999house Posted January 22, 2017 Share Posted January 22, 2017 (edited) Getting ready to move out of London (really cant wait) in the next week or so. I wondered what the rest of the forum thought about the scale of the problem. Maybe Im a miserable old git, but I just cant see how this city can carry on as it is. So out of 10, how fecked a situation is this? -Transport - completely unreliable. Never know if Im going to get to work on time. Squashed like sardines. Trains cancelled without notice. Trains missing half their stops because behind schedule. - Roads - severely congested during peak times. How do business get deliveries? People to work? Food delivered? - Health - GPs over subscribed and difficult to get appointments, doctors overworked - A and E, personally had to wait 8 hours for minor wound check - Schools - dont have kids but god knows how they cope when kids cant speak the language, and parents have no permanent address (renting) - Police - completely useless and couldnt care less about petty crime such as bikes, scooters and cars, muggings etc... -Tube - nightmarish (nothernline, district line), only decent one I have ridden is Victoria. - Customer service - Tesco's, Garages, Local shops, Sainsburys, etc etc.... full of people who dont give a shit, rarely does anyone have a decent grasp of English. No banter, no communicatiom skills and completely disinterested. -Queues - for everything everywhere -Housing - Unaffordable to everyone except people lucky enough to buy 15 years ago. -BTL - turning neighbourhoods and communities into shitholes. Unkept gardens, overflowing bins, poorly maintained houses with a revolving door of immigrants and young professionals -Jobs - Well paid, interesting work on face of it, but long hours and intense pressure (in my line of work anyway). inability to afford to live within 10 miles, therefore soulsapping commutes. -High streets - high commercial rents forcing independent shops out - Nightlife - 50% of nightclubs and live music venues closed due to high price of land and demand for flats - Deprevation, anxiety, stress and general miserableness - people look like they have lost the will to live - Train Strikes Feckedness - 9.5/10 How on earth does this mess get turned around? How long does it take? Edited January 22, 2017 by 999house Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MARTINX9 Posted January 22, 2017 Share Posted January 22, 2017 (edited) London is now a city for the very rich and very poor plus young migrants who come here for a bit and leave. No one not on welfare can come here anymore work hard and afford to build a permanent home for their family as was always the case until 10 or 15 years ago - just the insecurity of private renting or owning 20 per cent of a one bed flat on shared ownership. Its an overcrowded hell hole bar a few exclusive nice areas - rammed to capacity with schools, GPs, hospitals and transport systems that cannot cope. When you go there everyone looks so miserable on the tube. You often here Spanish or Italian or French spoken more by young people on the tube than English - well they are employable unlike many of the outputs of our woeful education system. Its now for the global elite and the worlds waifs and strays or to use for a few years before it uses you - best to let them get on with it and move to the UK. Cos it isn't really a British city anymore anyway. And it's only going to get worse - London has 9 million people now. Imagine it with 13 million as is predicted for a mere 25 years time. Those midwives must be exhausted. Edited January 22, 2017 by MARTINX9 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
999house Posted January 22, 2017 Author Share Posted January 22, 2017 56 minutes ago, MARTINX9 said: London is now a city for the very rich and very poor plus young migrants who come here for a bit and leave. No one not on welfare can come here anymore work hard and afford to build a permanent home for their family as was always the case until 10 or 15 years ago - just the insecurity of private renting or owning 20 per cent of a one bed flat on shared ownership. Its an overcrowded hell hole bar a few exclusive nice areas - rammed to capacity with schools, GPs, hospitals and transport systems that cannot cope. When you go there everyone looks so miserable on the tube. You often here Spanish or Italian or French spoken more by young people on the tube than English - well they are employable desperate unlike many of the outputs of our woeful education system. Its now for the global elite and the worlds waifs and strays or to use for a few years before it uses you - best to let them get on with it and move to the UK. Cos it isn't really a British city anymore anyway. And it's only going to get worse - London has 9 million people now. Imagine it with 13 million as is predicted for a mere 25 years time. Those midwives immigration officers must be exhausted. Agree with everything except highlighted! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dorkins Posted January 22, 2017 Share Posted January 22, 2017 (edited) Stay in London for 7-10 years in your 20s, then get out. No point trying to build a life there, just get some CV points, have fun and then leave. If you're not a property millionaire or a benefit claimant for life, London does not want you. The price signals could not be clearer. Edited January 22, 2017 by Dorkins Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Untoward Posted January 22, 2017 Share Posted January 22, 2017 (edited) 8 hours ago, 999house said: Getting ready to move out of London (really cant wait) in the next week or so. I wondered what the rest of the forum thought about the scale of the problem. Maybe Im a miserable old git, but I just cant see how this city can carry on as it is. So out of 10, how fecked a situation is this? -Transport - completely unreliable. Never know if Im going to get to work on time. Squashed like sardines. Trains cancelled without notice. Trains missing half their stops because behind schedule. - Roads - severely congested during peak times. How do business get deliveries? People to work? Food delivered? - Health - GPs over subscribed and difficult to get appointments, doctors overworked - A and E, personally had to wait 8 hours for minor wound check - Schools - dont have kids but god knows how they cope when kids cant speak the language, and parents have no permanent address (renting) - Police - completely useless and couldnt care less about petty crime such as bikes, scooters and cars, muggings etc... -Tube - nightmarish (nothernline, district line), only decent one I have ridden is Victoria. - Customer service - Tesco's, Garages, Local shops, Sainsburys, etc etc.... full of people who dont give a shit, rarely does anyone have a decent grasp of English. No banter, no communicatiom skills and completely disinterested. -Queues - for everything everywhere -Housing - Unaffordable to everyone except people lucky enough to buy 15 years ago. -BTL - turning neighbourhoods and communities into shitholes. Unkept gardens, overflowing bins, poorly maintained houses with a revolving door of immigrants and young professionals -Jobs - Well paid, interesting work on face of it, but long hours and intense pressure (in my line of work anyway). inability to afford to live within 10 miles, therefore soulsapping commutes. -High streets - high commercial rents forcing independent shops out - Nightlife - 50% of nightclubs and live music venues closed due to high price of land and demand for flats - Deprevation, anxiety, stress and general miserableness - people look like they have lost the will to live - Train Strikes Feckedness - 9.5/10 How on earth does this mess get turned around? How long does it take? Yes, it is f u c k e d I have my own business and one of my rules is: Never rely on London. Long term though, I have planned ahead and if the worst were to happen, I have positioned myself on a three stop, one hour train commute away. I have options to work abroad - and have done - but if the worst ever came to the worst, I could commute to London for an absolute maximum, two days a week. Actually living and working there, is a nightmare I do not want to deconstruct. Edited January 22, 2017 by Untoward Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jackwhiteisgod Posted January 22, 2017 Share Posted January 22, 2017 See my thread in anecdotals on 30-35Yo's. 9.5/10 everybody is leaving Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pieman Pieface Posted January 22, 2017 Share Posted January 22, 2017 London is a great place to be if you are free and single in your late 20s - Mid 30's, earn above £50k and have no commitments. Its a great place to be if you are moneyed perma-tourist from the arab world or china or russia. The city is incredibly vibrant and exciting in places, and you can get anything you ever needed within zones 1 and 2. However for pretty much everyone else life in London is simply an impossibility. The standard paradox is that you can in fact earn more by working in London, except that its almost always cancelled out by the living costs and rents. Spend 5 years here and you will probably be no closer to building up any sort of deposit than when you started. To have any sort of decent journey into work each day you would need to probably be living around the edges of zone 2 / 3. Anything further out usually results in longer journeys and more delays, anything closer is clearly far too expensive. So there is a narrow sliver of available housing for a lot of people that occupies a reasonable slot. But just going on your list, my opinion is that: Transport - Trains are actually pretty decent, except of course Southern who are *****. The further out you live the more chance you have of being screwed, but in London itself the tubes and trains and buses are all actually incredibly regular, considering how bad they could be. - Roads - Yep roads are mostly a nightmare. South and North circulars are jokes. You'd have to avoid central as well. - Health - I think the GPs at the moment are a joke, I was told I had to wait a month for an appointment and this is basically standard practice now. - Schools - You simply can't send you kids to school in London now, you wouldn't do it. - Police - Probably not enough police, but I've never had a problem. -Tube - Most tubes are actually exceptionally good IMO. Most lines have a train arriving every 3-5 mins which I'd say is amazing. However despite all that we still have over crowding and that just goes to show just how many people are here at peak times. - Customer service - I have no interest in bantering with the woman in Tescos, I'd rather they just scanned my items and shut up, so thats personal preference. -Queues - Yeah there are queues, but you have to learn when and where they are and avoid them. -Housing - Obviously, as we all know, Housing is now utterly out of reach for most people. I don't even dream about it now. Its over. Anyway, got bored, but the point is, if you want to earn good money, spunk it on nights out and dating and shagging, then London is great. Once you are past that, want to settle down and live a family life then you have to leave, there is no option. London cannot continue like this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EnglishinWales Posted January 22, 2017 Share Posted January 22, 2017 Lived in SE1 in 2004/5. Got out before it killed me. If you're not royalty, a politician or on TV there's no point being in London. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempus Posted January 22, 2017 Share Posted January 22, 2017 In 2013, the press were doing articles about £100,000 properties totally disappearing in London. They are now doing it about £300,000 properties disappearing. Would anyone bet against that being £500,000 properties in a couple of years? And you can bet that what you are buying at the level is a s***e flat. That sums it up. Insane prices that no ordinary/modest earner without family money can aspire to. And yet you'd still only be buying a s***e flat that you probably don't want to live in if you could afford it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tapori Posted January 23, 2017 Share Posted January 23, 2017 I'll tell you what, the psychiatric departments would have a field day trying to analyse the collective zombie-like response to house prices and it's affect on peoples' ability to think logically. Insane doesn't begin to cover it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iamnumerate Posted January 23, 2017 Share Posted January 23, 2017 21 hours ago, 999house said: Getting ready to move out of London (really cant wait) in the next week or so. I wondered what the rest of the forum thought about the scale of the problem. Maybe Im a miserable old git, but I just cant see how this city can carry on as it is. So out of 10, how fecked a situation is this? -Transport - completely unreliable. Never know if Im going to get to work on time. Squashed like sardines. Trains cancelled without notice. Trains missing half their stops because behind schedule. - Roads - severely congested during peak times. How do business get deliveries? People to work? Food delivered? - Health - GPs over subscribed and difficult to get appointments, doctors overworked - A and E, personally had to wait 8 hours for minor wound check - Schools - dont have kids but god knows how they cope when kids cant speak the language, and parents have no permanent address (renting) - Police - completely useless and couldnt care less about petty crime such as bikes, scooters and cars, muggings etc... -Tube - nightmarish (nothernline, district line), only decent one I have ridden is Victoria. - Customer service - Tesco's, Garages, Local shops, Sainsburys, etc etc.... full of people who dont give a shit, rarely does anyone have a decent grasp of English. No banter, no communicatiom skills and completely disinterested. -Queues - for everything everywhere -Housing - Unaffordable to everyone except people lucky enough to buy 15 years ago. -BTL - turning neighbourhoods and communities into shitholes. Unkept gardens, overflowing bins, poorly maintained houses with a revolving door of immigrants and young professionals -Jobs - Well paid, interesting work on face of it, but long hours and intense pressure (in my line of work anyway). inability to afford to live within 10 miles, therefore soulsapping commutes. -High streets - high commercial rents forcing independent shops out - Nightlife - 50% of nightclubs and live music venues closed due to high price of land and demand for flats - Deprevation, anxiety, stress and general miserableness - people look like they have lost the will to live - Train Strikes Feckedness - 9.5/10 How on earth does this mess get turned around? How long does it take? Actually even 15 years ago a lot of places were unaffordable - I would say 17 years for 60%+ of London Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Assume The Opposite Posted January 23, 2017 Share Posted January 23, 2017 The film Hunger Games comes to mind.. They appear to be socially cleansing London with a variety of methods (HPI, estate demolitions, developers buying anything , slashing of council budgets etc) to create a paradise for only the wealthy and privileged. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheCountOfNowhere Posted January 23, 2017 Share Posted January 23, 2017 On 22/01/2017 at 1:47 PM, 999house said: Getting ready to move out of London (really cant wait) in the next week or so. I wondered what the rest of the forum thought about the scale of the problem. It's not a crisis, it's a criminal state funded sub-prime ponzi scheme IMHO. I hope you've not paid london prices for a house outside london that the local economy dictates is worth < 50% of current asking prices ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iamnumerate Posted January 23, 2017 Share Posted January 23, 2017 6 minutes ago, Assume The Opposite said: The film Hunger Games comes to mind.. They appear to be socially cleansing London with a variety of methods (HPI, estate demolitions, developers buying anything , slashing of council budgets etc) to create a paradise for only the wealthy and privileged. ??? All the pro single mums I know are fine - I don't know which London you live in, but the one in the UK is not like that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Assume The Opposite Posted January 23, 2017 Share Posted January 23, 2017 (edited) Pro single mums? Sounds like you've watched too many benefit programmes Apparently by 2019 social housing allowances will be the same as private and with the benefit cap in force and HPI surely even these 'mums' will probably be priced out of London. The trend towards asset inflation continues with a combo of politicians, banks and developers all in it together. Edited January 23, 2017 by Assume The Opposite Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iamnumerate Posted January 23, 2017 Share Posted January 23, 2017 Just now, Assume The Opposite said: Pro single mums? Sounds like you've watched too many benefit programmes Apparently by 2019 social housing allowances will be the same as private and with benefit cap in force and HPI sure even these 'mums' will probably be priced out of London. I think I have only ever watched two " - don't take my benefits away and one with Heather Frost on it". I am talking about friends and acquaintances I know. A very good friend's wife is thinking about leaving him because she thinks she will be better off on her own. I hope you are right but I bet they will be in social housing paying half of what I do for twice as big. I do wish people wouldn't assume that people's views on benefits come from the media and not real life. I used to be a Guardian reader and hated the daily mail until I met people on benefits better off than me. (Thanks Blair for the education). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maynardgravy Posted January 23, 2017 Share Posted January 23, 2017 18 minutes ago, iamnumerate said: ??? All the pro single mums I know are fine - I don't know which London you live in, but the one in the UK is not like that. Have to agree having just come back from Park Royal. The only cleansing going on is cleansing of anyone who can speak English. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iamnumerate Posted January 23, 2017 Share Posted January 23, 2017 1 minute ago, Maynardgravy said: Have to agree having just come back from Park Royal. The only cleansing going on is cleansing of anyone who can speak English. Thank you, as the lowest rent there is £1500 pcm according to rightmove, they must be doing very well to live there - or be getting housing benefits. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maynardgravy Posted January 23, 2017 Share Posted January 23, 2017 Just now, iamnumerate said: Thank you, as the lowest rent there is £1500 pcm according to rightmove, they must be doing very well to live there - or be getting housing benefits. It's all glued together with benefits. The place is the worst dump on earth with nothing there but a giant Asda. Star Wars cafe springs to mind. We're all paying taxes to pay people to live in expensive tips. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iamnumerate Posted January 23, 2017 Share Posted January 23, 2017 1 minute ago, Maynardgravy said: It's all glued together with benefits. The place is the worst dump on earth with nothing there but a giant Asda. Star Wars cafe springs to mind. We're all paying taxes to pay people to live in expensive tips. I have never understood why we in effect pay people to come here. Some immigrants really dislike it as it gives them a bad name. I don't have any problem with immigration, just paying for it and if people know they have a 50% chance of getting free housing then we are in effect paying them to come here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maynardgravy Posted January 23, 2017 Share Posted January 23, 2017 27 minutes ago, iamnumerate said: I have never understood why we in effect pay people to come here. Some immigrants really dislike it as it gives them a bad name. I don't have any problem with immigration, just paying for it and if people know they have a 50% chance of getting free housing then we are in effect paying them to come here. Debt slaves/Consumers/Quick fix GDP etc... London's gone. I'm working in and around here for another few years and then I'm out... you won't see me for dust. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iamnumerate Posted January 23, 2017 Share Posted January 23, 2017 Just now, Maynardgravy said: Debt slaves/Consumers/Quick fix GDP etc... London's gone. I'm working in and around here for another few years and then I'm out... you won't see me for dust. But it is not working. It is bit like someone eating chocolate so they have energy to go for a run and only burning off 10% of what they consumed - actually looking at Gordon Brown that might explain a lot. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nabby81 Posted January 23, 2017 Share Posted January 23, 2017 It's so bad most places within 30 miles are now suffering because of it , those areas are just places for workers to commute on poor, crowded and expensive transport or for London councils to dump the people on benefits. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iamnumerate Posted January 23, 2017 Share Posted January 23, 2017 2 minutes ago, Nabby81 said: It's so bad most places within 30 miles are now suffering because of it , those areas are just places for workers to commute on poor, crowded and expensive transport or for London councils to dump the people on benefits. My daughter has a friend whose parents split up. The mum was given housing in our borough (probably worth about £200-300k at least) not forced to move outside of London. Maybe other boroughs are doing it but not where we live. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maynardgravy Posted January 23, 2017 Share Posted January 23, 2017 2 minutes ago, iamnumerate said: But it is not working. It is bit like someone eating chocolate so they have energy to go for a run and only burning off 10% of what they consumed - actually looking at Gordon Brown that might explain a lot. That's why GDP per capita is never discussed. I never said any of it worked (for the majority). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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