Leave The South-east

[jethrotull]

I turned neutral on housing in 2001 and bearish in 2003, and have been lurking on this site since soon after it started. This is my first post. When I turned bearish I wasn't calling the top or trying to predict anything, I was just stepping off the escalator because I didn't want the risk.

Back in 2005 I decided to STR and read all the advice on this site. I took a 12 month contract on a lovely house with 'old money' landlords who employed professional private land agents and maintenance staff to take care of everything. Renting a spare house off a proper old estate has been a great experience. They take care of every issue as soon as you ask. The charges are reasonable so they can be picky about choosing good tenants.

Within two weeks a bombshell struck when the train line franchise I commuted to London on was awarded to FGW and their new DfT imposed timetable axed all fast services and left only one semi-fast service a day to arrive before 0900. The one train a day left one hour earlier than before and returned later in the evening. Then the trains had the number of seats reduced so I went from sitting for 40-45 minutes to standing for 80-90 minutes, and eventually the trains got so overcrowded I couldn't get on. Paddington station gets so crowded at 0830 that the entrance to the tube often gets shut due to overcrowding in the mornings. The commute went from a total 2.5hrs a day to 6hrs of standing in overcrowded places and three train/tube changes to get to central London. Most days there was a problem with a service and an additional 45 minutes was normal every journey. (When a train company says they have 80% reliability you can bet that the 20% of problems covers the busy rush hour both ends of the day!). The government did this to prioritize 'green' inter-city over 'non-green' commuter trains, but all that happened is my neighbours and I now drive to the next train line (55 minutes drive), drive further out of London to an inter-city station (35 minutes drive plus longer train journey back past where we started), or just drive into London. It was a disaster in that I ended up paying for 2 houses for the rest of the rental contract. For the first time ever the cheapest, fastest, most reliable way for me to get into the centre of London is to drive. It is a crazy situation but that is how it is.

Commuting to London has become so unreliable, slow, crowded, unpleasant, dirty, and expensive that there seems to be no alternative but to have somewhere to stay overnight in London. What I have noticed is that my colleagues were beginning to buy houses beyond commuter distance - in Scotland, the West Country, Norfolk, Warwickshire and telecommute two or three days a week and just spend two or three days a week in London staying in someone's spare room. The office is almost empty on a Thursday and Friday. By the way - all these people are originally local to where they live but can't get well paid work outside of London. 20 years ago when I started in London people with families would commute in from Surrey, Kent, Essex every day. Now people commute in weekly from outside the South-East. These people are all well paid but they can't get the sort of family house within commuting distance they expect. People with good jobs just don't want to live in the new developments because they are packed in too densely. They want gardens for children to play football in, space for a dog, a vegetable patch, space and quiet. All they get is high density timber framed brick skinned sheds as infill next to a loud ring road, with a minimum guaranteed ratio of social housing for neighbours. The Home Counties are full of families that moved out of London to get a better quality of life and a bit of space, but commute back in to work. Now that the commuting is imploding and the space and quiet are gone they're moving beyond the home counties and commuting weekly instead of daily. You see it now with the Met Police where they do 3x12 hours shifts instead of 5x7.5 hour so they only commute 3 times a week instead of 5 to save time and money, and it lets them commute outside of rush hour and live outside the overcrowded south-east England. It seems that only the truly wealthy, those too poor to travel, and those on benefits are choosing London for their families - the average working/middle class family is less likely than ever to choose London - yet they're the people that fill all those offices that get built.

I am glad my STR plans fell through because house prices in the area of SE London I live in are still going up and up despite national trends. Sure flats are falling and so are the high density housing estates, but spacious detached family homes with big gardens and garages just keep on rising. I wish everything in life to cost less (including houses), but with all the new public transport (London Overgound, DLR expansion, CrossRail, new Thames crossing), it looks like SE London may not HPC as much as elsewhere. It was a cheap house in a rough ethnic area when I bought it but now developers want to knock it down to build a mini-estate on the site. I put the house on the market and am leaving London. A lot of workmates have gone abroad and telecommute back to London from all over Europe and N America - not because its cheaper but for a better quality of life. I'd like to stay in the community I grew up in but that went forever with the mass immigration in the past decade. My friends with the best quality of life aren't the ones that earn the most but those with the simplest lives: no commute, local facilities, cheap housing outside the south-east, pretty and uncrowded locations, time with their families, easy hours in local job or self employed portfolio work.

It seems to me all this "key worker" and "affordable housing" stuff is political gimmicks. If the UK built enough high quality family houses then high quality family houses would become affordable to all. Everyone needs housing, not just key workers. Too much is crammed into the South-East of the UK, especially the government and military. Surrey and East Hampshire are full of Army bases that could be in somewhere far more sensible in the UK. To get a decent quality of living we need more space for development in the London greenbelt and the transfer of that greenbelt to less crowded parts of the UK combined with more jobs throughout the UK. Commuting is a joke with conditions now slower and worse than 3rd class 100 years ago.

My business contacts in China are saying with the rise in the price of oil they can't afford to ship materials to their factories for manufacture nor ship products to Europe or Eastern US, except for small items. Their factories are idle for the first time ever. It looks like we'll be manufacturing our own bulky items again (like furniture) but continue to import smaller items (like electronics) if oil stays expensive.

It is all a complex trade-off between balancing family, community, work, finances, commute and housing. Your comments would be much appreciated.

[cartimandua51]

Welcome to posting - a great, well written & thoughtful contribution. Makes a relief from some of the ill-spelled rants (& not just typos!) that crop up all too frequently.

As someone who moved to London from well outside, and stayed for 35 years I agree about the unappealing nature of London once you are past (say) 40 or have children. I was stunningly lucky in that I bought in SE1 when it was (relatively) dirt cheap, so had a house, my job and the kids primary school all within a few hundred yards of each other. But for a few years I also had a cottage in Somerset and commuting to Woolwich where I was working at the time was not pleasant. Basically, it meant a 5.00am start, because you had to hit Slough before 7.00 or you'd had it! Train wasn't really an option. I was SO pleased to give it up, even though it was only Mondays in and Thursdays out usually.

Commuting in cattle-truck conditions for 3 hours a day is totally joyless, and as you say, it's the ordinary workers who suffer most. The council / housing association blocks of flats may not be wonderful but they are central - my query is, given they were built so the working poor had access to their jobs without a long commute which they couldn't afford (fair enough), why is there such a high proportion of unemployed and unemployable? An unemployed single mother (& I am not making any judgement here about whether she may be a twenty year-old with 4 kids by 3 different fathers, or a serviceman's widow) does not need a flat or house within strolling distance of Westminster or the City. These should be allocated to workers both for reasons of commuting time &, in these days, ecological credentials.

Decent housing may be a right (not an argument I want to get into just now) but housing in in a high-demand location is not. We'd all like a 4-bedroom house with garden in Knightsbridge - we ain't all going to get it! Much more flexibility in housing allocation is required - basically the ability to REQUIRE people to move on from unsuitable housing. A lot of 3-bed houses are occupied by the elderly; there should be more provision to enable them to move to smaller accommodation. If you are a single person APPLYING for council housing you won't get more than a small flat; logically, why should this not apply at the other end as well? Social housing is supposed to provide decent housing for the maximum number of people; all they can do at present is invite the over-housed to move. If benefits such as Housing allowances & Council Tax relief were only available for appropriately sized accommodation in council as well as private rentals some of the "bed-blocking" might shift.. I relise that it may seem brutal to require a 65 year-old couple to move from the 3 bed house which has been their home for 15 years; is it any more brutal than keeping a family with 2 young children in a 2-bed tower block flat because there is no more suitable accommodation available?

Edited July 10, 2008 by cartimandua51

[Concrete Jungle]

Reading the OP makes me realise why I left the South East. Now I get paid slightly less, but have a 15 min commute, less clogged up roads / trains, cheaper cost of living, cheaper housing getting cheaper by the month. If I finish work at half five in the summer I can be walking on the Pennines or fishing in the evening sun by half six. The lake district, Ribble valley, Morecambe bay and forest of Bowland on my doorstep.

[renterbob]

Welcome to posting - a great, well written & thoughtful contribution. Makes a relief from some of the ill-spelled rants (& not just typos!) that crop up all too frequently.

As someone who moved to London from well outside, and stayed for 35 years I agree about the unappealing nature of London once you are past (say) 40 or have children. I was stunningly lucky in that I bought in SE1 when it was (relatively) dirt cheap, so had a house, my job and the kids primary school all within a few hundred yards of each other. But for a few years I also had a cottage in Somerset and commuting to Woolwich where I was working at the time was not pleasant. Basically, it meant a 5.00am start, because you had to hit Slough before 7.00 or you'd had it! Train wasn't really an option. I was SO pleased to give it up, even though it was only Mondays in and Thursdays out usually.

Commuting in cattle-truck conditions for 3 hours a day is totally joyless, and as you say, it's the ordinary workers who suffer most. The council / housing association blocks of flats may not be wonderful but they are central - my query is, given they were built so the working poor had access to their jobs without a long commute which they couldn't afford (fair enough), why is there such a high proportion of unemployed and unemployable? An unemployed single mother (& I am not making any judgement here about whether she may be a twenty year-old with 4 kids by 3 different fathers, or a serviceman's widow) does not need a flat or house within strolling distance of Westminster or the City. These should be allocated to workers both for reasons of commuting time &, in these days, ecological credentials.

Decent housing may be a right (not an argument I want to get into just now) but housing in in a high-demand location is not. We'd all like a 4-bedroom house with garden in Knightsbridge - we ain't all going to get it! Much more flexibility in housing allocation is required - basically the ability to REQUIRE people to move on from unsuitable housing. A lot of 3-bed houses are occupied by the elderly; there should be more provision to enable them to move to smaller accommodation. If you are a single person APPLYING for council housing you won't get more than a small flat; logically, why should this not apply at the other end as well? Social housing is supposed to provide decent housing for the maximum number of people; all they can do at present is invite the over-housed to move. If benefits such as Housing allowances & Council Tax relief were only available for appropriately sized accommodation in council as well as private rentals some of the "bed-blocking" might shift.. I relise that it may seem brutal to require a 65 year-old couple to move from the 3 bed house which has been their home for 15 years; is it any more brutal than keeping a family with 2 young children in a 2-bed tower block flat because there is no more suitable accommodation available?

Good post, but slightly optimistic.

If you are a single person, or a married couple applying for council housing you won't get a flat or house of any sort. Many are 'reserved' for asylum seekers and young mums. A mate and his wife applied to Ham and Fulham council and were named over 2000 on their waiting list. They then reapplied saying the lass was pregnant...listed even lower down. Both were white taxpayers. Another white lass went and painted her face with black shoe polish and kicked up a huge fuss in the office in King Street...they gave her a flat within two weeks

That is the state of housing today.

Disgusting.

[renterbob]

Reading the OP makes me realise why I left the South East. Now I get paid slightly less, but have a 15 min commute, less clogged up roads / trains, cheaper cost of living, cheaper housing getting cheaper by the month. If I finish work at half five in the summer I can be walking on the Pennines or fishing in the evening sun by half six. The lake district, Ribble valley, Morecambe bay and forest of Bowland on my doorstep.

after moving South from the North and moving back again, I totally understnd your post. I was lucky and get paid more here....but I would have taken the post on a 20% pay cut.

The housing availability, less traffic (I drive to work within ten minutes...over 3 miles)...in London it took us 40 minutes for less than a mile on a REALLY good day.

Going to the shops...hours for a few miles.

Going out of London = best decision we ever made

[worried1]

after moving South from the North and moving back again, I totally understnd your post. I was lucky and get paid more here....but I would have taken the post on a 20% pay cut.

I think that is the key - if you have roots outside of the SE then it is easier to go back to them. For those who have always lived in London/SE, the move may be a bit more difficult - but still possible.

I personally love living on the edge of London - I have a 30 minute door to door commute, and everything else is within walking distance of my front door. It is great, BUT I am still relatively young and happy to live in a flat. If I ever decide to have children, a 3 bed semi in a good part of the area is over £600k, which I would find it difficult to afford even after a crash. Sure, I could move to a worse part of town, but then the benefits are gone, so what would be the point?

The problem with London/SE is that it is ruled by City money. Most people in their early thirties will have done pretty well if they are on a £60k+ salary. In the City, a lot of relatively junior people I know earn twice this amount, and the higher acheivers many multiples of it. This doesn't just affect the market for smart townhouses in Chelsea and mock-Georgian piles in Esher, but drives the up the price of standard 3 bed semis in Surbiton/Ealing/Twickenham etc as well.

This means that the 'normal' people on £60-£80k a year have to live in Tolworth/Hanwell/Isleworth etc instead, or move further out altogether.

This just does not happen outside of the SE. Wages are lower in general, but you do not have a large industry that pays many times what all of the others do.

[hilltop]

As I posted on an unemployment thread yesterday, the country is unbalanced economically. 60% of new graduate jobs are in London and the South-east and despite what is said, typical pay is around £16, 000 for a first job. How are the poor kids going to cope in London on that?

[hourkid]

As I posted on an unemployment thread yesterday, the country is unbalanced economically. 60% of new graduate jobs are in London and the South-east and despite what is said, typical pay is around £16, 000 for a first job. How are the poor kids going to cope in London on that?

Rent a room, ride a bike, don't blow all the rest on take-outs. Easy.

[renterbob]

Rent a room, ride a bike, don't blow all the rest on take-outs. Easy.

Yuk! Nasty attitude. Rent a room...oh lovely...and pay 600 month for the pleasure of living in the knife crime capital of the world.

Great life then, oh London, how we miss it.

All those lovely rooms to rent. Share with a Polski, even cheaper..or a few Czechs.

You know, oop north renting a room is a thing we NEVER hear of...just down South.

That is a stink of an existance, certainly no way of life.

Easy for the LL out to scam the poor buggers.

Better idea = stay on the dole..as if you go to London, you may NEVER escape, dread the thought.

[hourkid]

Yuk! Nasty attitude. Rent a room...oh lovely...and pay 600 month for the pleasure of living in the knife crime capital of the world.

Great life then, oh London, how we miss it.

All those lovely rooms to rent. Share with a Polski, even cheaper..or a few Czechs.

You know, oop north renting a room is a thing we NEVER hear of...just down South.

That is a stink of an existance, certainly no way of life.

Easy for the LL out to scam the poor buggers.

Better idea = stay on the dole..as if you go to London, you may NEVER escape, dread the thought.

It's how people get on in life you tw&t. Fortunately, there are enough wasters like you with chips on their shoulders to make the odds of getting on so much better. You stay where you are with your hands in your pants.

[barrabus]

Reading the OP makes me realise why I left the South East. Now I get paid slightly less, but have a 15 min commute, less clogged up roads / trains, cheaper cost of living, cheaper housing getting cheaper by the month. If I finish work at half five in the summer I can be walking on the Pennines or fishing in the evening sun by half six. The lake district, Ribble valley, Morecambe bay and forest of Bowland on my doorstep.

please keep this info to your- self, we do not want the hordes to invade the kingdom of Lancashire

[barrabus]

Reading the OP makes me realise why I left the South East. Now I get paid slightly less, but have a 15 min commute, less clogged up roads / trains, cheaper cost of living, cheaper housing getting cheaper by the month. If I finish work at half five in the summer I can be walking on the Pennines or fishing in the evening sun by half six. The lake district, Ribble valley, Morecambe bay and forest of Bowland on my doorstep.

please keep this info to your- self, we do not want the hordes to invade the kingdom of Lancashire

[worried1]

It's how people get on in life you tw&t. Fortunately, there are enough wasters like you with chips on their shoulders to make the odds of getting on so much better. You stay where you are with your hands in your pants.

That's true, but I can also understand why people would want to opt out of that sort of lifestyle. If you can live a relatively easy life in the north on a lower salary than in the south, why wouldn't some people prefer that? If they didn't it would make life in London even more competitive than it already is.

I am somewhere in the middle. I am prepared to live in a flat to live near London, but I am not sure I would go into a house-share.

[Kurt Barlow]

Yuk! Nasty attitude. Rent a room...oh lovely...and pay 600 month for the pleasure of living in the knife crime capital of the world.

Great life then, oh London, how we miss it.

All those lovely rooms to rent. Share with a Polski, even cheaper..or a few Czechs.

You know, oop north renting a room is a thing we NEVER hear of...just down South.

That is a stink of an existance, certainly no way of life.

Easy for the LL out to scam the poor buggers.

Better idea = stay on the dole..as if you go to London, you may NEVER escape, dread the thought.

What a load of ********

Actually - I rent a room in my house to a polish engineer working here and I must say he is a very pleasant courteous chap. Pays his rent on time (which goes straight into capital repayment off my mortgage) and is no trouble at all. Infact when Im on holiday - he mows the lawns for me

[Concrete Jungle]

please keep this info to your- self, we do not want the hordes to invade the kingdom of Lancashire

It is a bit late a few of my friends sold the horrible pokey 2 bed boxes they were cramped in darn sarf. Now they have a far better quality of life and work / life balance in their words. I think we need to quickly build Hadrian's wall mark 2 along the old Lancashire county border to repel the rest of the raiders!!

[hourkid]

That's true, but I can also understand why people would want to opt out of that sort of lifestyle. If you can live a relatively easy life in the north on a lower salary than in the south, why wouldn't some people prefer that? If they didn't it would make life in London even more competitive than it already is.

I am somewhere in the middle. I am prepared to live in a flat to live near London, but I am not sure I would go into a house-share.

The point about London is that you're not here for the 'easy life'. It attracts a certain sort, some who stay, some who leave. You are here to earn and here to learn. It's not for everyone, granted. House-share is just a fact of life for new-arrivers; but it's a way of living that suits the people attracted here, particulary initially if you are looking to build a network of friends.

[bobthe~]

Nice first post, but I would take issue with the idea that family houses in the south east are going up in price.

From looking in our area, asking prices for those sort of places are falling by large amounts and they aren't selling. If they do go under offer, most of them come back on the market.

I am afraid your info is out of date on that score.

[worried1]

Nice first post, but I would take issue with the idea that family houses in the south east are going up in price.

From looking in our area, asking prices for those sort of places are falling by large amounts and they aren't selling. If they do go under offer, most of them come back on the market.

I am afraid your info is out of date on that score.

I think he is talking about a specific area of SE London, rather than SE England as a whole.

There are pockets where prices have not come down yet. My target area only consists of only 3 roads, and the only houses that are on the market have been on for months at '2007 prices'. The owners are steadfastly not reducing the price even though they appear never to have gone under offer.

Once the stalemate period ends, it will no doubt follow the trends in the rest of the area

[everybodies_friend]

I turned neutral on housing in 2001 and bearish in 2003, and have been lurking on this site since soon after it started. This is my first post. When I turned bearish I wasn't calling the top or trying to predict anything, I was just stepping off the escalator because I didn't want the risk.

Back in 2005 I decided to STR and read all the advice on this site. I took a 12 month contract on a lovely house with 'old money' landlords who employed professional private land agents and maintenance staff to take care of everything. Renting a spare house off a proper old estate has been a great experience. They take care of every issue as soon as you ask. The charges are reasonable so they can be picky about choosing good tenants.

Within two weeks a bombshell struck when the train line franchise I commuted to London on was awarded to FGW and their new DfT imposed timetable axed all fast services and left only one semi-fast service a day to arrive before 0900. The one train a day left one hour earlier than before and returned later in the evening. Then the trains had the number of seats reduced so I went from sitting for 40-45 minutes to standing for 80-90 minutes, and eventually the trains got so overcrowded I couldn't get on. Paddington station gets so crowded at 0830 that the entrance to the tube often gets shut due to overcrowding in the mornings. The commute went from a total 2.5hrs a day to 6hrs of standing in overcrowded places and three train/tube changes to get to central London. Most days there was a problem with a service and an additional 45 minutes was normal every journey. (When a train company says they have 80% reliability you can bet that the 20% of problems covers the busy rush hour both ends of the day!). The government did this to prioritize 'green' inter-city over 'non-green' commuter trains, but all that happened is my neighbours and I now drive to the next train line (55 minutes drive), drive further out of London to an inter-city station (35 minutes drive plus longer train journey back past where we started), or just drive into London. It was a disaster in that I ended up paying for 2 houses for the rest of the rental contract. For the first time ever the cheapest, fastest, most reliable way for me to get into the centre of London is to drive. It is a crazy situation but that is how it is.

Commuting to London has become so unreliable, slow, crowded, unpleasant, dirty, and expensive that there seems to be no alternative but to have somewhere to stay overnight in London. What I have noticed is that my colleagues were beginning to buy houses beyond commuter distance - in Scotland, the West Country, Norfolk, Warwickshire and telecommute two or three days a week and just spend two or three days a week in London staying in someone's spare room. The office is almost empty on a Thursday and Friday. By the way - all these people are originally local to where they live but can't get well paid work outside of London. 20 years ago when I started in London people with families would commute in from Surrey, Kent, Essex every day. Now people commute in weekly from outside the South-East. These people are all well paid but they can't get the sort of family house within commuting distance they expect. People with good jobs just don't want to live in the new developments because they are packed in too densely. They want gardens for children to play football in, space for a dog, a vegetable patch, space and quiet. All they get is high density timber framed brick skinned sheds as infill next to a loud ring road, with a minimum guaranteed ratio of social housing for neighbours. The Home Counties are full of families that moved out of London to get a better quality of life and a bit of space, but commute back in to work. Now that the commuting is imploding and the space and quiet are gone they're moving beyond the home counties and commuting weekly instead of daily. You see it now with the Met Police where they do 3x12 hours shifts instead of 5x7.5 hour so they only commute 3 times a week instead of 5 to save time and money, and it lets them commute outside of rush hour and live outside the overcrowded south-east England. It seems that only the truly wealthy, those too poor to travel, and those on benefits are choosing London for their families - the average working/middle class family is less likely than ever to choose London - yet they're the people that fill all those offices that get built.

I am glad my STR plans fell through because house prices in the area of SE London I live in are still going up and up despite national trends. Sure flats are falling and so are the high density housing estates, but spacious detached family homes with big gardens and garages just keep on rising. I wish everything in life to cost less (including houses), but with all the new public transport (London Overgound, DLR expansion, CrossRail, new Thames crossing), it looks like SE London may not HPC as much as elsewhere. It was a cheap house in a rough ethnic area when I bought it but now developers want to knock it down to build a mini-estate on the site. I put the house on the market and am leaving London. A lot of workmates have gone abroad and telecommute back to London from all over Europe and N America - not because its cheaper but for a better quality of life. I'd like to stay in the community I grew up in but that went forever with the mass immigration in the past decade. My friends with the best quality of life aren't the ones that earn the most but those with the simplest lives: no commute, local facilities, cheap housing outside the south-east, pretty and uncrowded locations, time with their families, easy hours in local job or self employed portfolio work.

It seems to me all this "key worker" and "affordable housing" stuff is political gimmicks. If the UK built enough high quality family houses then high quality family houses would become affordable to all. Everyone needs housing, not just key workers. Too much is crammed into the South-East of the UK, especially the government and military. Surrey and East Hampshire are full of Army bases that could be in somewhere far more sensible in the UK. To get a decent quality of living we need more space for development in the London greenbelt and the transfer of that greenbelt to less crowded parts of the UK combined with more jobs throughout the UK. Commuting is a joke with conditions now slower and worse than 3rd class 100 years ago.

My business contacts in China are saying with the rise in the price of oil they can't afford to ship materials to their factories for manufacture nor ship products to Europe or Eastern US, except for small items. Their factories are idle for the first time ever. It looks like we'll be manufacturing our own bulky items again (like furniture) but continue to import smaller items (like electronics) if oil stays expensive.

It is all a complex trade-off between balancing family, community, work, finances, commute and housing. Your comments would be much appreciated.

Excellent post. I work for the Met police as a civilian. Some of my colleagues commute in from Devon of all places. They are usually quite senior in terms of length of service. They say that they dont want to bring up their kids in London.

The totally unfettered immigration in to London particularly is often cited. Who in their right mind would want to send their child to a school which is 98% minority. Thats the main factor amoungst my colleagues.

EBF

[Surf's Up]

Within two weeks a bombshell struck when the train line franchise I commuted to London on was awarded to FGW and their new DfT imposed timetable axed all fast services and left only one semi-fast service a day to arrive before 0900. The one train a day left one hour earlier than before and returned later in the evening.

Interesting and thought-provoking thread. But I was wondering if maybe the desirable rented place became available in the first place because of the upcoming rail franchise switch?

[The Masked Tulip]

Life goes by so quickly people - quality is more important than anything and more improtant still are your family, your loved ones, your health.

You can feel invincible and then a shock happens - a loved one dies, you develop an illness, numerous tragedies occur - and your life is never the same. Don't put off tomorrow what you can do today - learn the power of NOW.

[deflation]

Yuk! Nasty attitude. Rent a room...oh lovely...and pay 600 month for the pleasure of living in the knife crime capital of the world.

I know there's been a few on the news but I think you'll find it a lot more dangerous in Moscow and South Africa. The worst, according to some quick internet research is Kingston, Jamaica.

[jethrotull]

I know there's been a few on the news but I think you'll find it a lot more dangerous in Moscow and South Africa. The worst, according to some quick internet research is Kingston, Jamaica.

I have a lot of new neighbours in London from these three places.

[deflation]

I hope then that they are 'economic migrants' as the press tend to label them. They are probably moving out of the frying pan and into the fire if they are fleeing crime.

[Wires 74]

The worlds gone mad - my parents old house is most likely valued at around 500K now ( or up until very recently !) yet a set of old mortgage deeds from the 1950`showed the occupation of the then owner as `shop assistant` - no-one in such an ordinary job can even afford the smallest flat now - likewise for those of us old enough to recall the TV series The Good Life ` The characters played by Richard Briers and Felicity Kendal owned a huge house in Surbiton presumably bought when Tom had his previous occupation as a draughtsman -what bewilders me is who are thse people who now live in all these huge houses , where is their money from and how do they sustain the lifestyle of 4 x4`s and private schooling to match ?