot. I know it well enough to say that on the whole, you aren’t the lovely tolerant folk you actually claim to be.

nancy I don’t see it to anything like the same extent in other UK cities.

One of the joys of being a seafaring nation for the last 600 years, is that people at the other end of those journeys have come here some voluntarily, the majority not.
But non-white people have lived here for hundreds of years.
I find the base ignorance displayed on this thread shocking in this day and age.
My grandfather came to the UK from Guyana, to serve in the RAF during the war. That was nearly 75 years ago. Are people here really saying that we aren't British because we aren't white?
As for UrsulaPandress and her doom laden trip to the foreign morass that is London, get a grip you ignorant whatsit!
You were served and managed a stay for a few days and everyone managed to make themselves understood. Did you use pidgin? Sign language? Mime? I suspect not, I'm betting it was ENGLISH!!!

No one said we weren’t selfish, rude and unpleasant. Tolerant and selfish maybe. I’ll take that over racist and selfish.

We can all talk about incidences of rudeness and kindness but that happens everywhere.
I’m lucky enough to realise that most people you come across in London and everywhere else are generally nice, with some arseholes here and and there, through my own experiences.
Ask a lot of Asian and black people of their experiences when venturing out of London and you might realise that their view of racism in the rest of the uk (apart from the cities) might be justified. Especially young adults and teens who seem to experience it a lot.

this quote is such a good example of the way wealthy, ex-pat brexiteers think.

You can’t be tolerant and selfish.

Potol but I don't think it is clear what Cleese meant, or what some posters meant. There are people who understand we can be non white and still be English.

but as long as no one is allowed to speak clearly, it will get more and more confusing what people actually mean.

*calpop

Make that a couple of thousand years and you’re right. Which is why it’s the great city it is now and long may it continue to evolve.

Charles that simply isn’t true. Unpleasant behaviour is far more prevalent in London than elsewhere. I live in another UK city. I visit other UK cities. London is so harsh compared to other places in terms of how people treat each other.

Of course you can. You can push past me on the Tube because you are a selfish arse. You can push past me on the Tube and whisper ‘Paki’ in my ear. That makes you racist and selfish.
Guess which one I prefer?

and OP said London's diversity is it's strength - as did Sadiq Khan. What does that mean?

The rest of the Uk aren’t all racist bigots. I don’t know where people get this information from.

And Poto nobody should push past anybody else. It just isn’t on.

Why don’t Cleese and these other posters make it clear what they meant? Why is it the job of my boys, based on their brown skin and surname to prove that they belong by displaying how ‘English’ they are?
I mean someone said if you are born in England you are English. Is that how most people feel about English born black and brown kids? I reckon not.

I don’t care if people should push past other people. The rudest people I have ever encountered are at Birmingham New Street station. Repeatedly. When travelling with small children.
As a brown skinned person trust me, when I say, that everyday racism bothers me more than everyday rudeness.
It would be wonderful if people were tolerant and non selfish but hey ho. I’ll settle for tolerant with a touch of London selfishness.

I didn’t say the rest of the UK were racist bigots. YOU said Londoners weren’t tolerant/anti racist because we were selfish and rude. I was pointing out that the two weren’t mutually incompatible.

@howwudyoufeel why are you telling me that’s not true?
My statement is true in my experience. I’m not actually lying about finding most people to be kind, even in London.
Even drivers in London are more tolerant than anywhere else I’ve driven in the uk where you get honked at and sworn at more.

As for the racist thing, I know lots of teens and young adults who’ve gone to other towns and have been shocked at the racism they’ve received as they’ve not experienced it London. One Asian lad had a drink thrown at him by a random man, they’ve often been shoved and pushed, they’ve been sworn at.

London’s diversity is its strength. I take that to mean that people from all over the world feel welcome in London. And conversely this is good for business, for tourism and for a global outlook.

It doesn’t mean other cities aren’t, but London is more diverse based on race, language, religion etc than any other British city and many other world cities. My kids feel more comfortable in London than in New Delhi despite their brown skin, because it is more cosmopolitan (apologies to all Delhiites- I am really not a fan though).

Now if I say people from Lagos to Jakarta feel comfortable in London, someone will pop up and say, but someone from Shropshire doesn’t and that’s what’s ‘wrong’ with London. To which I will say this. Why not? What makes the presence of brown skinned, black skinned people in large numbers make white people (assuming for a second that the person from Shropshire is white) feel threatened, feel their ‘culture’ is lost, that their capital city is not theirs. What would it be about meeting my very English kids that would make them think that London isn’t ‘English’ any more except, except the colour of their skin?

Charles my dc is in an extremely tight friendship group of 6 lads. They do everything together. One of them is black. To date nothing remotely similar to the things you are talking about has happened to him. Believe me I would know about it because they would all tell me.
I stand by my comment that Londoners can act harshly towards one another compared to the rest of the UK. I see more honking horns, pushing and shoving in London than anywhere else in the UK, including other capitals.

But that’s all that it boils down to - the fact that there aren’t enough white skinned, born and bred for the last 5 generations of English people.
Forget the work ethic, the drive, the personality and the attitudes of those ‘other’ people. They’ve ruined the Englishness of the city just by their mere presence.