This is all UKIP, with the main switch of 2% from Cameron to Farage. The election will be decided as it always was, on how many Tory to UKIP defectors Cameron can win back
What do you consider to qualify someone as a Londoner?
Someone born in or who went to school in London
Dunno about that. I was born there (Wandsworth), went to school there (Sir Walter St John's Grammar, Battersea) but haven't lived there since I was 18 and the army beckoned, though I have worked there off and on over the years. I love The City for its history, its churches and its institutions but other than that I can't say I have any feeling for London. Am I a Londoner? I don't think so.
What do you consider to qualify someone as a Londoner?
Someone born in or who went to school in London
Seems a very, very narrow definition. Do you include the Essex suburbs or just postal London?
It's a ridiculous definition. The whole point of London - the genius of London - is that it absorbs everyone, immediately, and turns them into Londoners. The same way America transforms migrants into Americans.
I've lived in London 32 years (with the odd foreign sojourn) and I am happy to call myself a Londoner, and I am happy to call the new Bulgarian family down the road Londoners, too, even if they arrived last week. Peter Ackroyd, THE great London historian, is very good on this crucial ability of London (a city founded by Italians, rebuilt by Germans, reaffirmed by Danes and then fortified by Normans) to give incomers a sense of belonging, overnight.
No it isn't ridiculous. You aren't a Londoner, you are a Cornishman or Devonian living in London, and the Bulgarians are Bulgarians living in London
What do you consider to qualify someone as a Londoner?
Someone born in or who went to school in London
Seems a very, very narrow definition. Do you include the Essex suburbs or just postal London?
Not really very narrow. If you were born in Manchester and come to London at 18 you're not a Londoner
Essex suburbs would be a stretch maybe, but wouldn't be outrageous to say they were a Londone if they lived nr a tube station I guess
So someone who was born in Manchester and came to live and work in London after university and now owns a house in Herne Hill at 45 is not a Londoner, but someone who was born next to Epping tube and never moved is.
It's crazy and sad that you seek to exclude people from a city that is built on attracting talent from all over the world. I think you are in a tiny minority, thankfully.
What do you consider to qualify someone as a Londoner?
Someone born in or who went to school in London
Seems a very, very narrow definition. Do you include the Essex suburbs or just postal London?
It's a ridiculous definition. The whole point of London - the genius of London - is that it absorbs everyone, immediately, and turns them into Londoners. The same way America transforms migrants into Americans.
I've lived in London 32 years (with the odd foreign sojourn) and I am happy to call myself a Londoner, and I am happy to call the new Bulgarian family down the road Londoners, too, even if they arrived last week. Peter Ackroyd, THE great London historian, is very good on this crucial ability of London (a city founded by Italians, rebuilt by Germans, reaffirmed by Danes and then fortified by Normans) to give incomers a sense of belonging, overnight.
Can you remember the precise date you moved to London?
And my apologies for not logging in (especially at weekends) to catch the latest instalment of the "Ah, but does May mean all/none/some of May..." debate.
What do you consider to qualify someone as a Londoner?
Someone born in or who went to school in London
Seems a very, very narrow definition. Do you include the Essex suburbs or just postal London?
Not really very narrow. If you were born in Manchester and come to London at 18 you're not a Londoner
Essex suburbs would be a stretch maybe, but wouldn't be outrageous to say they were a Londone if they lived nr a tube station I guess
So someone who was born in Manchester and came to live and work in London after university and now owns a house in Herne Hill at 45 is not a Londoner, but someone who was born next to Epping tube and never moved is.
It's crazy and sad that you seek to exclude people from a city that is built on attracting talent from all over the world. I think you are in a tiny minority, thankfully.
People born and brought up in let's say up to zone 3/4 could consider themselves true Londoners, outside that maybe not so much. Personally was born, raised and have lived almost all my life in a London borough, but would say I am an Essex boy, and wouldn't be a Londoner in the way someone who was from Mile End is.
It's not sad and I'm not trying to be hurtful in excluding anyone. Just that I wouldn't consider someone with a Geordie/Manc/Brummie accent a Londoner. So what? Being a Londoner isn't any better or worse than any other part of the country to me
What do you consider to qualify someone as a Londoner?
Someone born in or who went to school in London
Seems a very, very narrow definition. Do you include the Essex suburbs or just postal London?
Not really very narrow. If you were born in Manchester and come to London at 18 you're not a Londoner
Essex suburbs would be a stretch maybe, but wouldn't be outrageous to say they were a Londone if they lived nr a tube station I guess
So someone who was born in Manchester and came to live and work in London after university and now owns a house in Herne Hill at 45 is not a Londoner, but someone who was born next to Epping tube and never moved is.
It's crazy and sad that you seek to exclude people from a city that is built on attracting talent from all over the world. I think you are in a tiny minority, thankfully.
I would say a good definition of a Londoner is someone who knows that Londoners are created overnight, as soon as they start living in London - i.e. my definition upthread.
Anyone who denies this is NOT a Londoner. e.g. isam?
I have lived and worked here for 12 years, longer than I have worked anywhere else, own a house here and have started a family here. I could retire here at 70 and still not qualify according to him.
I can see the science in it: If he runs off to Chelmsford whinging about, erm, London, he gets to still be a Londoner, from a remote location.
And my apologies for not logging in (especially at weekends) to catch the latest instalment of the "Ah, but does May mean all/none/some of May..." debate.
What do you consider to qualify someone as a Londoner?
Someone born in or who went to school in London
Seems a very, very narrow definition. Do you include the Essex suburbs or just postal London?
Not really very narrow. If you were born in Manchester and come to London at 18 you're not a Londoner
Essex suburbs would be a stretch maybe, but wouldn't be outrageous to say they were a Londone if they lived nr a tube station I guess
So someone who was born in Manchester and came to live and work in London after university and now owns a house in Herne Hill at 45 is not a Londoner, but someone who was born next to Epping tube and never moved is.
It's crazy and sad that you seek to exclude people from a city that is built on attracting talent from all over the world. I think you are in a tiny minority, thankfully.
I would say a good definition of a Londoner is someone who knows that Londoners are created overnight, as soon as they start living in London - i.e. my definition upthread.
Anyone who denies this is NOT a Londoner. e.g. isam?
Wouldn't call myself a Londoner no. Despite living my whole life under London council/mayoral laws, as I live on the outskirts in zone 6
Wouldn't call you one either, or anyone else that wasnt raised in London. It's not an insult to say someone isn't a Londoner !
What do you consider to qualify someone as a Londoner?
Someone born in or who went to school in London
Seems a very, very narrow definition. Do you include the Essex suburbs or just postal London?
It's a ridiculous definition. The whole point of London - the genius of London - is that it absorbs everyone, immediately, and turns them into Londoners. The same way America transforms migrants into Americans.
I've lived in London 32 years (with the odd foreign sojourn) and I am happy to call myself a Londoner, and I am happy to call the new Bulgarian family down the road Londoners, too, even if they arrived last week. Peter Ackroyd, THE great London historian, is very good on this crucial ability of London (a city founded by Italians, rebuilt by Germans, reaffirmed by Danes and then fortified by Normans) to give incomers a sense of belonging, overnight.
Can you remember the precise date you moved to London?
Yes, September 30th 1981. Sunday before the first day of term, for the academic year 1981-82, at University College London.
Interesting. You just avoided the Brixton riots by a few months.
You wrongly specify the RCC in the USA since child abuse scandals have been happening in the RCC worldwide including places where the RRC certainly isn't gay friendly.
Yes, but the ratio is nothing like the USA. In fact, the USA figures are so huge they skew the statistics.
The estimate is 30% of American priests are homosexual, but the vast majority of them keep their vows. But my, what damage the 3% have done, overwhelmingly to boys.
Equally I'd question your connection of modern gay-friendly organisations when referring to cases that happened decades ago.
Amazingly, it takes time for the children to grow up, even longer to confront their ordeal.
And you use this to excuse child rape?
What's absolutely pitiful about your post (and JackW's) is that you show absolutely no concern for the victims, just trying to defend a particular cohort.
What do you consider to qualify someone as a Londoner?
Someone born in or who went to school in London
Seems a very, very narrow definition. Do you include the Essex suburbs or just postal London?
Not really very narrow. If you were born in Manchester and come to London at 18 you're not a Londoner
Essex suburbs would be a stretch maybe, but wouldn't be outrageous to say they were a Londone if they lived nr a tube station I guess
So someone who was born in Manchester and came to live and work in London after university and now owns a house in Herne Hill at 45 is not a Londoner, but someone who was born next to Epping tube and never moved is.
It's crazy and sad that you seek to exclude people from a city that is built on attracting talent from all over the world. I think you are in a tiny minority, thankfully.
I would say a good definition of a Londoner is someone who knows that Londoners are created overnight, as soon as they start living in London - i.e. my definition upthread.
Anyone who denies this is NOT a Londoner. e.g. isam?
I have lived and worked here for 12 years, longer than I have worked anywhere else, own a house here and have started a family here. I could retire here at 70 and still not qualify according to him.
I can see the science in it: If he runs off to Chelmsford whinging about, erm, London, he gets to still be a Londoner, from a remote location.
What do you consider to qualify someone as a Londoner?
Someone born in or who went to school in London
Seems a very, very narrow definition. Do you include the Essex suburbs or just postal London?
Not really very narrow. If you were born in Manchester and come to London at 18 you're not a Londoner
Essex suburbs would be a stretch maybe, but wouldn't be outrageous to say they were a Londone if they lived nr a tube station I guess
So someone who was born in Manchester and came to live and work in London after university and now owns a house in Herne Hill at 45 is not a Londoner, but someone who was born next to Epping tube and never moved is.
It's crazy and sad that you seek to exclude people from a city that is built on attracting talent from all over the world. I think you are in a tiny minority, thankfully.
I'll always be a coventrian. Don't live there now but I haven't suddenly become a yorkshireman...
The person you refer in yr post is, and always will be a Manc.
What do you consider to qualify someone as a Londoner?
Someone born in or who went to school in London
Seems a very, very narrow definition. Do you include the Essex suburbs or just postal London?
Not really very narrow. If you were born in Manchester and come to London at 18 you're not a Londoner
Essex suburbs would be a stretch maybe, but wouldn't be outrageous to say they were a Londone if they lived nr a tube station I guess
So someone who was born in Manchester and came to live and work in London after university and now owns a house in Herne Hill at 45 is not a Londoner, but someone who was born next to Epping tube and never moved is.
It's crazy and sad that you seek to exclude people from a city that is built on attracting talent from all over the world. I think you are in a tiny minority, thankfully.
I would say a good definition of a Londoner is someone who knows that Londoners are created overnight, as soon as they start living in London - i.e. my definition upthread.
Anyone who denies this is NOT a Londoner. e.g. isam?
Normally Sean not only do I agree with what you say but am in amusement at how you say it.
However, you may be an adopted Londoner but you will never be a Londoner. By the same token my wife's grandad was Cornish, he worked in Holmans and down Crofty. When he died many years ago his cottage wasn't worth two bob so her family renovated it and go down there regularly, one has moved to Cornwall permanently. He eats pasties every week, drinks loads of Doom Bar but it doesn't make him Cornish.
Much as you want to be a Londoner you will never be one, you just live there.
What do you consider to qualify someone as a Londoner?
Someone born in or who went to school in London
Seems a very, very narrow definition. Do you include the Essex suburbs or just postal London?
Not really very narrow. If you were born in Manchester and come to London at 18 you're not a Londoner
Essex suburbs would be a stretch maybe, but wouldn't be outrageous to say they were a Londone if they lived nr a tube station I guess
So someone who was born in Manchester and came to live and work in London after university and now owns a house in Herne Hill at 45 is not a Londoner, but someone who was born next to Epping tube and never moved is.
It's crazy and sad that you seek to exclude people from a city that is built on attracting talent from all over the world. I think you are in a tiny minority, thankfully.
I would say a good definition of a Londoner is someone who knows that Londoners are created overnight, as soon as they start living in London - i.e. my definition upthread.
Anyone who denies this is NOT a Londoner. e.g. isam?
Wouldn't call myself a Londoner no. Despite living my whole life under London council/mayoral laws, as I live on the outskirts in zone 6
Wouldn't call you one either, or anyone else that wasnt raised in London. It's not an insult to say someone isn't a Londoner !
No it's not an insult no. But that all said nor does it make much sense, for the reasons we have stated. It's not an insular place. Where you live may be however, which probably informs your definition.
What do you consider to qualify someone as a Londoner?
Someone born in or who went to school in London
Seems a very, very narrow definition. Do you include the Essex suburbs or just postal London?
Not really very narrow. If you were born in Manchester and come to London at 18 you're not a Londoner
Essex suburbs would be a stretch maybe, but wouldn't be outrageous to say they were a Londone if they lived nr a tube station I guess
So someone who was born in Manchester and came to live and work in London after university and now owns a house in Herne Hill at 45 is not a Londoner, but someone who was born next to Epping tube and never moved is.
It's crazy and sad that you seek to exclude people from a city that is built on attracting talent from all over the world. I think you are in a tiny minority, thankfully.
People born and brought up in let's say up to zone 3/4 could consider themselves true Londoners, outside that maybe not so much. Personally was born, raised and have lived almost all my life in a London borough, but would say I am an Essex boy, and wouldn't be a Londoner in the way someone who was from Mile End is.
It's not sad and I'm not trying to be hurtful in excluding anyone. Just that I wouldn't consider someone with a Geordie/Manc/Brummie accent a Londoner. So what? Being a Londoner isn't any better or worse than any other part of the country to me
You don't understand how London works, or, more importantly, WHY London works. It is THE great city of immigration, more than New York, because it has been doing it for so much longer. It has always sucked people in age 12, 15, 21, turning them into Londoners, then they leave when they have kids or grow old.
In the past the death rates in London were so bad (much worse than in the country as a whole) this ability to suck people in was the only thing that kept London going, and growing.
So as soon as someone moves to a new city they become someone from that city in the same way that someone who was born there and whose family lived there for generations is?
Not in my book
If I lived the rest if my life in Manchester I wouldn't be a mancunian in the way that Gary Neville is would I? Of course not
Just cos it sounds cool to say you're a Londoner doesn't make it true. Same goes for me
What do you consider to qualify someone as a Londoner?
Someone born in or who went to school in London
Seems a very, very narrow definition. Do you include the Essex suburbs or just postal London?
Not really very narrow. If you were born in Manchester and come to London at 18 you're not a Londoner
Essex suburbs would be a stretch maybe, but wouldn't be outrageous to say they were a Londone if they lived nr a tube station I guess
So someone who was born in Manchester and came to live and work in London after university and now owns a house in Herne Hill at 45 is not a Londoner, but someone who was born next to Epping tube and never moved is.
It's crazy and sad that you seek to exclude people from a city that is built on attracting talent from all over the world. I think you are in a tiny minority, thankfully.
I would say a good definition of a Londoner is someone who knows that Londoners are created overnight, as soon as they start living in London - i.e. my definition upthread.
Anyone who denies this is NOT a Londoner. e.g. isam?
Wouldn't call myself a Londoner no. Despite living my whole life under London council/mayoral laws, as I live on the outskirts in zone 6
Wouldn't call you one either, or anyone else that wasnt raised in London. It's not an insult to say someone isn't a Londoner !
No it's not an insult no. But that all said nor does it make much sense, for the reasons we have stated. It's not an insular place. Where you live may be however, which probably informs your definition.
You're not a Londoner, however much you'd like to be
May I say how despicable I find Ninoinoz comments to be. Jimmy Saville has nothing to do with gay marriage. But clearly anti gay marriage and similar intolerance has got a lot to do with a lot of the vitriol directed at Cameron Miller the govt.
Jimmy Savile (note the spelling) had everything to do with the BBC. The BBC is Maria Miller's responsibility. She should have dropped EVERYTHING to deal with it.
Are you genuinely surprised that people are angry the way they've been treated? The whole way the Same Sex Marriage Act has come into being:
Not in Conservative Party manifesto, but in a supplement published three days before the election.
Not in the coalition agreement.
A consultation being wrung out of the Government, it which subsequently ignored.
False documentation put out by the DCMS.
No referendum.
Relying on opposition votes to get the bill passed.
And Cameron still expects social conservatives to vote him in the next election.
I'm a Londoner through and through, born and bred, parents, grandparernts, 7/8 greats, significant ancestral lines to C18 east end. Anyone who can't match that must call themselves a 'nouveau Londoner' so that real Londoners like me don't have to explain our heritage.
What do you consider to qualify someone as a Londoner?
Someone born in or who went to school in London
Seems a very, very narrow definition. Do you include the Essex suburbs or just postal London?
Not really very narrow. If you were born in Manchester and come to London at 18 you're not a Londoner
Essex suburbs would be a stretch maybe, but wouldn't be outrageous to say they were a Londone if they lived nr a tube station I guess
It's crazy and sad that you seek to exclude people from a city that is built on attracting talent from all over the world. I think you are in a tiny minority, thankfully.
People born and brought up in let's say up to zone 3/4 could consider themselves true Londoners, outside that maybe not so much. Personally was born, raised and have lived almost all my life in a London borough, but would say I am an Essex boy, and wouldn't be a Londoner in the way someone who was from Mile End is.
It's not sad and I'm not trying to be hurtful in excluding anyone. Just that I wouldn't consider someone with a Geordie/Manc/Brummie accent a Londoner. So what? Being a Londoner isn't any better or worse than any other part of the country to me
You don't understand how London works, or, more importantly, WHY London works. It is THE great city of immigration, more than New York, because it has been doing it for so much longer. It has always sucked people in age 12, 15, 21, turning them into Londoners, then they leave when they have kids or grow old.
In the past the death rates in London were so bad (much worse than in the country as a whole) this ability to suck people in was the only thing that kept London going, and growing.
So as soon as someone moves to a new city they become someone from that city in the same way that someone who was born there and whose family lived there for generations is?
Not in my book
If I lived the rest if my life in Manchester I wouldn't be a mancunian in the way that Gary Neville is would I? Of course not
Just cos it sounds cool to say you're a Londoner doesn't make it true. Same goes for me
What you are saying is tragically mistaken, but I will forgive you your stunted chavvy logic, as I am a quintessential wealthy north Londoner, and we are soft hearted.
Nah you're a country boy who lives in London. Nothing to be ashamed of
You wrongly specify the RCC in the USA since child abuse scandals have been happening in the RCC worldwide including places where the RRC certainly isn't gay friendly.
Yes, but the ratio is nothing like the USA. In fact, the USA figures are so huge they skew the statistics.
The estimate is 30% of American priests are homosexual, but the vast majority of them keep their vows. But my, what damage the 3% have done, overwhelmingly to boys.
Equally I'd question your connection of modern gay-friendly organisations when referring to cases that happened decades ago.
Amazingly, it takes time for the children to grow up, even longer to confront their ordeal.
And you use this to excuse child rape?
What's absolutely pitiful about your post (and JackW's) is that you show absolutely no concern for the victims, just trying to defend a particular cohort.
Disgusting.
No you idiot. You're pointing at organisations that (to some extent) are gay friendly now, but are talking about cases that happened decades ago, i.e. before the organisations were gay friendly.
Do you have a source for any of these numbers you're throwing out?
Isam asked a couple of nights ago how long I'd lived in East London. Answer is fifteen years in East Ham - my mother was born in Forest Gate though the house she was born in suffered some serious re-arranging by the Luftwaffe but my Mum had been evacuated so was safe. Mrs Stodge's family hail from Dalston and Hackney way.
My Dad's family come from Millwall and Coldharbour - my father was born there but the family moved to south London in the 1930s. My mum's family came to south London from the east end in the 1950s.
Apart from my time at University, I've lived in south or east London (north London is the home of the two-headed troll people, particularly around Primrose Hill, I'm told).
I reckon I'm a Londoner though some may disagree - as SeanT says, the place absorbs you and changes you. One day we'll leave - it's not a place I want to grow old in - it's a place for the young and the dynamic.
What do you consider to qualify someone as a Londoner?
Someone born in or who went to school in London
Seems a very, very narrow definition. Do you include the Essex suburbs or just postal London?
Not really very narrow. If you were born in Manchester and come to London at 18 you're not a Londoner
Essex suburbs would be a stretch maybe, but wouldn't be outrageous to say they were a Londone if they lived nr a tube station I guess
So someone who was born in Manchester and came to live and work in London after university and now owns a house in Herne Hill at 45 is not a Londoner, but someone who was born next to Epping tube and never moved is.
It's crazy and sad that you seek to exclude people from a city that is built on attracting talent from all over the world. I think you are in a tiny minority, thankfully.
I would say a good definition of a Londoner is someone who knows that Londoners are created overnight, as soon as they start living in London - i.e. my definition upthread.
Anyone who denies this is NOT a Londoner. e.g. isam?
Normally Sean not only do I agree with what you say but am in amusement at how you say it.
However, you may be an adopted Londoner but you will never be a Londoner. By the same token my wife's grandad was Cornish, he worked in Holmans and down Crofty. When he died many years ago his cottage wasn't worth two bob so her family renovated it and go down there regularly, one has moved to Cornwall permanently. He eats pasties every week, drinks loads of Doom Bar but it doesn't make him Cornish.
Much as you want to be a Londoner you will never be one, you just live there.
I don't WANT to be a Londoner, I just AM. Anyone who fails to see this does not understand London.
FWIW None of you lot are Brits compared to me - you don't belong here, so bog off. You're all Europeans, bloody continentals, a bunch of lousy Germans and Frogs, you make me puke.
Bog off back to garlic and sausage land.
By contrast, the Cornish have been here SINCE THE ICE AGE. Hah.
What do you consider to qualify someone as a Londoner?
Someone born in or who went to school in London
Seems a very, very narrow definition. Do you include the Essex suburbs or just postal London?
It's a ridiculous definition. The whole point of London - the genius of London - is that it absorbs everyone, immediately, and turns them into Londoners. The same way America transforms migrants into Americans.
I've lived in London 32 years (with the odd foreign sojourn) and I am happy to call myself a Londoner, and I am happy to call the new Bulgarian family down the road Londoners, too, even if they arrived last week. Peter Ackroyd, THE great London historian, is very good on this crucial ability of London (a city founded by Italians, rebuilt by Germans, reaffirmed by Danes and then fortified by Normans) to give incomers a sense of belonging, overnight.
+1
iSam needs to get out into the countryside more. You can live all your life bar one day in a remote country village and still be an outsider. I once met a Scottish doctor who'd been present at the birth of a quarter of his village, yet was still referred to as, essentially, a foreigner (I forget the exact Gaelic term used).
In comparison, big cities are incredibly easy to become part of. They can be very inclusive, yet also sad, lonely places.
What do you consider to qualify someone as a Londoner?
Someone born in or who went to school in London
Seems a very, very narrow definition. Do you include the Essex suburbs or just postal London?
Not really very narrow. If you were born in Manchester and come to London at 18 you're not a Londoner
Essex suburbs would be a stretch maybe, but wouldn't be outrageous to say they were a Londone if they lived nr a tube station I guess
So someone who was born in Manchester and came to live and work in London after university and now owns a house in Herne Hill at 45 is not a Londoner, but someone who was born next to Epping tube and never moved is.
It's crazy and sad that you seek to exclude people from a city that is built on attracting talent from all over the world. I think you are in a tiny minority, thankfully.
I would say a good definition of a Londoner is someone who knows that Londoners are created overnight, as soon as they start living in London - i.e. my definition upthread.
Anyone who denies this is NOT a Londoner. e.g. isam?
Normally Sean not only do I agree with what you say but am in amusement at how you say it.
However, you may be an adopted Londoner but you will never be a Londoner. By the same token my wife's grandad was Cornish, he worked in Holmans and down Crofty. When he died many years ago his cottage wasn't worth two bob so her family renovated it and go down there regularly, one has moved to Cornwall permanently. He eats pasties every week, drinks loads of Doom Bar but it doesn't make him Cornish.
Much as you want to be a Londoner you will never be one, you just live there.
I don't WANT to be a Londoner, I just AM. Anyone who fails to see this does not understand London.
FWIW None of you lot are Brits compared to me - you don't belong here, so bog off. You're all Europeans, bloody continentals, a bunch of lousy Germans and Frogs, you make me puke.
Bog off back to garlic and sausage land.
By contrast, the Cornish have been here SINCE THE ICE AGE. Hah.
From what I've read London was in a pretty bad state during the 1970s; a lot of middle-class people moved out during that time. The population reached an all time low in about 1981, which is also when the last docks closed down. Somehow it managed to reinvigorate itself in the mid 1980s.
I'm a Londoner through and through, born and bred, parents, grandparernts, 7/8 greats, significant ancestral lines to C18 east end. Anyone who can't match that must call themselves a 'nouveau Londoner' so that real Londoners like me don't have to explain our heritage.
Being a "Londoner" is like being "Irish" during the reign of Jackie Charlton. If yer gran once had a sip of Guinness, you were Irish. If your Da' once used Irish peat on his allotment, you could don the emerald. Sean t once had some jellied eels, so he's definitely a Cockney. iSam has travelled by tube, so he must be too. Boba cries about the beauty of London's parks, so he's probably a Pearly King.
I'm a Londoner through and through, born and bred, parents, grandparernts, 7/8 greats, significant ancestral lines to C18 east end. Anyone who can't match that must call themselves a 'nouveau Londoner' so that real Londoners like me don't have to explain our heritage.
From what I've read London was in a pretty bad state during the 1970s; a lot of middle-class people moved out during that time. The population reached an all time low in about 1981, which is also when the last docks closed down. Somehow it managed to reinvigorate itself in the mid 1980s.
Thank Heseltine. There really ought to be a fifty-foot statue to him (in Tarzan loincloth?) outside Canary Wharf.
Sorry Socrates but some things are barely worth discussing and the leadership qualities of a man who thought it was a good idea to have a bye election in one of the safest seats in the country to try and prove a point and then found himself out manouvred when the others simply refused to play is one of them.
Davies had been a pain ever since he lost to Cameron and this is just yet another example. Such indiscipline and inability to think ahead more than a few minutes at a time is why he would have been a disastrous leader.
Oh right. Because he should follow David Cameron's astute tactical manouvers? Like his decision to back Maria Miller to the hilt? Perhaps he should have Cameron's wise planning, like an immigration target that we need to hit our higher education sector to attempt, but still fails because the measure is so badly designed.
Or maybe Cameron's long term thinking? Such as saying we'd have a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, and then not downplaying expectations about it until the thing actually passed, as could have been predicted for months? Or remedying the EU issue with a claim of repatriation that is clearly never going to work out? Or cutting the UK's military just as Russia is getting back on its feet as an imperialist power, with invasions to potential NATO candidates.
Davis' decision to run for a by-election over civil liberties probably was a mistake, but the man was clearly tearing his hair out how the supposed "liberal Conservative" he was serving under turned out to be a Blair-style authoritarian. Cameron mocked those that care about individual freedom while supporting the shadow areas of government being able to access the content of our private conversations without a warrant. When you have a PM that is so committed to government power over individual privacy, it's hard to know what you can honestly do.
Perhaps people would not need to be such a "pain" to the leadership, if Cameron wasn't making such disastrous issues on the EU, on civil liberties, on defence, etc.
You forgot to add calculatedly insulting his own party, and long-standing partyworkers, as part of a demented strategy to appeal to the centre-left to win a majority. He succeeded in alienating the former (including me) whilst winning none of the latter.
I'm a Londoner through and through, born and bred, parents, grandparernts, 7/8 greats, significant ancestral lines to C18 east end. Anyone who can't match that must call themselves a 'nouveau Londoner' so that real Londoners like me don't have to explain our heritage.
In those days it would be called "Essex." ;-)
Jeez, I'm a quarter (at least) a Londoner myself. Grandad born in Tottenham, 1891.
I had others mucking about in Spitalfields in 1803 (but I'm sure they were Welsh, bach)
But if you go back further it's Yorkshire, Northamptonshire and Essex.
It was the Railways see, that brought everyone to the Smoke (amongst other cities).
What do you consider to qualify someone as a Londoner?
Someone born in or who went to school in London
Seems a very, very narrow definition. Do you include the Essex suburbs or just postal London?
Not really very narrow. If you were born in Manchester and come to London at 18 you're not a Londoner
Essex suburbs would be a stretch maybe, but wouldn't be outrageous to say they were a Londone if they lived nr a tube station I guess
So someone who was born in Manchester and came to live and work in London after university and now owns a house in Herne Hill at 45 is not a Londoner, but someone who was born next to Epping tube and never moved is.
It's crazy and sad that you seek to exclude people from a city that is built on attracting talent from all over the world. I think you are in a tiny minority, thankfully.
I would say a good definition of a Londoner is someone who knows that Londoners are created overnight, as soon as they start living in London - i.e. my definition upthread.
Anyone who denies this is NOT a Londoner. e.g. isam?
Wouldn't call myself a Londoner no. Despite living my whole life under London council/mayoral laws, as I live on the outskirts in zone 6
Wouldn't call you one either, or anyone else that wasnt raised in London. It's not an insult to say someone isn't a Londoner !
No it's not an insult no. But that all said nor does it make much sense, for the reasons we have stated. It's not an insular place. Where you live may be however, which probably informs your definition.
You're not a Londoner, however much you'd like to be
Cameron has screwed up big time over Miller although I suspect the standards she's being judged by would snare many more MP'S - Balls and Cooper to name but two.
He is however blessed by Miliband who each day more closely resembles Beaker. Tomorrow in the Indie he's going to save the squeezed middle from the cost of living crisis.
Labour supporters with half a brain cell must despair of this slogan driven BS.
I suppose lefties have a desire to avoid people feeling like part of a community*, because at some point they start getting conservative about wanting to hang on to it.
(*Obviously there's an exception for some ethnic communities, or at least the ones which can be told that the reason they have lower educational achievement/employment/pay levels is the fault of everyone else, and they need Labour to protect them from such victimisation.)
OT. Over the years I have refereed/umpired many games - so I know mistakes can be made. But this afternoon I saw one of the most incompetent performances ever - not in football but in Rugby League. The cup match between Huddersfield Giants and St Helens Saints was a big match and it had one of the top referees in Phil Bentham. St Helens dominates the first quarter and went into a 8-0 lead. But Huddersfield came back and were up 10-8 at half-time. This stretched to 16-8. Then the referee started giving a series of penalties against Huddersfield culminating in a red card for a key player. As a result St Helens got it back to 16 all. With 2 minutes to go Huddersfield were camped on St Helens' goal line. A series of dropped goal attempts were charged down but at last one went over ( 17-16). But the referee refused to give it - and refused to go to the video referee for confirmation ( although he had used the video for 2 of the 3 Huddersfield tries). Play went to the other end where St Helens got a dropped goal - 17-16 to them. And the referee's decision is final.
Essex suburbs would be a stretch maybe, but wouldn't be outrageous to say they were a Londone if they lived nr a tube station I guess
So someone who was born in Manchester and came to live and work in London after university and now owns a house in Herne Hill at 45 is not a Londoner, but someone who was born next to Epping tube and never moved is.
It's crazy and sad that you seek to exclude people from a city that is built on attracting talent from all over the world. I think you are in a tiny minority, thankfully.
I would say a good definition of a Londoner is someone who knows that Londoners are created overnight, as soon as they start living in London - i.e. my definition upthread.
Anyone who denies this is NOT a Londoner. e.g. isam?
Normally Sean not only do I agree with what you say but am in amusement at how you say it.
However, you may be an adopted Londoner but you will never be a Londoner. By the same token my wife's grandad was Cornish, he worked in Holmans and down Crofty. When he died many years ago his cottage wasn't worth two bob so her family renovated it and go down there regularly, one has moved to Cornwall permanently. He eats pasties every week, drinks loads of Doom Bar but it doesn't make him Cornish.
Much as you want to be a Londoner you will never be one, you just live there.
I don't WANT to be a Londoner, I just AM. Anyone who fails to see this does not understand London.
FWIW None of you lot are Brits compared to me - you don't belong here, so bog off. You're all Europeans, bloody continentals, a bunch of lousy Germans and Frogs, you make me puke.
Bog off back to garlic and sausage land.
By contrast, the Cornish have been here SINCE THE ICE AGE. Hah.
Cameron has screwed up big time over Miller although I suspect the standards she's being judged by would snare many more MP'S - Balls and Cooper to name but two.
And yet people like Richad Nabavi seem to think it's perfectly reasonable for them to be judged by a committee of MPs, who can overrule the impartial independent body.
BBC News has been covering up child abuse for years - as long as you're a BBC employee.
Worryingly, the photo that shows Broadcasting House in my link has Prospero and Ariel by Eric Gill (a now known child abuser) on the front. The young boy is showing his genitals. So, I think I'm right to be suspicious.
Malcolm Chisholm MSP is retiring in Edinburgh North & Leith...because Labour today selected a new candidate: Cllr Lesley Hinds
He was one of the few intelligent Labour MSPs.
Here are the current odds for the Westminster seat:
Lab 1/20 LD 8/1 SNP 50/1 UKIP 100/1 Con 100/1
Result 2011
Lab (Malcolm Chisholm) 12,858 SNP 12,263 Con 2,928 LD 2,836
Interesting (and a shame to see Mr Chisholm go). Am I missing something or am I misreading the disparity in odds vis-à-vis the actual election result in 2011? I can't make sense of it.
HOWEVER - Cllr Hinds is now the convenor of the transport committee - ie in a real sense the Face of the Trams - and was a Labour councillor for most/all the relevant period. She started in 2012 so gets the benefit of inheriting something almost sorted out and launching the working trams. But she is in the position of having to be photographed smiling while presenting a miserably late, hugely expensive and (for now) viciously truncated system - about which she can do nothing - to a now sceptical and sensitised public. They might have forgotten about it by 2016, but the Fon of Bafut was not necessarily right in regarding all publicity as good publicity - he didn't have to be elected ...
What do you consider to qualify someone as a Londoner?
Someone born in or who went to school in London
Seems a very, very narrow definition. Do you include the Essex suburbs or just postal London?
Not really very narrow. If you were born in Manchester and come to London at 18 you're not a Londoner
Essex suburbs would be a stretch maybe, but wouldn't be outrageous to say they were a Londone if they lived nr a tube station I guess
So someone who was born in Manchester and came to live and work in London after university and now owns a house in Herne Hill at 45 is not a Londoner, but someone who was born next to Epping tube and never moved is.
It's crazy and sad that you seek to exclude people from a city that is built on attracting talent from all over the world. I think you are in a tiny minority, thankfully.
I'll always be a coventrian. Don't live there now but I haven't suddenly become a yorkshireman...
The person you refer in yr post is, and always will be a Manc.
I should imagine by that definition a fairly low proportion of Londoners would be, erm, Londoners. As a mercantile world city that is a magnet for talent from across the world, I think a more open definition is wiser here.
What do you consider to qualify someone as a Londoner?
Someone born in or who went to school in London
Seems a very, very narrow definition. Do you include the Essex suburbs or just postal London?
Not really very narrow. If you were born in Manchester and come to London at 18 you're not a Londoner
Essex suburbs would be a stretch maybe, but wouldn't be outrageous to say they were a Londone if they lived nr a tube station I guess
So someone who was born in Manchester and came to live and work in London after university and now owns a house in Herne Hill at 45 is not a Londoner, but someone who was born next to Epping tube and never moved is.
It's crazy and sad that you seek to exclude people from a city that is built on attracting talent from all over the world. I think you are in a tiny minority, thankfully.
I would say a good definition of a Londoner is someone who knows that Londoners are created overnight, as soon as they start living in London - i.e. my definition upthread.
Anyone who denies this is NOT a Londoner. e.g. isam?
Wouldn't call myself a Londoner no. Despite living my whole life under London council/mayoral laws, as I live on the outskirts in zone 6
Wouldn't call you one either, or anyone else that wasnt raised in London. It's not an insult to say someone isn't a Londoner !
No it's not an insult no. But that all said nor does it make much sense, for the reasons we have stated. It's not an insular place. Where you live may be however, which probably informs your definition.
You're not a Londoner, however much you'd like to be
Mick Pork/Twisted Fire Starter (previous thread) Karzai may be useless, but Abdullah Abdullah has experience fighting the Russians and the Taleban with the Northern Alliance and Ahmed Sheh Massoud, he will also have the 300, 000 strong Afghan army behind him and the 10,000 NATO troops he has agreed should stay in the country
What do you consider to qualify someone as a Londoner?
Someone born in or who went to school in London
Seems a very, very narrow definition. Do you include the Essex suburbs or just postal London?
Not really very narrow. If you were born in Manchester and come to London at 18 you're not a Londoner
Essex suburbs would be a stretch maybe, but wouldn't be outrageous to say they were a Londone if they lived nr a tube station I guess
So someone who was born in Manchester and came to live and work in London after university and now owns a house in Herne Hill at 45 is not a Londoner, but someone who was born next to Epping tube and never moved is.
It's crazy and sad that you seek to exclude people from a city that is built on attracting talent from all over the world. I think you are in a tiny minority, thankfully.
I would say a good definition of a Londoner is someone who knows that Londoners are created overnight, as soon as they start living in London - i.e. my definition upthread.
Anyone who denies this is NOT a Londoner. e.g. isam?
Wouldn't call myself a Londoner no. Despite living my whole life under London council/mayoral laws, as I live on the outskirts in zone 6
Wouldn't call you one either, or anyone else that wasnt raised in London. It's not an insult to say someone isn't a Londoner !
No it's not an insult no. But that all said nor does it make much sense, for the reasons we have stated. It's not an insular place. Where you live may be however, which probably informs your definition.
You're not a Londoner, however much you'd like to be
Not by your definition, no.
Nor by any logical definition.
Both definitions are logical, to some extent.
But one is insular and narrow. The other open and enterprising, like London itself.
So I guess isam, nigel and others don't think the Mayor of London is a Londoner?
I would have thought the sensible position is somewhere between the two extremes. You're not a Londoner as soon as you turn up, but equally being a Londoner isn't an impossible group to join. It's like being British: you become it once you have lived there for long enough that you get into the rhythms of the place, pick up the local habits and culture, appreciate its nuances, form an emotional attachment to it, identify as belonging to that group, and instinctively want to defend it from outside criticism.
London is an idea as much as a city, it's a shared enterprise between people who have by and large chosen to make it their home. New York is the same.
Manchester isn't. I can't explain why, but it just is.
Exactly right. If you move to Cornwall do you become Cornish overnight? No. Ditto Yorkshire, Plymouth, Leeds, Shetland, Newcastle - almost anywhere.
But London IS different. Trying to force some blood-and-soil "identity" onto the definition of Londoner is just embarrassing.
That attitude is why real Londoners are moving out
"Real Londoners". Jeez. Give me strength. Real Londoners have a bit of backbone and don't eff off at the first sight of a dusky face or a Polish delicatessen.
I have lived in Leicester more than 20 years. When I am holiday and people ask where I am from, I say Leicester. I wouldn't describe myself as Leicester to a native Leicesterian though.
In the Isle of Wight the Island born are known as caulkheads, those who have moved there are overners and visitors are trickles.
Please let Maria Miller stay for as long as possible. Everyone loves a bit of BLUE ON BLUE INCOMING :-)
The rightwing press in this country I despair at,they part of the problem that is giving miliband keys to no 10,the leftwing press are united in wanting a labour government,example -
What do you consider to qualify someone as a Londoner?
Someone born in or who went to school in London
Seems a very, very narrow definition. Do you include the Essex suburbs or just postal London?
It's a ridiculous definition. The whole point of London - the genius of London - is that it absorbs everyone, immediately, and turns them into Londoners. The same way America transforms migrants into Americans.
I've lived in London 32 years (with the odd foreign sojourn) and I am happy to call myself a Londoner, and I am happy to call the new Bulgarian family down the road Londoners, too, even if they arrived last week. Peter Ackroyd, THE great London historian, is very good on this crucial ability of London (a city founded by Italians, rebuilt by Germans, reaffirmed by Danes and then fortified by Normans) to give incomers a sense of belonging, overnight.
+1
iSam needs to get out into the countryside more. You can live all your life bar one day in a remote country village and still be an outsider. I once met a Scottish doctor who'd been present at the birth of a quarter of his village, yet was still referred to as, essentially, a foreigner (I forget the exact Gaelic term used).
In comparison, big cities are incredibly easy to become part of. They can be very inclusive, yet also sad, lonely places.
Did he speak Gaelic? Could it have been Sasunnach? Lit. Saxon: but with the meanings I believe of southron, lowlander, English-speaker? It may have been a reference to his (presumed) lack of Gaelic. [eduted to restore unintended delete]
BBC News has been covering up child abuse for years - as long as you're a BBC employee.
Worryingly, the photo that shows Broadcasting House in my link has Prospero and Ariel by Eric Gill (a now known child abuser) on the front. The young boy is showing his genitals. So, I think I'm right to be suspicious.
Oh dear. I see there's someone else I need to send the tinfoil-hat making instructions to.
What do you consider to qualify someone as a Londoner?
Someone born in or who went to school in London
Seems a very, very narrow definition. Do you include the Essex suburbs or just postal London?
Not really very narrow. If you were born in Manchester and come to London at 18 you're not a Londoner
Essex suburbs would be a stretch maybe, but wouldn't be outrageous to say they were a Londone if they lived nr a tube station I guess
So someone who was born in Manchester and came to live and work in London after university and now owns a house in Herne Hill at 45 is not a Londoner, but someone who was born next to Epping tube and never moved is.
It's crazy and sad that you seek to exclude people from a city that is built on attracting talent from all over the world. I think you are in a tiny minority, thankfully.
I'll always be a coventrian. Don't live there now but I haven't suddenly become a yorkshireman...
The person you refer in yr post is, and always will be a Manc.
I should imagine by that definition a fairly low proportion of Londoners would be, erm, Londoners. As a mercantile world city that is a magnet for talent from across the world, I think a more open definition is wiser here.
Same as a low proportion of Londoners are cockneys.
I have a good mate from Cheshire who worked in the City and lived in Shad Thames for years but moved back to Cheshire when he started a family. Is he a Londoner?
What do you consider to qualify someone as a Londoner?
Someone born in or who went to school in London
Seems a very, very narrow definition. Do you include the Essex suburbs or just postal London?
It's a ridiculous definition. The whole point of London - the genius of London - is that it absorbs everyone, immediately, and turns them into Londoners. The same way America transforms migrants into Americans.
I've lived in London 32 years (with the odd foreign sojourn) and I am happy to call myself a Londoner, and I am happy to call the new Bulgarian family down the road Londoners, too, even if they arrived last week. Peter Ackroyd, THE great London historian, is very good on this crucial ability of London (a city founded by Italians, rebuilt by Germans, reaffirmed by Danes and then fortified by Normans) to give incomers a sense of belonging, overnight.
+1
iSam needs to get out into the countryside more. You can live all your life bar one day in a remote country village and still be an outsider. I once met a Scottish doctor who'd been present at the birth of a quarter of his village, yet was still referred to as, essentially, a foreigner (I forget the exact Gaelic term used).
In comparison, big cities are incredibly easy to become part of. They can be very inclusive, yet also sad, lonely places.
Did he speak Gaelic? Could it have been Sasunnach? Lit. Saxon: but with the meanings I believe of southron, lowlander, English-speaker? It may have been a reference to his (presumed) lack of Gaelic. [eduted to restore unintended delete]
I honestly cannot remember. It was all Gaelic to me. ;-)
It could just as easily have been a local word I didn't recognise. Having said all that, with the exception of Ullapool and the area immediately around Aberdeen, the inhabitants of northern Scotland are amazingly friendly to outsiders. Great people.
What do you consider to qualify someone as a Londoner?
Someone born in or who went to school in London
Seems a very, very narrow definition. Do you include the Essex suburbs or just postal London?
Not really very narrow. If you were born in Manchester and come to London at 18 you're not a Londoner
Essex suburbs would be a stretch maybe, but wouldn't be outrageous to say they were a Londone if they lived nr a tube station I guess
So someone who was born in Manchester and came to live and work in London after university and now owns a house in Herne Hill at 45 is not a Londoner, but someone who was born next to Epping tube and never moved is.
It's crazy and sad that you seek to exclude people from a city that is built on attracting talent from all over the world. I think you are in a tiny minority, thankfully.
I would say a good definition of a Londoner is someone who knows that Londoners are created overnight, as soon as they start living in London - i.e. my definition upthread.
Anyone who denies this is NOT a Londoner. e.g. isam?
Wouldn't call myself a Londoner no. Despite living my whole life under London council/mayoral laws, as I live on the outskirts in zone 6
Wouldn't call you one either, or anyone else that wasnt raised in London. It's not an insult to say someone isn't a Londoner !
No it's not an insult no. But that all said nor does it make much sense, for the reasons we have stated. It's not an insular place. Where you live may be however, which probably informs your definition.
You're not a Londoner, however much you'd like to be
Not by your definition, no.
Nor by any logical definition.
Both definitions are logical, to some extent.
But one is insular and narrow. The other open and enterprising, like London itself.
The other is complete rubbish for the reasons I have explained.
22:34 Fidesz picks up 95% of mail-in votes from Hungarian citizens living in neighboring countries; Jobbik places second with 2.4 percent. [valasztas.hu]
Er! People, I've come late to the conversation, so what is this a about being a Londonder? I was born there but I would never be proud of admitting it. To non paraphrase Johnstone, to be British is to walk the road out of London.
The last time I was there, I was on the Tube to Kings Cross semi listening into a conversation between 2 young ladies about going to Edinburgh for the festival. On my way to the doors, I brushed past one of them, I apologised but got a mouthful of abuse in return. I just looked at her, and told her not to bother going to Edinburgh with that attitude.
I was once told by a French man that Paris extended 20k from the centre, after that was France. I would consider something similar for London to the UK.
The big story is #ukraine, and I'm just hearing and seeing parochial minutiae about #MariaMiller
Give it time and she'll be joined by plenty of others. Even if some of the Cameroons and Blairites haven't caught on yet they eventually will. This is not a one-off and all the papers are preparing for another feeding frenzy on expenses in due course. Most MPs did not learn a thing from the first scandal and have given themselves more than enough rope since then to hang themselves, unsurprisingly enough.
I have lived in Leicester more than 20 years. When I am holiday and people ask where I am from, I say Leicester. I wouldn't describe myself as Leicester to a native Leicesterian though.
In the Isle of Wight the Island born are known as caulkheads, those who have moved there are overners and visitors are trickles.
Sean T is a London Overner.
But who cares.
In Scotland there are two alternative questions.
"Where do you stay?" - my answer is Renfrewshire. "Where are you from (or fae) ?" - my answer is Worcestershire.
What do you consider to qualify someone as a Londoner?
Someone born in or who went to school in London
Seems a very, very narrow definition. Do you include the Essex suburbs or just postal London?
Not really very narrow. If you were born in Manchester and come to London at 18 you're not a Londoner
Essex suburbs would be a stretch maybe, but wouldn't be outrageous to say they were a Londone if they lived nr a tube station I guess
So someone who was born in Manchester and came to live and work in London after university and now owns a house in Herne Hill at 45 is not a Londoner, but someone who was born next to Epping tube and never moved is.
It's crazy and sad that you seek to exclude people from a city that is built on attracting talent from all over the world. I think you are in a tiny minority, thankfully.
I would say a good definition of a Londoner is someone who knows that Londoners are created overnight, as soon as they start living in London - i.e. my definition upthread.
Anyone who denies this is NOT a Londoner. e.g. isam?
Wouldn't call myself a Londoner no. Despite living my whole life under London council/mayoral laws, as I live on the outskirts in zone 6
Wouldn't call you one either, or anyone else that wasnt raised in London. It's not an insult to say someone isn't a Londoner !
No it's not an insult no. But that all said nor does it make much sense, for the reasons we have stated. It's not an insular place. Where you live may be however, which probably informs your definition.
You're not a Londoner, however much you'd like to be
Not by your definition, no.
Nor by any logical definition.
Both definitions are logical, to some extent.
But one is insular and narrow. The other open and enterprising, like London itself.
The other is complete rubbish for the reasons I have explained.
Haha he is so desperate to be a Londoner it's excrutiating! How embarrassing
BBC News has been covering up child abuse for years - as long as you're a BBC employee.
Worryingly, the photo that shows Broadcasting House in my link has Prospero and Ariel by Eric Gill (a now known child abuser) on the front. The young boy is showing his genitals. So, I think I'm right to be suspicious.
Oh dear. I see there's someone else I need to send the tinfoil-hat making instructions to.
Thanks for the offer.
Perhaps you'd like to expand your defence of the BBC, rather than giving pithy one-liners?
Please let Maria Miller stay for as long as possible. Everyone loves a bit of BLUE ON BLUE INCOMING :-)
The rightwing press in this country I despair at,they part of the problem that is giving miliband keys to no 10,the leftwing press are united in wanting a labour government,example -
Tomorrow's Independent front page: 'Miliband to the rescue of the middle classes' http://bit.ly/1e4fnBQ
Pfft. You can hardly claim that Ed Miliband is given an easy ride by the press. He is a national laughing stock. Even leftwing papers mock him.
I'm afraid Maria Miller is Tory self harm. That ridiculously terse apology. Tut.
Besides, if Miliband wins it will be thanks to the electoral system, not the media.
Yes sean I despair at the crap rightwing press,even when miliband gets the criticism of the so called tory papers,it backfires like the attack on his father 'The man who hated britain'
I agree with you on miller but part of the attack on her by certain papers is for me is leveson pay back time.
Your blogs on the telegraph as more bite than the weak and pi$$ poor attacks on labour by the rightwing press.
What do you consider to qualify someone as a Londoner?
Someone born in or who went to school in London
Seems a very, very narrow definition. Do you include the Essex suburbs or just postal London?
Not really very narrow. If you were born in Manchester and come to London at 18 you're not a Londoner
Essex suburbs would be a stretch maybe, but wouldn't be outrageous to say they were a Londone if they lived nr a tube station I guess
So someone who was born in Manchester and came to live and work in London after university and now owns a house in Herne Hill at 45 is not a Londoner, but someone who was born next to Epping tube and never moved is.
It's crazy and sad that you seek to exclude people from a city that is built on attracting talent from all over the world. I think you are in a tiny minority, thankfully.
I'll always be a coventrian. Don't live there now but I haven't suddenly become a yorkshireman...
The person you refer in yr post is, and always will be a Manc.
I should imagine by that definition a fairly low proportion of Londoners would be, erm, Londoners. As a mercantile world city that is a magnet for talent from across the world, I think a more open definition is wiser here.
That's the point. Very few people living in London are Londoners. That's why people that live there don't mind the fact it is a transient place that few really think of as home, be wise home when it comes to the crunch, where their family and roots are, where they watched football on a Saturday with their mates as a kid, was far away
Perhaps people would not need to be such a "pain" to the leadership, if Cameron wasn't making such disastrous issues on the EU, on civil liberties, on defence, etc.
My own view is that Cameron's leadership has been terminal for the Conservatives, and that 2015 will be their last hurrah.
I agree. However, I also agree (on a comment of yours a few days ago) that the 1990-1997 period did permanent damage to the Conservative party.
I think the root-cause of this, I'm sorry to say, was formally factionalising the party from the early 1980s onwards. It had reached fever pitch by 1990 and, once the lid was off, no leader ever found a way to appeal to the broad mass of the whole party again. The Conservatives lost their core strength, one they had always had: loyalty. It also started to turn inward, bitterly, and became a little bit insular and nasty.
The trouble was once the Conservative party became turbo-charged ideologically, every group starting judging the other by its purity; it's own "interpretation" of proper Conservatism. In some respects, therefore, it was the Tories who were the real losers from the battles of the 1980s, even though it was Labour who formally split. Every leader had a problem in appealing and uniting the various factions behind them. And every leader has since had to, by definition, be from one - or other - of those factions, thereby instantly alienating the others.
No leader has really grasped this problem; managed to articulate what Conservatism is really about. And none has been of the quality needed to unite everyone together, as a party, and that is why they have failed so abysmally.
Cameron shone through in 2005 because he was articulate, media-friendly, and could put on a good show. He got the party an airing it might not otherwise have had. Perhaps we weren't to know that it was just his ambition that was driving him; that he would be so vacuous and empty. But then at that point many of us, like me, were desperate; we could see no-one else and we wanted to believe he was the answer.
Since then, he's pursued an entirely destructive strategy that's almost the exact opposite of the above. A strategy designed to show his own contempt for the Conservative Party to the electorate in the hope they will recognise his enlightenment and elect him. It's nihilistic trajectory has only been tempered by a few in his shadow cabinet that he either understands too little about, or is too apathetic to do anything about. As for results, it's actually accelerated and destroyed the remaining base of the party, without achieving anything of its objectives.
Fundamentally, the question is this: if people see you neither lead, unite or respect your own party, then why should they respect (and vote) for you?
It seems that Fidesz have won at least 95 of the constituency seats . What's less clear is how they'll do in the list seats. The surplus majorities get carried over so I think Rod Crosby is right with his seat estimate.
What do you consider to qualify someone as a Londoner?
Someone born in or who went to school in London
Seems a very, very narrow definition. Do you include the Essex suburbs or just postal London?
Not really very narrow. If you were born in Manchester and come to London at 18 you're not a Londoner
Essex suburbs would be a stretch maybe, but wouldn't be outrageous to say they were a Londone if they lived nr a tube station I guess
So someone who was born in Manchester and came to live and work in London after university and now owns a house in Herne Hill at 45 is not a Londoner, but someone who was born next to Epping tube and never moved is.
It's crazy and sad that you seek to exclude people from a city that is built on attracting talent from all over the world. I think you are in a tiny minority, thankfully.
I would say a good definition of a Londoner is someone who knows that Londoners are created overnight, as soon as they start living in London - i.e. my definition upthread.
Anyone who denies this is NOT a Londoner. e.g. isam?
Wouldn't call myself a Londoner no. Despite living my whole life under London council/mayoral laws, as I live on the outskirts in zone 6
Wouldn't call you one either, or anyone else that wasnt raised in London. It's not an insult to say someone isn't a Londoner !
No it's not an insult no. But that all said nor does it make much sense, for the reasons we have stated. It's not an insular place. Where you live may be however, which probably informs your definition.
You're not a Londoner, however much you'd like to be
Not by your definition, no.
Nor by any logical definition.
Both definitions are logical, to some extent.
But one is insular and narrow. The other open and enterprising, like London itself.
The other is complete rubbish for the reasons I have explained.
Haha he is so desperate to be a Londoner it's excrutiating! How embarrassing
What you define me as is meaningless. I tell people I'm "from Lomdon" if asked, I never introduce myself as a Londoner. I am merely querying why you seek to create a narrow definition - no need to be childish.
Seant: jellied eels and liquor or a nice Kelly's vanilla ice cream?
BTW, a real Londoner would have the ice cream every time.
A real Londoner would have the ribeye at Heston Blumenthal's Dinner.
And here perhaps is the answer. There are DIFFERENT Londons, and therefore different kinds of Londoner - as one might expect from such a great, ancient and multifarious city.
There is my London, where I am a Londoner, and there is your London, where you are a Londoner; both are perfectly valid, though they exist in parallel and might not overlap.
What do you consider to qualify someone as a Londoner?
Someone born in or who went to school in London
Seems a very, very narrow definition. Do you include the Essex suburbs or just postal London?
Not really very narrow. If you were born in Manchester and come to London at 18 you're not a Londoner
Essex suburbs would be a stretch maybe, but wouldn't be outrageous to say they were a Londone if they lived nr a tube station I guess
So someone who was born in Manchester and came to live and work in London after university and now owns a house in Herne Hill at 45 is not a Londoner, but someone who was born next to Epping tube and never moved is.
It's crazy and sad that you seek to exclude people from a city that is built on attracting talent from all over the world. I think you are in a tiny minority, thankfully.
I'll always be a coventrian. Don't live there now but I haven't suddenly become a yorkshireman...
The person you refer in yr post is, and always will be a Manc.
I should imagine by that definition a fairly low proportion of Londoners would be, erm, Londoners. As a mercantile world city that is a magnet for talent from across the world, I think a more open definition is wiser here.
That's the point. Very few people living in London are Londoners. That's why people that live there don't mind the fact it is a transient place that few really think of as home, be wise home when it comes to the crunch, where their family and roots are, where they watched football on a Saturday with their mates as a kid, was far away
Gor blimey, luvaduck. Jumpers for goalposts. Apples and pears, Lumme. What a bleedin' plonker you are.
Why would you be so upset to be a Cornishman that lives in London rather than a Londoner? No offence intended, I amazed you have taken any
"Cameron shone through in 2005 because he was articulate, media-friendly, and could put on a good show. He got the party an airing it might not otherwise have had. Perhaps we weren't to know that it was just his ambition that was driving him; that he would be so vacuous and empty. But then at that point many of us, like me, were desperate; we could see no-one else and we wanted to believe he was the answer.
Since then, he's pursued an entirely destructive strategy that's almost the exact opposite of the above. A strategy designed to show his own contempt for the Conservative Party to the electorate in the hope they will recognise his enlightenment and elect him. It's nihilistic trajectory has only been tempered by a few in his shadow cabinet that he either understands too little about, or is too apathetic to do anything about. As for results, it's actually accelerated and destroyed the remaining base of the party, without achieving anything of its objectives.
Fundamentally, the question is this: if people see you neither lead, unite or respect your own party, then why should they respect (and vote) for you?"
Bravo, Casino_Royal. I couldn't put it better myself.
Comments
You're saying that there is a culture of child abuse at the BBC?
Iain Dale @IainDale
Support for Maria Miller is virtually non existent on Tory backbenches. Can't find a single MP to stick up for her on Breakfast tomorrow.1/
Open goal for labour -
Iain Dale @IainDale
2/2 Having said that, Labour are so incompetent they can't find anyone to put up either. Baffling. Missing an open goal.
Maybe not ;-)
It's crazy and sad that you seek to exclude people from a city that is built on attracting talent from all over the world. I think you are in a tiny minority, thankfully.
ConservativeGR @ToryGrassroots
David Cameron at odds with both top Tories and grassroots as pressure grows on Maria Miller http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/apr/06/downing-street-resists-action-over-expenses …
Say, Liberals in 1923.
I hope you understand, chums.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/13331381/20140329_232809.jpg
Marks, lads?
It's not sad and I'm not trying to be hurtful in excluding anyone. Just that I wouldn't consider someone with a Geordie/Manc/Brummie accent a Londoner. So what? Being a Londoner isn't any better or worse than any other part of the country to me
I can see the science in it: If he runs off to Chelmsford whinging about, erm, London, he gets to still be a Londoner, from a remote location.
Wouldn't call you one either, or anyone else that wasnt raised in London. It's not an insult to say someone isn't a Londoner !
I've just took a big gulp ;-)
Also, who exactly administers the sacraments to girls? Really? I gave examples, you've given....an assertion. Yes, but the ratio is nothing like the USA. In fact, the USA figures are so huge they skew the statistics.
The estimate is 30% of American priests are homosexual, but the vast majority of them keep their vows. But my, what damage the 3% have done, overwhelmingly to boys. Amazingly, it takes time for the children to grow up, even longer to confront their ordeal.
And you use this to excuse child rape?
What's absolutely pitiful about your post (and JackW's) is that you show absolutely no concern for the victims, just trying to defend a particular cohort.
Disgusting.
The person you refer in yr post is, and always will be a Manc.
However, you may be an adopted Londoner but you will never be a Londoner. By the same token my wife's grandad was Cornish, he worked in Holmans and down Crofty. When he died many years ago his cottage wasn't worth two bob so her family renovated it and go down there regularly, one has moved to Cornwall permanently. He eats pasties every week, drinks loads of Doom Bar but it doesn't make him Cornish.
Much as you want to be a Londoner you will never be one, you just live there.
Not in my book
If I lived the rest if my life in Manchester I wouldn't be a mancunian in the way that Gary Neville is would I? Of course not
Just cos it sounds cool to say you're a Londoner doesn't make it true. Same goes for me
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/after-crimea-moldova-too-fears-unwanted-events-on-road-to-eu/497129.html?ask_mobile=Y
Are you genuinely surprised that people are angry the way they've been treated? The whole way the Same Sex Marriage Act has come into being:
Not in Conservative Party manifesto, but in a supplement published three days before the election.
Not in the coalition agreement.
A consultation being wrung out of the Government, it which subsequently ignored.
False documentation put out by the DCMS.
No referendum.
Relying on opposition votes to get the bill passed.
And Cameron still expects social conservatives to vote him in the next election.
pbbbbbbbbbttttt!
Manchester isn't. I can't explain why, but it just is.
http://www.politics.hu/20140406/2014-hungarian-national-election-liveblog-april-6/
Do you have a source for any of these numbers you're throwing out?
Isam asked a couple of nights ago how long I'd lived in East London. Answer is fifteen years in East Ham - my mother was born in Forest Gate though the house she was born in suffered some serious re-arranging by the Luftwaffe but my Mum had been evacuated so was safe. Mrs Stodge's family hail from Dalston and Hackney way.
My Dad's family come from Millwall and Coldharbour - my father was born there but the family moved to south London in the 1930s. My mum's family came to south London from the east end in the 1950s.
Apart from my time at University, I've lived in south or east London (north London is the home of the two-headed troll people, particularly around Primrose Hill, I'm told).
I reckon I'm a Londoner though some may disagree - as SeanT says, the place absorbs you and changes you. One day we'll leave - it's not a place I want to grow old in - it's a place for the young and the dynamic.
Yes, London is an unfriendly city – and long may it stay that way
Ignore the people saying Londoners should talk to each other more to 'build a friendlier city'. Most of us moved here precisely to avoid having to chat to strangers
iSam needs to get out into the countryside more. You can live all your life bar one day in a remote country village and still be an outsider. I once met a Scottish doctor who'd been present at the birth of a quarter of his village, yet was still referred to as, essentially, a foreigner (I forget the exact Gaelic term used).
In comparison, big cities are incredibly easy to become part of. They can be very inclusive, yet also sad, lonely places.
You just live here, you are Cornish so be proud of that as they are great people. You are not and never will be a Londoner.
Sean t once had some jellied eels, so he's definitely a Cockney. iSam has travelled by tube, so he must be too. Boba cries about the beauty of London's parks, so he's probably a Pearly King.
Stupid doesn't come close.
Jeez, I'm a quarter (at least) a Londoner myself. Grandad born in Tottenham, 1891.
I had others mucking about in Spitalfields in 1803 (but I'm sure they were Welsh, bach)
But if you go back further it's Yorkshire, Northamptonshire and Essex.
It was the Railways see, that brought everyone to the Smoke (amongst other cities).
He is however blessed by Miliband who each day more closely resembles Beaker. Tomorrow in the Indie he's going to save the squeezed middle from the cost of living crisis.
Labour supporters with half a brain cell must despair of this slogan driven BS.
(*Obviously there's an exception for some ethnic communities, or at least the ones which can be told that the reason they have lower educational achievement/employment/pay levels is the fault of everyone else, and they need Labour to protect them from such victimisation.)
PoliticsHome @politicshome
Tomorrow's Daily Telegraph front page: 'Miller faces questions over tax on home sale' http://bit.ly/1qa6yGs
Essex suburbs would be a stretch maybe, but wouldn't be outrageous to say they were a Londone if they lived nr a tube station I guess
So someone who was born in Manchester and came to live and work in London after university and now owns a house in Herne Hill at 45 is not a Londoner, but someone who was born next to Epping tube and never moved is.
It's crazy and sad that you seek to exclude people from a city that is built on attracting talent from all over the world. I think you are in a tiny minority, thankfully.
I would say a good definition of a Londoner is someone who knows that Londoners are created overnight, as soon as they start living in London - i.e. my definition upthread.
Anyone who denies this is NOT a Londoner. e.g. isam?
Normally Sean not only do I agree with what you say but am in amusement at how you say it.
However, you may be an adopted Londoner but you will never be a Londoner. By the same token my wife's grandad was Cornish, he worked in Holmans and down Crofty. When he died many years ago his cottage wasn't worth two bob so her family renovated it and go down there regularly, one has moved to Cornwall permanently. He eats pasties every week, drinks loads of Doom Bar but it doesn't make him Cornish.
Much as you want to be a Londoner you will never be one, you just live there.
I don't WANT to be a Londoner, I just AM. Anyone who fails to see this does not understand London.
FWIW None of you lot are Brits compared to me - you don't belong here, so bog off. You're all Europeans, bloody continentals, a bunch of lousy Germans and Frogs, you make me puke.
Bog off back to garlic and sausage land.
By contrast, the Cornish have been here SINCE THE ICE AGE. Hah.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2160853/For-truest-Brits-west-Welsh-Cornish-ancient-Britons-DNA-analysis-finds.html
Sorry Sean, telling people who were born, raised, educated and work in London that they do not understand London is ludicrous.
You just live here, you are Cornish so be proud of that as they are great people. You are not and never will be a Londoner.
You don't understand London. Sorry.
By your logic When/if you or Bobajob or others move out of London will you then cease to be a Londoner? I won't for the simple reason that I am one.
However, there certainly was a culture of child abuse before the '60's:
http://politicalscrapbook.net/2012/10/john-simpson-alleges-sex-abuse-cover-up-at-bbc/
Note that this involved a radio personality.
BBC News has been covering up child abuse for years - as long as you're a BBC employee.
Worryingly, the photo that shows Broadcasting House in my link has Prospero and Ariel by Eric Gill (a now known child abuser) on the front. The young boy is showing his genitals. So, I think I'm right to be suspicious.
She did manage a small increase in the vote in the different seat where she stood in 2011 -
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/election2011/constituency/html/36100.stm
HOWEVER - Cllr Hinds is now the convenor of the transport committee - ie in a real sense the Face of the Trams - and was a Labour councillor for most/all the relevant period. She started in 2012 so gets the benefit of inheriting something almost sorted out and launching the working trams. But she is in the position of having to be photographed smiling while presenting a miserably late, hugely expensive and (for now) viciously truncated system - about which she can do nothing - to a now sceptical and sensitised public. They might have forgotten about it by 2016, but the Fon of Bafut was not necessarily right in regarding all publicity as good publicity - he didn't have to be elected ...
But one is insular and narrow. The other open and enterprising, like London itself.
I would have thought the sensible position is somewhere between the two extremes. You're not a Londoner as soon as you turn up, but equally being a Londoner isn't an impossible group to join. It's like being British: you become it once you have lived there for long enough that you get into the rhythms of the place, pick up the local habits and culture, appreciate its nuances, form an emotional attachment to it, identify as belonging to that group, and instinctively want to defend it from outside criticism.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-week/leading-article/9176001/french-lessons-2/
By your logic When/if you or Bobajob or others move out of London will you then cease to be a Londoner? I won't for the simple reason that I am one.
Exactly
In the Isle of Wight the Island born are known as caulkheads, those who have moved there are overners and visitors are trickles.
Sean T is a London Overner.
But who cares.
The Guardian ✔ @guardian
Guardian front page, Monday 7 April 2014: PM at odds with top Tories as pressure grows on Miller pic.twitter.com/Svr8fokEp7
PoliticsHome @politicshome
Tomorrow's Independent front page: 'Miliband to the rescue of the middle classes' http://bit.ly/1e4fnBQ
David Aaronovitch @DAaronovitch
The big story is #ukraine, and I'm just hearing and seeing parochial minutiae about #MariaMiller
I have a good mate from Cheshire who worked in the City and lived in Shad Thames for years but moved back to Cheshire when he started a family. Is he a Londoner?
Interesting...
BTW, a real Londoner would have the ice cream every time.
It could just as easily have been a local word I didn't recognise. Having said all that, with the exception of Ullapool and the area immediately around Aberdeen, the inhabitants of northern Scotland are amazingly friendly to outsiders. Great people.
The last time I was there, I was on the Tube to Kings Cross semi listening into a conversation between 2 young ladies about going to Edinburgh for the festival. On my way to the doors, I brushed past one of them, I apologised but got a mouthful of abuse in return. I just looked at her, and told her not to bother going to Edinburgh with that attitude.
I was once told by a French man that Paris extended 20k from the centre, after that was France. I would consider something similar for London to the UK.
"Where do you stay?" - my answer is Renfrewshire.
"Where are you from (or fae) ?" - my answer is Worcestershire.
http://www.yourthurrock.com/2012/12/15/census-reveals-1500-increase-in-black-population-in-thurrock/
Perhaps you'd like to expand your defence of the BBC, rather than giving pithy one-liners?
I agree with you on miller but part of the attack on her by certain papers is for me is leveson pay back time.
Your blogs on the telegraph as more bite than the weak and pi$$ poor attacks on labour by the rightwing press.
I think the root-cause of this, I'm sorry to say, was formally factionalising the party from the early 1980s onwards. It had reached fever pitch by 1990 and, once the lid was off, no leader ever found a way to appeal to the broad mass of the whole party again. The Conservatives lost their core strength, one they had always had: loyalty. It also started to turn inward, bitterly, and became a little bit insular and nasty.
The trouble was once the Conservative party became turbo-charged ideologically, every group starting judging the other by its purity; it's own "interpretation" of proper Conservatism. In some respects, therefore, it was the Tories who were the real losers from the battles of the 1980s, even though it was Labour who formally split. Every leader had a problem in appealing and uniting the various factions behind them. And every leader has since had to, by definition, be from one - or other - of those factions, thereby instantly alienating the others.
No leader has really grasped this problem; managed to articulate what Conservatism is really about. And none has been of the quality needed to unite everyone together, as a party, and that is why they have failed so abysmally.
Cameron shone through in 2005 because he was articulate, media-friendly, and could put on a good show. He got the party an airing it might not otherwise have had. Perhaps we weren't to know that it was just his ambition that was driving him; that he would be so vacuous and empty. But then at that point many of us, like me, were desperate; we could see no-one else and we wanted to believe he was the answer.
Since then, he's pursued an entirely destructive strategy that's almost the exact opposite of the above. A strategy designed to show his own contempt for the Conservative Party to the electorate in the hope they will recognise his enlightenment and elect him. It's nihilistic trajectory has only been tempered by a few in his shadow cabinet that he either understands too little about, or is too apathetic to do anything about. As for results, it's actually accelerated and destroyed the remaining base of the party, without achieving anything of its objectives.
Fundamentally, the question is this: if people see you neither lead, unite or respect your own party, then why should they respect (and vote) for you?
"Cameron shone through in 2005 because he was articulate, media-friendly, and could put on a good show. He got the party an airing it might not otherwise have had. Perhaps we weren't to know that it was just his ambition that was driving him; that he would be so vacuous and empty. But then at that point many of us, like me, were desperate; we could see no-one else and we wanted to believe he was the answer.
Since then, he's pursued an entirely destructive strategy that's almost the exact opposite of the above. A strategy designed to show his own contempt for the Conservative Party to the electorate in the hope they will recognise his enlightenment and elect him. It's nihilistic trajectory has only been tempered by a few in his shadow cabinet that he either understands too little about, or is too apathetic to do anything about. As for results, it's actually accelerated and destroyed the remaining base of the party, without achieving anything of its objectives.
Fundamentally, the question is this: if people see you neither lead, unite or respect your own party, then why should they respect (and vote) for you?"
Bravo, Casino_Royal. I couldn't put it better myself.