Health Secretary Wes Streeting has said "we must act now" as he announced a national investigation into maternity care in England.
The "rapid" inquiry will urgently look at the worst-performing maternity and neonatal services in the country, including Leeds, Sussex, Gloucester, and Mid and South Essex.
From what I have seen of it, the NHS specialises in disjointed care. That is, an ever changing cast of people, who never seem to have been handed all the information on the patient.
So you have lots of well meaning people, lost in disconnected bubbles.
From an OR point of view that is an absurd system.
I presume this is a result of the shift system interacting with agency?
I would argue that the area of Central London where my apartment is (Shaftesbury Avenue) has gotten worse. We're right by Forbidden Planet, and the number of homeless drug addicts on the street has dramatically increased in the post Covid period.
I used to go up Tottenham Court Road way quite a bit and that was a very grim area in the late 80s through to much of the 90s. Whenever I read these "London is done" stories I always think that they can't remember just how bad it was before.
This is why the question is impossible to answer. Tottenham Court Road is much cleaner and safer than it used to be but I never go there anymore because all of the electronics and audio shops are gone. I used to love walking up Tottenham Court Road looking in the windows and occasionally buying some interesting bit of outdated electronics that the shops still had stock of. Which of these two situations makes Tottenham Court Road 'better' is entirely subjective.
I would argue that the area of Central London where my apartment is (Shaftesbury Avenue) has gotten worse. We're right by Forbidden Planet, and the number of homeless drug addicts on the street has dramatically increased in the post Covid period.
I used to go up Tottenham Court Road way quite a bit and that was a very grim area in the late 80s through to much of the 90s. Whenever I read these "London is done" stories I always think that they can't remember just how bad it was before.
I came to london in the 80s. It was much worse than it is now almost everywhere. So this is a straw man
I was honestly asking opinions on Fraser Nelson’s tweet that “london is a better city than it was ten years ago”
Because most of my friends would disagree with this and the rest would shrug and say “no better no worse”
For me it is exactly this last decade where it has declined (not compared to the 1980s when it was totally on its arse)
However there are PBers who genuinely believe london is better, like Fraser, and that’s interesting to hear
I would argue that the area of Central London where my apartment is (Shaftesbury Avenue) has gotten worse. We're right by Forbidden Planet, and the number of homeless drug addicts on the street has dramatically increased in the post Covid period.
I used to go up Tottenham Court Road way quite a bit and that was a very grim area in the late 80s through to much of the 90s. Whenever I read these "London is done" stories I always think that they can't remember just how bad it was before.
This is why the question is impossible to answer. Tottenham Court Road is much cleaner and safer than it used to be but I never go there anymore because all of the electronics and audio shops are gone. I used to love walking up Tottenham Court Road looking in the windows and occasionally buying some interesting bit of outdated electronics that the shops still had stock of. Which of these two situations makes Tottenham Court Road 'better' is entirely subjective.
I used to buy new mobile phones on Tottenham Court Road, in the brief period before buying everything online.
"Dia Chakravarty I stood up to a fare-dodger on the Tube while TfL just shrugs It is infuriating to watch authorities turn a blind eye to this blatant flouting of the law" (£)
London might be paradise to you southern softies, but get out of your bubble and head up the M1 and you'll find a different world. Loughborough. Got the university and not much else . Any bit of land/ empty building finds itself turned into student accommodation or bulldozed for student accommodation. The Carillion Shopping Centre has been the focal point of the Town Centre as long as I can remember. It's currently empty, shops having had all their tenancies terminated so the owners can knock it down and build an eight floor student accommodation block, right slap bang in the middle of the town. There's a planning wrangle currently going on. The massive Cineworld has closed and the restaurants and bars that were destined to open in the adjoining development never really happened- fully half the units have been empty since it was completed. Very few shops survive in the town longer than 6 months, unless it's fast food, Turkish barber or nail bar. Even the charity shops are moving out. We have no idea what a museum or art gallery is. Still, the empty shops do give the homeless some doorways to sleep in.
Tell me about it. Somebody took the little city I grew up in and loved and replaced it with a sweaty turd. Norwich is dying on its arse. There's no Thursday night late shopping anymore, the two shopping centres are deserted and full of nonsense shops and phone screen repair shacks. The nightlife is non existent or violent. There's a big Primark and last year a massive Poundland opened. Grim. The last remaining treasures- the market and the lanes will no doubt get flattened soon enough.
Based on that I wonder how much correlation there is between "prefer/hate internet shopping" and "my area is getting better/worse to live".
Probably worse than that. We want to use internet shopping ourselves, because it's cheaper and more convenient. The bookshop on Gosport High Street was a good thing to have, but it was a bit rubbish. But we also want physical shops to be available- partly because we really want them when we want them (think back to March 2020), but also because shops make a town.
People are messed up.
If we want physical shops there probably needs to be a 50-75% reduction in business rates replaced by a 5-10% online sales tax. (FWIW personally prefer online and happy for centres to shrink and go towards hospitality and residential).
London might be paradise to you southern softies, but get out of your bubble and head up the M1 and you'll find a different world. Loughborough. Got the university and not much else . Any bit of land/ empty building finds itself turned into student accommodation or bulldozed for student accommodation. The Carillion Shopping Centre has been the focal point of the Town Centre as long as I can remember. It's currently empty, shops having had all their tenancies terminated so the owners can knock it down and build an eight floor student accommodation block, right slap bang in the middle of the town. There's a planning wrangle currently going on. The massive Cineworld has closed and the restaurants and bars that were destined to open in the adjoining development never really happened- fully half the units have been empty since it was completed. Very few shops survive in the town longer than 6 months, unless it's fast food, Turkish barber or nail bar. Even the charity shops are moving out. We have no idea what a museum or art gallery is. Still, the empty shops do give the homeless some doorways to sleep in.
Tell me about it. Somebody took the little city I grew up in and loved and replaced it with a sweaty turd. Norwich is dying on its arse. There's no Thursday night late shopping anymore, the two shopping centres are deserted and full of nonsense shops and phone screen repair shacks. The nightlife is non existent or violent. There's a big Primark and last year a massive Poundland opened. Grim. The last remaining treasures- the market and the lanes will no doubt get flattened soon enough.
Based on that I wonder how much correlation there is between "prefer/hate internet shopping" and "my area is getting better/worse to live".
Probably worse than that. We want to use internet shopping ourselves, because it's cheaper and more convenient. The bookshop on Gosport High Street was a good thing to have, but it was a bit rubbish. But we also want physical shops to be available- partly because we really want them when we want them (think back to March 2020), but also because shops make a town.
People are messed up.
We just haven't decided what town centres are for any more. Increasingly it will be for personal services, food and drink, top-up shopping, FMCGs (I don't want to have to order shampoo on line when I run out) and Boutique-y places, particularly for things you want to feel/see/try on before you buy them. That's a lot less than there used to be, so we need to think mixed development and accommodation
While I make most purchases online I still use the town centre Waitrose as when I go shopping I typically need stuff *for today*. And I can make my own substitutions, impulse purchases, pick up reductions etc
London might be paradise to you southern softies, but get out of your bubble and head up the M1 and you'll find a different world. Loughborough. Got the university and not much else . Any bit of land/ empty building finds itself turned into student accommodation or bulldozed for student accommodation. The Carillion Shopping Centre has been the focal point of the Town Centre as long as I can remember. It's currently empty, shops having had all their tenancies terminated so the owners can knock it down and build an eight floor student accommodation block, right slap bang in the middle of the town. There's a planning wrangle currently going on. The massive Cineworld has closed and the restaurants and bars that were destined to open in the adjoining development never really happened- fully half the units have been empty since it was completed. Very few shops survive in the town longer than 6 months, unless it's fast food, Turkish barber or nail bar. Even the charity shops are moving out. We have no idea what a museum or art gallery is. Still, the empty shops do give the homeless some doorways to sleep in.
Tell me about it. Somebody took the little city I grew up in and loved and replaced it with a sweaty turd. Norwich is dying on its arse. There's no Thursday night late shopping anymore, the two shopping centres are deserted and full of nonsense shops and phone screen repair shacks. The nightlife is non existent or violent. There's a big Primark and last year a massive Poundland opened. Grim. The last remaining treasures- the market and the lanes will no doubt get flattened soon enough.
Based on that I wonder how much correlation there is between "prefer/hate internet shopping" and "my area is getting better/worse to live".
Probably worse than that. We want to use internet shopping ourselves, because it's cheaper and more convenient. The bookshop on Gosport High Street was a good thing to have, but it was a bit rubbish. But we also want physical shops to be available- partly because we really want them when we want them (think back to March 2020), but also because shops make a town.
People are messed up.
If we want physical shops there probably needs to be a 50-75% reduction in business rates replaced by a 5-10% online sales tax.
Good job the government aren't scrapping the discount on business rates....
I would argue that the area of Central London where my apartment is (Shaftesbury Avenue) has gotten worse. We're right by Forbidden Planet, and the number of homeless drug addicts on the street has dramatically increased in the post Covid period.
I used to go up Tottenham Court Road way quite a bit and that was a very grim area in the late 80s through to much of the 90s. Whenever I read these "London is done" stories I always think that they can't remember just how bad it was before.
I came to london in the 80s. It was much worse than it is now almost everywhere. So this is a straw man
I was honestly asking opinions on Fraser Nelson’s tweet that “london is a better city than it was ten years ago”
Because most of my friends would disagree with this and the rest would shrug and say “no better no worse”
For me it is exactly this last decade where it has declined (not compared to the 1980s when it was totally on its arse)
However there are PBers who genuinely believe london is better, like Fraser, and that’s interesting to hear
Do you think London had more character, atmosphere, etc in the 80s compared to now?
I would argue that the area of Central London where my apartment is (Shaftesbury Avenue) has gotten worse. We're right by Forbidden Planet, and the number of homeless drug addicts on the street has dramatically increased in the post Covid period.
I used to go up Tottenham Court Road way quite a bit and that was a very grim area in the late 80s through to much of the 90s. Whenever I read these "London is done" stories I always think that they can't remember just how bad it was before.
I came to london in the 80s. It was much worse than it is now almost everywhere. So this is a straw man
I was honestly asking opinions on Fraser Nelson’s tweet that “london is a better city than it was ten years ago”
Because most of my friends would disagree with this and the rest would shrug and say “no better no worse”
For me it is exactly this last decade where it has declined (not compared to the 1980s when it was totally on its arse)
However there are PBers who genuinely believe london is better, like Fraser, and that’s interesting to hear
10 years of stagnation? For sure, as we've had a pandemic, major European war that whacked our economy, and going back further we never really recovered from the financial crash as well as we hoped. So about the same or worse is a fair description over the 10 and maybe even 20 year time frame. But it was far worse than that 30 or 40 years ago. It's night and day.
Really striking how even Reform imitate language of liberal consensus. Britain was built on attracting the brightest and the best!
It empirically wasn’t. Anglophone world meant Britain was a society built on *emigration*. Interesting that even insurgent right adopts US rhetoric.
Looking at his tweets, even Bastani is on the "provincial towns are down the tubes" train....
"There should be a concerted effort by government to revive these places. Eastbourne, Worthing, Hastings. All have gorgeous architecture just like this - & proximity to the cool sea air! High speed internet, high speed rail to London & funds to rebuild urban fabric."
I would argue that the area of Central London where my apartment is (Shaftesbury Avenue) has gotten worse. We're right by Forbidden Planet, and the number of homeless drug addicts on the street has dramatically increased in the post Covid period.
I used to go up Tottenham Court Road way quite a bit and that was a very grim area in the late 80s through to much of the 90s. Whenever I read these "London is done" stories I always think that they can't remember just how bad it was before.
This is why the question is impossible to answer. Tottenham Court Road is much cleaner and safer than it used to be but I never go there anymore because all of the electronics and audio shops are gone. I used to love walking up Tottenham Court Road looking in the windows and occasionally buying some interesting bit of outdated electronics that the shops still had stock of. Which of these two situations makes Tottenham Court Road 'better' is entirely subjective.
TCR also seemed to have a large amount of furniture shops along it - haven’t been there for a very long time. Was in halls off it and one “improvement” I noticed on a rare visit back was that the weird cockney knees up venue for the tourists at the top end had been converted to a Spearmint Rhino.
I was very relieved that it wasn’t Spearmint Rhino when I was in halls as I think it would have been a bit awkward explaining to my old man why I was spending thousands a week and not doing any study.
I would argue that the area of Central London where my apartment is (Shaftesbury Avenue) has gotten worse. We're right by Forbidden Planet, and the number of homeless drug addicts on the street has dramatically increased in the post Covid period.
I used to go up Tottenham Court Road way quite a bit and that was a very grim area in the late 80s through to much of the 90s. Whenever I read these "London is done" stories I always think that they can't remember just how bad it was before.
This is why the question is impossible to answer. Tottenham Court Road is much cleaner and safer than it used to be but I never go there anymore because all of the electronics and audio shops are gone. I used to love walking up Tottenham Court Road looking in the windows and occasionally buying some interesting bit of outdated electronics that the shops still had stock of. Which of these two situations makes Tottenham Court Road 'better' is entirely subjective.
I used to buy new mobile phones on Tottenham Court Road, in the brief period before buying everything online.
If I was at leisure I used to do a shopping trip starting at the Waterstones in Gower Street (brilliant second hand section from all of the UCL academics), walking up Tottenham Court Road to look at the electronics, visit the second hand bookshops in Charing Cross and finish up with the weird shops in Cecil Court. There are still a couple of good bookshops in Charing Cross Road but they're being edged out by Korean shops and eateries.
What do PBers think? Is London better or worse than it was 10 years ago? Fraser Nelson cites several stats that back up his point. Cleaner air, less crime
And yet I don’t know a single person of any age that agrees with him. At most they might say it’s stagnant, no change - the majority would say worse
So what’s going on?
"And yet I don’t know a single person of any age that agrees with him."
That's probably because of the people you associate with. They're either other right-wing nutcases, or sane people who just nod politely as they think: "who is this ranting nutter? I'd better just agree..."
That's a thing about conversations: they can be directed quite easily, especially if people have not got firm views on the matter.
I live in NW1. Have you ever been to NW1, or indeed north London? Most of my friends in London are left wing - yet they all feel the city has gone down hill
My kids think this. Everyone thinks this
Which handily shows the problem is you.
Believing that some things about London haven't got worse recently is a faith. It's not based on real life.
That's not what he's saying, though. He is saying *everyone* thinks the same as him. It's bullshit.
I think the village I live in is a very nice place to live. I'd give it 8.5 out of 10. Not perfect, but pleasant. I've just been to the dentist; a mile walk there along a quietish road with wide pavements, and a mile walk back through a country park. If I talk to people about the village, they agree it's a nice place to live. Perhaps because I'm positive about it.
But I'm not so braindead stupid as to think that everyone feels the same way. Occasionally on a village FB group someone will say: "I'm thinking of moving to the village. What is it like?" The responses are generally "It's great!". But you also get a few: "It's a hellhole; crime is everywhere and the kids are out of control!!!!!"
If you up to people and says: "Isn't this place an absolute hellhole compared to ten years ago, eh?", you'll get more people saying that it's a hellhole than if you say "Isn't this place lovely?"
Main complaint here is the fact that there aren't as many pubs as Once Upon a Time.
There were a lot in the dim and distant, though!
On the other hand, if like me you like specialist craft beer and/or real ale pubs, London is much better than it used to be. There has been a bit of a clearing-out of small breweries and hence taprooms, but that is a national thing, and you can still do a Bermondsey Beer Mile crawl.
However I go into London much less often than I used to. A period of rail engineering work was followed by Covid was followed by train strikes and it just wasn't worth the effort. They have only recently reinstated a late enough service to make it possible to go to a midweek gig and get home without missing the encore
Really striking how even Reform imitate language of liberal consensus. Britain was built on attracting the brightest and the best!
It empirically wasn’t. Anglophone world meant Britain was a society built on *emigration*. Interesting that even insurgent right adopts US rhetoric.
Looking at his tweets, even Bastani is on the "provincial towns are down the tubes" train....
"There should be a concerted effort by government to revive these places. Eastbourne, Worthing, Hastings. All have gorgeous architecture just like this - & proximity to the cool sea air! High speed internet, high speed rail to London & funds to rebuild urban fabric."
In 2065 those UK seaside towns will be full of Spanish tourists enjoying paella before heading to the local flameco bars all summer to escape the 45-50 degree heat of Spain.
London might be paradise to you southern softies, but get out of your bubble and head up the M1 and you'll find a different world. Loughborough. Got the university and not much else . Any bit of land/ empty building finds itself turned into student accommodation or bulldozed for student accommodation. The Carillion Shopping Centre has been the focal point of the Town Centre as long as I can remember. It's currently empty, shops having had all their tenancies terminated so the owners can knock it down and build an eight floor student accommodation block, right slap bang in the middle of the town. There's a planning wrangle currently going on. The massive Cineworld has closed and the restaurants and bars that were destined to open in the adjoining development never really happened- fully half the units have been empty since it was completed. Very few shops survive in the town longer than 6 months, unless it's fast food, Turkish barber or nail bar. Even the charity shops are moving out. We have no idea what a museum or art gallery is. Still, the empty shops do give the homeless some doorways to sleep in.
Tell me about it. Somebody took the little city I grew up in and loved and replaced it with a sweaty turd. Norwich is dying on its arse. There's no Thursday night late shopping anymore, the two shopping centres are deserted and full of nonsense shops and phone screen repair shacks. The nightlife is non existent or violent. There's a big Primark and last year a massive Poundland opened. Grim. The last remaining treasures- the market and the lanes will no doubt get flattened soon enough.
Based on that I wonder how much correlation there is between "prefer/hate internet shopping" and "my area is getting better/worse to live".
Probably worse than that. We want to use internet shopping ourselves, because it's cheaper and more convenient. The bookshop on Gosport High Street was a good thing to have, but it was a bit rubbish. But we also want physical shops to be available- partly because we really want them when we want them (think back to March 2020), but also because shops make a town.
People are messed up.
Convenience doesn't necessarily improve quality of life, (except in a very superficial way). That's the paradox.
London might be paradise to you southern softies, but get out of your bubble and head up the M1 and you'll find a different world. Loughborough. Got the university and not much else . Any bit of land/ empty building finds itself turned into student accommodation or bulldozed for student accommodation. The Carillion Shopping Centre has been the focal point of the Town Centre as long as I can remember. It's currently empty, shops having had all their tenancies terminated so the owners can knock it down and build an eight floor student accommodation block, right slap bang in the middle of the town. There's a planning wrangle currently going on. The massive Cineworld has closed and the restaurants and bars that were destined to open in the adjoining development never really happened- fully half the units have been empty since it was completed. Very few shops survive in the town longer than 6 months, unless it's fast food, Turkish barber or nail bar. Even the charity shops are moving out. We have no idea what a museum or art gallery is. Still, the empty shops do give the homeless some doorways to sleep in.
Tell me about it. Somebody took the little city I grew up in and loved and replaced it with a sweaty turd. Norwich is dying on its arse. There's no Thursday night late shopping anymore, the two shopping centres are deserted and full of nonsense shops and phone screen repair shacks. The nightlife is non existent or violent. There's a big Primark and last year a massive Poundland opened. Grim. The last remaining treasures- the market and the lanes will no doubt get flattened soon enough.
Based on that I wonder how much correlation there is between "prefer/hate internet shopping" and "my area is getting better/worse to live".
Probably worse than that. We want to use internet shopping ourselves, because it's cheaper and more convenient. The bookshop on Gosport High Street was a good thing to have, but it was a bit rubbish. But we also want physical shops to be available- partly because we really want them when we want them (think back to March 2020), but also because shops make a town.
People are messed up.
Convenience doesn't necessarily improve quality of life, (except in a very superficial way). That's the paradox.
Of course it does.
It doesn't stop miserable old gits from complaining.
London might be paradise to you southern softies, but get out of your bubble and head up the M1 and you'll find a different world. Loughborough. Got the university and not much else . Any bit of land/ empty building finds itself turned into student accommodation or bulldozed for student accommodation. The Carillion Shopping Centre has been the focal point of the Town Centre as long as I can remember. It's currently empty, shops having had all their tenancies terminated so the owners can knock it down and build an eight floor student accommodation block, right slap bang in the middle of the town. There's a planning wrangle currently going on. The massive Cineworld has closed and the restaurants and bars that were destined to open in the adjoining development never really happened- fully half the units have been empty since it was completed. Very few shops survive in the town longer than 6 months, unless it's fast food, Turkish barber or nail bar. Even the charity shops are moving out. We have no idea what a museum or art gallery is. Still, the empty shops do give the homeless some doorways to sleep in.
Tell me about it. Somebody took the little city I grew up in and loved and replaced it with a sweaty turd. Norwich is dying on its arse. There's no Thursday night late shopping anymore, the two shopping centres are deserted and full of nonsense shops and phone screen repair shacks. The nightlife is non existent or violent. There's a big Primark and last year a massive Poundland opened. Grim. The last remaining treasures- the market and the lanes will no doubt get flattened soon enough.
Based on that I wonder how much correlation there is between "prefer/hate internet shopping" and "my area is getting better/worse to live".
The problem is that the councils etc haven't worked out that internet shopping is here to stay. Physical shops are simply worth a lot less, in many many places.
London might be paradise to you southern softies, but get out of your bubble and head up the M1 and you'll find a different world. Loughborough. Got the university and not much else . Any bit of land/ empty building finds itself turned into student accommodation or bulldozed for student accommodation. The Carillion Shopping Centre has been the focal point of the Town Centre as long as I can remember. It's currently empty, shops having had all their tenancies terminated so the owners can knock it down and build an eight floor student accommodation block, right slap bang in the middle of the town. There's a planning wrangle currently going on. The massive Cineworld has closed and the restaurants and bars that were destined to open in the adjoining development never really happened- fully half the units have been empty since it was completed. Very few shops survive in the town longer than 6 months, unless it's fast food, Turkish barber or nail bar. Even the charity shops are moving out. We have no idea what a museum or art gallery is. Still, the empty shops do give the homeless some doorways to sleep in.
Tell me about it. Somebody took the little city I grew up in and loved and replaced it with a sweaty turd. Norwich is dying on its arse. There's no Thursday night late shopping anymore, the two shopping centres are deserted and full of nonsense shops and phone screen repair shacks. The nightlife is non existent or violent. There's a big Primark and last year a massive Poundland opened. Grim. The last remaining treasures- the market and the lanes will no doubt get flattened soon enough.
Based on that I wonder how much correlation there is between "prefer/hate internet shopping" and "my area is getting better/worse to live".
Probably worse than that. We want to use internet shopping ourselves, because it's cheaper and more convenient. The bookshop on Gosport High Street was a good thing to have, but it was a bit rubbish. But we also want physical shops to be available- partly because we really want them when we want them (think back to March 2020), but also because shops make a town.
People are messed up.
We recently opened a new, bigger bookshop.
Focus is on the experience. The shop sales themselves will probably just about cover the day to day running costs it incurs this year, but the experience we provide is of huge value to our mostly online/mail-order business.
The only shops that have opened in our prosperous, historic, near-seaside market town this year are those that also market experiences, offer advice, or have alternative streams of income.
If you just sell a widget, you're always going to be undercut by the internet.
There is no need for an online sales tax; business just needs to adapt to the realities. You need to provide value add in a retail setting, or you die.
What do PBers think? Is London better or worse than it was 10 years ago? Fraser Nelson cites several stats that back up his point. Cleaner air, less crime
And yet I don’t know a single person of any age that agrees with him. At most they might say it’s stagnant, no change - the majority would say worse
So what’s going on?
"And yet I don’t know a single person of any age that agrees with him."
That's probably because of the people you associate with. They're either other right-wing nutcases, or sane people who just nod politely as they think: "who is this ranting nutter? I'd better just agree..."
That's a thing about conversations: they can be directed quite easily, especially if people have not got firm views on the matter.
I live in NW1. Have you ever been to NW1, or indeed north London? Most of my friends in London are left wing - yet they all feel the city has gone down hill
My kids think this. Everyone thinks this
Which handily shows the problem is you.
Believing that some things about London haven't got worse recently is a faith. It's not based on real life.
That's not what he's saying, though. He is saying *everyone* thinks the same as him. It's bullshit.
I think the village I live in is a very nice place to live. I'd give it 8.5 out of 10. Not perfect, but pleasant. I've just been to the dentist; a mile walk there along a quietish road with wide pavements, and a mile walk back through a country park. If I talk to people about the village, they agree it's a nice place to live. Perhaps because I'm positive about it.
But I'm not so braindead stupid as to think that everyone feels the same way. Occasionally on a village FB group someone will say: "I'm thinking of moving to the village. What is it like?" The responses are generally "It's great!". But you also get a few: "It's a hellhole; crime is everywhere and the kids are out of control!!!!!"
If you up to people and says: "Isn't this place an absolute hellhole compared to ten years ago, eh?", you'll get more people saying that it's a hellhole than if you say "Isn't this place lovely?"
Main complaint here is the fact that there aren't as many pubs as Once Upon a Time.
There were a lot in the dim and distant, though!
On the other hand, if like me you like specialist craft beer and/or real ale pubs, London is much better than it used to be. There has been a bit of a clearing-out of small breweries and hence taprooms, but that is a national thing, and you can still do a Bermondsey Beer Mile crawl.
However I go into London much less often than I used to. A period of rail engineering work was followed by Covid was followed by train strikes and it just wasn't worth the effort. They have only recently reinstated a late enough service to make it possible to go to a midweek gig and get home without missing the encore
Sadly I can't go to London now, unless it's to a specific, and car-accessible, location. However we've a wine bar recently opened locally which I think does craft beer.
Which I'm going to try one of these days, when I can get up courage to try their steps with my walking aid.
I would argue that the area of Central London where my apartment is (Shaftesbury Avenue) has gotten worse. We're right by Forbidden Planet, and the number of homeless drug addicts on the street has dramatically increased in the post Covid period.
I used to go up Tottenham Court Road way quite a bit and that was a very grim area in the late 80s through to much of the 90s. Whenever I read these "London is done" stories I always think that they can't remember just how bad it was before.
I came to london in the 80s. It was much worse than it is now almost everywhere. So this is a straw man
I was honestly asking opinions on Fraser Nelson’s tweet that “london is a better city than it was ten years ago”
Because most of my friends would disagree with this and the rest would shrug and say “no better no worse”
For me it is exactly this last decade where it has declined (not compared to the 1980s when it was totally on its arse)
However there are PBers who genuinely believe london is better, like Fraser, and that’s interesting to hear
Do you think London had more character, atmosphere, etc in the 80s compared to now?
I’m wary of saying Yes because I was 21 in the 1980s! And a lot of things are more fun when you’re 21
Overall, in my very subjective opinion london improved as a city - in some ways, dramatically - up until 2010 or so - then it plateaued; then it began a slide from about 2015 which was very gentle but may now be accelerating
Recent migration patterns have been bad for London and it is not good that native Brits are being replaced
Hopefully if property prices do collapse that might mean ordinary Brits can reclaim their capital city. So that’s one upside
Every day London becomes a bit more disorderly. The police report that shoplifting increased by more than 50% last year, a far sharper increase than in other regions, and thefts such as pickpocketing increased by 41%, with mobile phones plucked like low-hanging fruit. Transport for London (TfL) calculates that fare dodging costs the transit system £400 million ($540 million) a year, but the real figure may be much higher. But these crime figures only capture a small proportion of the disorder. Delivery drivers cycle at high speed, often on the pavement, frequently scattering pedestrians in their path. The bikes have electric motors and thick tires; the drivers usually wear masks or balaclavas to conceal their faces, regardless of the heat. The sickly sweet smell of marijuana is ubiquitous in large parts of London (and certainly in Clapham where I live).
London might be paradise to you southern softies, but get out of your bubble and head up the M1 and you'll find a different world. Loughborough. Got the university and not much else . Any bit of land/ empty building finds itself turned into student accommodation or bulldozed for student accommodation. The Carillion Shopping Centre has been the focal point of the Town Centre as long as I can remember. It's currently empty, shops having had all their tenancies terminated so the owners can knock it down and build an eight floor student accommodation block, right slap bang in the middle of the town. There's a planning wrangle currently going on. The massive Cineworld has closed and the restaurants and bars that were destined to open in the adjoining development never really happened- fully half the units have been empty since it was completed. Very few shops survive in the town longer than 6 months, unless it's fast food, Turkish barber or nail bar. Even the charity shops are moving out. We have no idea what a museum or art gallery is. Still, the empty shops do give the homeless some doorways to sleep in.
Tell me about it. Somebody took the little city I grew up in and loved and replaced it with a sweaty turd. Norwich is dying on its arse. There's no Thursday night late shopping anymore, the two shopping centres are deserted and full of nonsense shops and phone screen repair shacks. The nightlife is non existent or violent. There's a big Primark and last year a massive Poundland opened. Grim. The last remaining treasures- the market and the lanes will no doubt get flattened soon enough.
Based on that I wonder how much correlation there is between "prefer/hate internet shopping" and "my area is getting better/worse to live".
The problem is that the councils etc haven't worked out that internet shopping is here to stay. Physical shops are simply worth a lot less, in many many places.
I would argue that the area of Central London where my apartment is (Shaftesbury Avenue) has gotten worse. We're right by Forbidden Planet, and the number of homeless drug addicts on the street has dramatically increased in the post Covid period.
I used to go up Tottenham Court Road way quite a bit and that was a very grim area in the late 80s through to much of the 90s. Whenever I read these "London is done" stories I always think that they can't remember just how bad it was before.
This is why the question is impossible to answer. Tottenham Court Road is much cleaner and safer than it used to be but I never go there anymore because all of the electronics and audio shops are gone. I used to love walking up Tottenham Court Road looking in the windows and occasionally buying some interesting bit of outdated electronics that the shops still had stock of. Which of these two situations makes Tottenham Court Road 'better' is entirely subjective.
I used to buy new mobile phones on Tottenham Court Road, in the brief period before buying everything online.
If I was at leisure I used to do a shopping trip starting at the Waterstones in Gower Street (brilliant second hand section from all of the UCL academics), walking up Tottenham Court Road to look at the electronics, visit the second hand bookshops in Charing Cross and finish up with the weird shops in Cecil Court. There are still a couple of good bookshops in Charing Cross Road but they're being edged out by Korean shops and eateries.
I’m so old - and a UCL alumnus - I can remember when that Waterstone’s was a Dillion’s
That corner of London definitely had more “character” back then
Every day London becomes a bit more disorderly. The police report that shoplifting increased by more than 50% last year, a far sharper increase than in other regions, and thefts such as pickpocketing increased by 41%, with mobile phones plucked like low-hanging fruit. Transport for London (TfL) calculates that fare dodging costs the transit system £400 million ($540 million) a year, but the real figure may be much higher. But these crime figures only capture a small proportion of the disorder. Delivery drivers cycle at high speed, often on the pavement, frequently scattering pedestrians in their path. The bikes have electric motors and thick tires; the drivers usually wear masks or balaclavas to conceal their faces, regardless of the heat. The sickly sweet smell of marijuana is ubiquitous in large parts of London (and certainly in Clapham where I live).
What do PBers think? Is London better or worse than it was 10 years ago? Fraser Nelson cites several stats that back up his point. Cleaner air, less crime
And yet I don’t know a single person of any age that agrees with him. At most they might say it’s stagnant, no change - the majority would say worse
So what’s going on?
"And yet I don’t know a single person of any age that agrees with him."
That's probably because of the people you associate with. They're either other right-wing nutcases, or sane people who just nod politely as they think: "who is this ranting nutter? I'd better just agree..."
That's a thing about conversations: they can be directed quite easily, especially if people have not got firm views on the matter.
I live in NW1. Have you ever been to NW1, or indeed north London? Most of my friends in London are left wing - yet they all feel the city has gone down hill
My kids think this. Everyone thinks this
Which handily shows the problem is you.
Believing that some things about London haven't got worse recently is a faith. It's not based on real life.
That's not what he's saying, though. He is saying *everyone* thinks the same as him. It's bullshit.
I think the village I live in is a very nice place to live. I'd give it 8.5 out of 10. Not perfect, but pleasant. I've just been to the dentist; a mile walk there along a quietish road with wide pavements, and a mile walk back through a country park. If I talk to people about the village, they agree it's a nice place to live. Perhaps because I'm positive about it.
But I'm not so braindead stupid as to think that everyone feels the same way. Occasionally on a village FB group someone will say: "I'm thinking of moving to the village. What is it like?" The responses are generally "It's great!". But you also get a few: "It's a hellhole; crime is everywhere and the kids are out of control!!!!!"
If you up to people and says: "Isn't this place an absolute hellhole compared to ten years ago, eh?", you'll get more people saying that it's a hellhole than if you say "Isn't this place lovely?"
Main complaint here is the fact that there aren't as many pubs as Once Upon a Time.
There were a lot in the dim and distant, though!
On the other hand, if like me you like specialist craft beer and/or real ale pubs, London is much better than it used to be. There has been a bit of a clearing-out of small breweries and hence taprooms, but that is a national thing, and you can still do a Bermondsey Beer Mile crawl.
However I go into London much less often than I used to. A period of rail engineering work was followed by Covid was followed by train strikes and it just wasn't worth the effort. They have only recently reinstated a late enough service to make it possible to go to a midweek gig and get home without missing the encore
Sadly I can't go to London now, unless it's to a specific, and car-accessible, location. However we've a wine bar recently opened locally which I think does craft beer.
Which I'm going to try one of these days, when I can get up courage to try their steps with my walking aid.
Unfortunately what your local wine bar might sell is brands like Beavertown which have been bought out by the multinationals, dumbed down, and no longer really count as Craft. But still admittedly a much better product than John Smith's Smooth of course.
I could be wrong... but there are loads of gastropubs out there that pride themselves on their wine list, but expect their beer drinking clients to be happy with Doom Bar. Often it's the terms of the pub lease of course but wine people often really don't seem to understand beer
I would argue that the area of Central London where my apartment is (Shaftesbury Avenue) has gotten worse. We're right by Forbidden Planet, and the number of homeless drug addicts on the street has dramatically increased in the post Covid period.
I used to go up Tottenham Court Road way quite a bit and that was a very grim area in the late 80s through to much of the 90s. Whenever I read these "London is done" stories I always think that they can't remember just how bad it was before.
I came to london in the 80s. It was much worse than it is now almost everywhere. So this is a straw man
I was honestly asking opinions on Fraser Nelson’s tweet that “london is a better city than it was ten years ago”
Because most of my friends would disagree with this and the rest would shrug and say “no better no worse”
For me it is exactly this last decade where it has declined (not compared to the 1980s when it was totally on its arse)
However there are PBers who genuinely believe london is better, like Fraser, and that’s interesting to hear
Do you think London had more character, atmosphere, etc in the 80s compared to now?
I’m wary of saying Yes because I was 21 in the 1980s! And a lot of things are more fun when you’re 21
Overall, in my very subjective opinion london improved as a city - in some ways, dramatically - up until 2010 or so - then it plateaued; then it began a slide from about 2015 which was very gentle but may now be accelerating
Recent migration patterns have been bad for London and it is not good that native Brits are being replaced
Hopefully if property prices do collapse that might mean ordinary Brits can reclaim their capital city. So that’s one upside
21 in the 80-'s. Like my children! I thought you were older than that!
"Dia Chakravarty I stood up to a fare-dodger on the Tube while TfL just shrugs It is infuriating to watch authorities turn a blind eye to this blatant flouting of the law" (£)
Really striking how even Reform imitate language of liberal consensus. Britain was built on attracting the brightest and the best!
It empirically wasn’t. Anglophone world meant Britain was a society built on *emigration*. Interesting that even insurgent right adopts US rhetoric.
Built on colonisation in one period maybe, but there has always been migration in both directions, and it seems a very strange attitude to characterise a society in terms of the people who aren't there any more.
I would argue that the area of Central London where my apartment is (Shaftesbury Avenue) has gotten worse. We're right by Forbidden Planet, and the number of homeless drug addicts on the street has dramatically increased in the post Covid period.
I used to go up Tottenham Court Road way quite a bit and that was a very grim area in the late 80s through to much of the 90s. Whenever I read these "London is done" stories I always think that they can't remember just how bad it was before.
I came to london in the 80s. It was much worse than it is now almost everywhere. So this is a straw man
I was honestly asking opinions on Fraser Nelson’s tweet that “london is a better city than it was ten years ago”
Because most of my friends would disagree with this and the rest would shrug and say “no better no worse”
For me it is exactly this last decade where it has declined (not compared to the 1980s when it was totally on its arse)
However there are PBers who genuinely believe london is better, like Fraser, and that’s interesting to hear
10 years of stagnation? For sure, as we've had a pandemic, major European war that whacked our economy, and going back further we never really recovered from the financial crash as well as we hoped. So about the same or worse is a fair description over the 10 and maybe even 20 year time frame. But it was far worse than that 30 or 40 years ago. It's night and day.
FWIW: Manchester is better than it was 10 years ago. The city centre has grown astonishingly and is full of cool hidden little neighbourhoods. It still has a lot of improving to do to become the top tier European city it could be. But Manchester 2025 is more like Copenhagen 2025 than it is like Manchester 1980. Which was dreadful. I can also report that Stockport, Sale, Altrincham, Warrington, Bury are also better than they were ten years ago. Wigan always seems on the cusp of a leap forward but has been there for a decade or more; Bolton has declined, and Rochdale, Oldham and Ashton are all as depressing as ever (though I read today that Oldham is one of the most in-demand property hotspots in the country). Further afield, Liverpool and Sheffield have both improved a lot in the last 10-15 years.
I love history and reading about history. I've just started Dominic Sandbrook's "Who dares wins", about the history of Britain in the years 1979-1982 (essentially Maggie's first three years). Its starts with a stark depiction of the UK in terminal decline - nothing works, the nation is getting poorer, hotels are terrible, with rude staff and poor service (Fawlty Tower's is regarded as not that far from reality) and so on. Strikingly it records the New York Times laying into the UK from afar.
Its all so strikingly reminiscent of current times. What's interesting is when you move beyond the doomsayers, as Sandbrook does, it wasn't actually that bad. Were people better off in 1980 than in 1960? Undoubtedly. They had better houses, central heating, TV's , more stuff in general. And yet the air of decline was all around. Sandbrook points out that the real mallaise for Britain was that it was the first major industrial economy to start to move away from the traditional industries (coal, steel etc) to services, and so it looked like the 'sick man of Europe' mainly because it was the first country to undergo this process, not through an inherent problem.
The opening chapter resonates with me. We have so many people claiming national decline, and saying how awful it is, when at the same time arguably life ahs never been better for most people. Who among you would rather be living in the 80's again? Really?
One wonders what the future will bring. AI is clearly a challenge to many ways of earning a living. How far can it go? Will there be jobs in the future? How then does a society allocate wealth? How do you generate wealth?
Lots of questions, few answers. One thing I will add - interest in studying at University doesn't seem to be declining - we have seen record interest at our recent two Open Days. The University apocalypse has not yet started.
It will. If you think about it, it is inevitable
Some big wig in the Spectator is predicting that 80% of universities will shut within 10 years. That seems hyperbolic to me, but the direction is clear
Well, that would release a hell of a lot of modern studio flats onto the market, as good affordable housing. Subject to government changing the regulations to allow non-students to live in places that small.
(Are student flats counted in housebuilding stats? They're too small for normal habitation by law so maybe not...)
Chatted with the site surveyor of some student accommodation in West London, a while back. He was pretty open that, when you looked at soil stacks etc, the plan was obviously to build in conversion to "normal" flats. So a few non structural walls go, change the kitchen and bathrooms etc but the building itself is ready for it.
He reckoned that the idea was that the student gentrify the locality, while paying off the original paper on the building. Then covert and sell. And use part of the money to build new student accommodation, not far away, in another dodgy bit.
Sounds like a good thing. Why wouldn't that be something to be open about?
Student accommodation is a way round the planning laws requiring x amount of affordable housing.
IIRC, converting it for full domestic doesn’t trigger those rules.
Those laws should be abolished anyway.
All new housing improves affordability. All construction improves supply and affordability is supply versus demand.
Yes. Requiring a proportion of a development to be "affordable" is displacement activity from tackling the core problem of a mismatch between demand and supply.
I would argue that the area of Central London where my apartment is (Shaftesbury Avenue) has gotten worse. We're right by Forbidden Planet, and the number of homeless drug addicts on the street has dramatically increased in the post Covid period.
I used to go up Tottenham Court Road way quite a bit and that was a very grim area in the late 80s through to much of the 90s. Whenever I read these "London is done" stories I always think that they can't remember just how bad it was before.
I came to london in the 80s. It was much worse than it is now almost everywhere. So this is a straw man
I was honestly asking opinions on Fraser Nelson’s tweet that “london is a better city than it was ten years ago”
Because most of my friends would disagree with this and the rest would shrug and say “no better no worse”
For me it is exactly this last decade where it has declined (not compared to the 1980s when it was totally on its arse)
However there are PBers who genuinely believe london is better, like Fraser, and that’s interesting to hear
Do you think London had more character, atmosphere, etc in the 80s compared to now?
I’m wary of saying Yes because I was 21 in the 1980s! And a lot of things are more fun when you’re 21
Overall, in my very subjective opinion london improved as a city - in some ways, dramatically - up until 2010 or so - then it plateaued; then it began a slide from about 2015 which was very gentle but may now be accelerating
Recent migration patterns have been bad for London and it is not good that native Brits are being replaced
Hopefully if property prices do collapse that might mean ordinary Brits can reclaim their capital city. So that’s one upside
That puts Peak London in the early 2010s. If I were making a popular history documentary, narrowing that down to 2012 would be trite, lazy... and probably accurate enough. Real improvements (cleaner air, King's Cross, Elizabeth Line) alongside perceptions of things getting grottier. Not even exciting edginess (which never did anything for me, but I'm sure some pine for).
The difficult thing to process is that, although "we" didn't vote for this, we probably did vote (with our wallets and our ballots) for things that were pretty likely to lead to something like this. See also the messed-up housing market. We expect developers to provide below-market housing because we aren't willing to pay for it honestly though taxes.
I would argue that the area of Central London where my apartment is (Shaftesbury Avenue) has gotten worse. We're right by Forbidden Planet, and the number of homeless drug addicts on the street has dramatically increased in the post Covid period.
I used to go up Tottenham Court Road way quite a bit and that was a very grim area in the late 80s through to much of the 90s. Whenever I read these "London is done" stories I always think that they can't remember just how bad it was before.
This is why the question is impossible to answer. Tottenham Court Road is much cleaner and safer than it used to be but I never go there anymore because all of the electronics and audio shops are gone. I used to love walking up Tottenham Court Road looking in the windows and occasionally buying some interesting bit of outdated electronics that the shops still had stock of. Which of these two situations makes Tottenham Court Road 'better' is entirely subjective.
I used to buy new mobile phones on Tottenham Court Road, in the brief period before buying everything online.
If I was at leisure I used to do a shopping trip starting at the Waterstones in Gower Street (brilliant second hand section from all of the UCL academics), walking up Tottenham Court Road to look at the electronics, visit the second hand bookshops in Charing Cross and finish up with the weird shops in Cecil Court. There are still a couple of good bookshops in Charing Cross Road but they're being edged out by Korean shops and eateries.
I’m so old - and a UCL alumnus - I can remember when that Waterstone’s was a Dillion’s
That corner of London definitely had more “character” back then
Yes it did, I lived in London 1995-2002 and frequented that area. It was getting a bit seedy even then but the bookshops etc was great, there was a big map shop on Charing Cross Road I used to go to when travelling, can't remember the name.
I love history and reading about history. I've just started Dominic Sandbrook's "Who dares wins", about the history of Britain in the years 1979-1982 (essentially Maggie's first three years). Its starts with a stark depiction of the UK in terminal decline - nothing works, the nation is getting poorer, hotels are terrible, with rude staff and poor service (Fawlty Tower's is regarded as not that far from reality) and so on. Strikingly it records the New York Times laying into the UK from afar.
Its all so strikingly reminiscent of current times. What's interesting is when you move beyond the doomsayers, as Sandbrook does, it wasn't actually that bad. Were people better off in 1980 than in 1960? Undoubtedly. They had better houses, central heating, TV's , more stuff in general. And yet the air of decline was all around. Sandbrook points out that the real mallaise for Britain was that it was the first major industrial economy to start to move away from the traditional industries (coal, steel etc) to services, and so it looked like the 'sick man of Europe' mainly because it was the first country to undergo this process, not through an inherent problem.
The opening chapter resonates with me. We have so many people claiming national decline, and saying how awful it is, when at the same time arguably life ahs never been better for most people. Who among you would rather be living in the 80's again? Really?
One wonders what the future will bring. AI is clearly a challenge to many ways of earning a living. How far can it go? Will there be jobs in the future? How then does a society allocate wealth? How do you generate wealth?
Lots of questions, few answers. One thing I will add - interest in studying at University doesn't seem to be declining - we have seen record interest at our recent two Open Days. The University apocalypse has not yet started.
It will. If you think about it, it is inevitable
Some big wig in the Spectator is predicting that 80% of universities will shut within 10 years. That seems hyperbolic to me, but the direction is clear
Well, that would release a hell of a lot of modern studio flats onto the market, as good affordable housing. Subject to government changing the regulations to allow non-students to live in places that small.
(Are student flats counted in housebuilding stats? They're too small for normal habitation by law so maybe not...)
Many student blocks are built in a way that conversion into flats would be a straightforward task for multiple obvious reasons
London might be paradise to you southern softies, but get out of your bubble and head up the M1 and you'll find a different world. Loughborough. Got the university and not much else . Any bit of land/ empty building finds itself turned into student accommodation or bulldozed for student accommodation. The Carillion Shopping Centre has been the focal point of the Town Centre as long as I can remember. It's currently empty, shops having had all their tenancies terminated so the owners can knock it down and build an eight floor student accommodation block, right slap bang in the middle of the town. There's a planning wrangle currently going on. The massive Cineworld has closed and the restaurants and bars that were destined to open in the adjoining development never really happened- fully half the units have been empty since it was completed. Very few shops survive in the town longer than 6 months, unless it's fast food, Turkish barber or nail bar. Even the charity shops are moving out. We have no idea what a museum or art gallery is. Still, the empty shops do give the homeless some doorways to sleep in.
Visit Loughborough every so often to ride on the steam railway. But the town always seems a bit disappointing, apart from the university.
London might be paradise to you southern softies, but get out of your bubble and head up the M1 and you'll find a different world. Loughborough. Got the university and not much else . Any bit of land/ empty building finds itself turned into student accommodation or bulldozed for student accommodation. The Carillion Shopping Centre has been the focal point of the Town Centre as long as I can remember. It's currently empty, shops having had all their tenancies terminated so the owners can knock it down and build an eight floor student accommodation block, right slap bang in the middle of the town. There's a planning wrangle currently going on. The massive Cineworld has closed and the restaurants and bars that were destined to open in the adjoining development never really happened- fully half the units have been empty since it was completed. Very few shops survive in the town longer than 6 months, unless it's fast food, Turkish barber or nail bar. Even the charity shops are moving out. We have no idea what a museum or art gallery is. Still, the empty shops do give the homeless some doorways to sleep in.
Tell me about it. Somebody took the little city I grew up in and loved and replaced it with a sweaty turd. Norwich is dying on its arse. There's no Thursday night late shopping anymore, the two shopping centres are deserted and full of nonsense shops and phone screen repair shacks. The nightlife is non existent or violent. There's a big Primark and last year a massive Poundland opened. Grim. The last remaining treasures- the market and the lanes will no doubt get flattened soon enough.
Based on that I wonder how much correlation there is between "prefer/hate internet shopping" and "my area is getting better/worse to live".
Probably worse than that. We want to use internet shopping ourselves, because it's cheaper and more convenient. The bookshop on Gosport High Street was a good thing to have, but it was a bit rubbish. But we also want physical shops to be available- partly because we really want them when we want them (think back to March 2020), but also because shops make a town.
People are messed up.
We recently opened a new, bigger bookshop.
Focus is on the experience. The shop sales themselves will probably just about cover the day to day running costs it incurs this year, but the experience we provide is of huge value to our mostly online/mail-order business.
The only shops that have opened in our prosperous, historic, near-seaside market town this year are those that also market experiences, offer advice, or have alternative streams of income.
If you just sell a widget, you're always going to be undercut by the internet.
There is no need for an online sales tax; business just needs to adapt to the realities. You need to provide value add in a retail setting, or you die.
When I was a fund manager, I used to say that there were only two retail business models that would survive: shopping as an experience, and shopping as a convenience. If you aren't one ot the other, you are going to be in big trouble.
I love history and reading about history. I've just started Dominic Sandbrook's "Who dares wins", about the history of Britain in the years 1979-1982 (essentially Maggie's first three years). Its starts with a stark depiction of the UK in terminal decline - nothing works, the nation is getting poorer, hotels are terrible, with rude staff and poor service (Fawlty Tower's is regarded as not that far from reality) and so on. Strikingly it records the New York Times laying into the UK from afar.
Its all so strikingly reminiscent of current times. What's interesting is when you move beyond the doomsayers, as Sandbrook does, it wasn't actually that bad. Were people better off in 1980 than in 1960? Undoubtedly. They had better houses, central heating, TV's , more stuff in general. And yet the air of decline was all around. Sandbrook points out that the real mallaise for Britain was that it was the first major industrial economy to start to move away from the traditional industries (coal, steel etc) to services, and so it looked like the 'sick man of Europe' mainly because it was the first country to undergo this process, not through an inherent problem.
The opening chapter resonates with me. We have so many people claiming national decline, and saying how awful it is, when at the same time arguably life ahs never been better for most people. Who among you would rather be living in the 80's again? Really?
One wonders what the future will bring. AI is clearly a challenge to many ways of earning a living. How far can it go? Will there be jobs in the future? How then does a society allocate wealth? How do you generate wealth?
Lots of questions, few answers. One thing I will add - interest in studying at University doesn't seem to be declining - we have seen record interest at our recent two Open Days. The University apocalypse has not yet started.
It will. If you think about it, it is inevitable
Some big wig in the Spectator is predicting that 80% of universities will shut within 10 years. That seems hyperbolic to me, but the direction is clear
Well, that would release a hell of a lot of modern studio flats onto the market, as good affordable housing. Subject to government changing the regulations to allow non-students to live in places that small.
(Are student flats counted in housebuilding stats? They're too small for normal habitation by law so maybe not...)
Chatted with the site surveyor of some student accommodation in West London, a while back. He was pretty open that, when you looked at soil stacks etc, the plan was obviously to build in conversion to "normal" flats. So a few non structural walls go, change the kitchen and bathrooms etc but the building itself is ready for it.
He reckoned that the idea was that the student gentrify the locality, while paying off the original paper on the building. Then covert and sell. And use part of the money to build new student accommodation, not far away, in another dodgy bit.
Sounds like a good thing. Why wouldn't that be something to be open about?
Student accommodation is a way round the planning laws requiring x amount of affordable housing.
IIRC, converting it for full domestic doesn’t trigger those rules.
Those laws should be abolished anyway.
All new housing improves affordability. All construction improves supply and affordability is supply versus demand.
Yes. Requiring a proportion of a development to be "affordable" is displacement activity from tackling the core problem of a mismatch between demand and supply.
But if you don't ensure a proportion of affordable housing in developments, you get a geographical distribution of affordability, resulting in a Paris rather than what has been familiar in London of greater social mixing in areas.
I would argue that the area of Central London where my apartment is (Shaftesbury Avenue) has gotten worse. We're right by Forbidden Planet, and the number of homeless drug addicts on the street has dramatically increased in the post Covid period.
I used to go up Tottenham Court Road way quite a bit and that was a very grim area in the late 80s through to much of the 90s. Whenever I read these "London is done" stories I always think that they can't remember just how bad it was before.
I came to london in the 80s. It was much worse than it is now almost everywhere. So this is a straw man
I was honestly asking opinions on Fraser Nelson’s tweet that “london is a better city than it was ten years ago”
Because most of my friends would disagree with this and the rest would shrug and say “no better no worse”
For me it is exactly this last decade where it has declined (not compared to the 1980s when it was totally on its arse)
However there are PBers who genuinely believe london is better, like Fraser, and that’s interesting to hear
Do you think London had more character, atmosphere, etc in the 80s compared to now?
I’m wary of saying Yes because I was 21 in the 1980s! And a lot of things are more fun when you’re 21
Overall, in my very subjective opinion london improved as a city - in some ways, dramatically - up until 2010 or so - then it plateaued; then it began a slide from about 2015 which was very gentle but may now be accelerating
Recent migration patterns have been bad for London and it is not good that native Brits are being replaced
Hopefully if property prices do collapse that might mean ordinary Brits can reclaim their capital city. So that’s one upside
That puts Peak London in the early 2010s. If I were making a popular history documentary, narrowing that down to 2012 would be trite, lazy... and probably accurate enough. Real improvements (cleaner air, King's Cross, Elizabeth Line) alongside perceptions of things getting grottier. Not even exciting edginess (which never did anything for me, but I'm sure some pine for).
The difficult thing to process is that, although "we" didn't vote for this, we probably did vote (with our wallets and our ballots) for things that were pretty likely to lead to something like this. See also the messed-up housing market. We expect developers to provide below-market housing because we aren't willing to pay for it honestly though taxes.
London is a big place. Some parts of it, eg the corner I live in, are probably as good as they have ever been, and are still on an upwards trajectory.
By the way I’d define hyper-central quite narrowly, and place KX, Farringdon, Clerkenwell, Marylebone, Pimlico and the square mile outside it. Those are merely “central”
The actual City of London not in hyper-central London? Yes, if you take the point of view of the tourist. The places they might ideally want to stay and search on booking.com, before accepting they’ll need to be a small tube journey from the sites. Those extend only over a rectangle from roughly Marble Arch to Westminster Abbey to Covent Garden to Russell Square.
You’ve just defined the city of Westminster - the City of London is the square mile.
London might be paradise to you southern softies, but get out of your bubble and head up the M1 and you'll find a different world. Loughborough. Got the university and not much else . Any bit of land/ empty building finds itself turned into student accommodation or bulldozed for student accommodation. The Carillion Shopping Centre has been the focal point of the Town Centre as long as I can remember. It's currently empty, shops having had all their tenancies terminated so the owners can knock it down and build an eight floor student accommodation block, right slap bang in the middle of the town. There's a planning wrangle currently going on. The massive Cineworld has closed and the restaurants and bars that were destined to open in the adjoining development never really happened- fully half the units have been empty since it was completed. Very few shops survive in the town longer than 6 months, unless it's fast food, Turkish barber or nail bar. Even the charity shops are moving out. We have no idea what a museum or art gallery is. Still, the empty shops do give the homeless some doorways to sleep in.
Tell me about it. Somebody took the little city I grew up in and loved and replaced it with a sweaty turd. Norwich is dying on its arse. There's no Thursday night late shopping anymore, the two shopping centres are deserted and full of nonsense shops and phone screen repair shacks. The nightlife is non existent or violent. There's a big Primark and last year a massive Poundland opened. Grim. The last remaining treasures- the market and the lanes will no doubt get flattened soon enough.
Based on that I wonder how much correlation there is between "prefer/hate internet shopping" and "my area is getting better/worse to live".
The problem is that the councils etc haven't worked out that internet shopping is here to stay. Physical shops are simply worth a lot less, in many many places.
Nor, indeed, have landlords...
Worth saying that Business Rates will over time reflect rents.
Decrease rents and business rates drop, keep rents high and it’s hard to justify business rates being reduced because the models don’t allow it
What do PBers think? Is London better or worse than it was 10 years ago? Fraser Nelson cites several stats that back up his point. Cleaner air, less crime
And yet I don’t know a single person of any age that agrees with him. At most they might say it’s stagnant, no change - the majority would say worse
So what’s going on?
"And yet I don’t know a single person of any age that agrees with him."
That's probably because of the people you associate with. They're either other right-wing nutcases, or sane people who just nod politely as they think: "who is this ranting nutter? I'd better just agree..."
That's a thing about conversations: they can be directed quite easily, especially if people have not got firm views on the matter.
I live in NW1. Have you ever been to NW1, or indeed north London? Most of my friends in London are left wing - yet they all feel the city has gone down hill
My kids think this. Everyone thinks this
Which handily shows the problem is you.
Believing that some things about London haven't got worse recently is a faith. It's not based on real life.
That's not what he's saying, though. He is saying *everyone* thinks the same as him. It's bullshit.
I think the village I live in is a very nice place to live. I'd give it 8.5 out of 10. Not perfect, but pleasant. I've just been to the dentist; a mile walk there along a quietish road with wide pavements, and a mile walk back through a country park. If I talk to people about the village, they agree it's a nice place to live. Perhaps because I'm positive about it.
But I'm not so braindead stupid as to think that everyone feels the same way. Occasionally on a village FB group someone will say: "I'm thinking of moving to the village. What is it like?" The responses are generally "It's great!". But you also get a few: "It's a hellhole; crime is everywhere and the kids are out of control!!!!!"
If you up to people and says: "Isn't this place an absolute hellhole compared to ten years ago, eh?", you'll get more people saying that it's a hellhole than if you say "Isn't this place lovely?"
Main complaint here is the fact that there aren't as many pubs as Once Upon a Time.
There were a lot in the dim and distant, though!
On the other hand, if like me you like specialist craft beer and/or real ale pubs, London is much better than it used to be. There has been a bit of a clearing-out of small breweries and hence taprooms, but that is a national thing, and you can still do a Bermondsey Beer Mile crawl.
However I go into London much less often than I used to. A period of rail engineering work was followed by Covid was followed by train strikes and it just wasn't worth the effort. They have only recently reinstated a late enough service to make it possible to go to a midweek gig and get home without missing the encore
Sadly I can't go to London now, unless it's to a specific, and car-accessible, location. However we've a wine bar recently opened locally which I think does craft beer.
Which I'm going to try one of these days, when I can get up courage to try their steps with my walking aid.
Unfortunately what your local wine bar might sell is brands like Beavertown which have been bought out by the multinationals, dumbed down, and no longer really count as Craft. But still admittedly a much better product than John Smith's Smooth of course.
I could be wrong... but there are loads of gastropubs out there that pride themselves on their wine list, but expect their beer drinking clients to be happy with Doom Bar. Often it's the terms of the pub lease of course but wine people often really don't seem to understand beer
I've said it before - there are two types of beer drinker. Confronted with a choice of say six local ales and Green King IPA, they will either go "oh great, I'll have a Green King IPA" or they will go "great, they have some local ales I can try". There is a reason why so many highstreets are identical, why McDonalds is so popular and why Green King IPA is everywhere - an awful lot of people like what they know.
Happily there are people who like new things too. I'm not sure, but I suspect PB has a lot more of the latter than the former.
I love history and reading about history. I've just started Dominic Sandbrook's "Who dares wins", about the history of Britain in the years 1979-1982 (essentially Maggie's first three years). Its starts with a stark depiction of the UK in terminal decline - nothing works, the nation is getting poorer, hotels are terrible, with rude staff and poor service (Fawlty Tower's is regarded as not that far from reality) and so on. Strikingly it records the New York Times laying into the UK from afar.
Its all so strikingly reminiscent of current times. What's interesting is when you move beyond the doomsayers, as Sandbrook does, it wasn't actually that bad. Were people better off in 1980 than in 1960? Undoubtedly. They had better houses, central heating, TV's , more stuff in general. And yet the air of decline was all around. Sandbrook points out that the real mallaise for Britain was that it was the first major industrial economy to start to move away from the traditional industries (coal, steel etc) to services, and so it looked like the 'sick man of Europe' mainly because it was the first country to undergo this process, not through an inherent problem.
The opening chapter resonates with me. We have so many people claiming national decline, and saying how awful it is, when at the same time arguably life ahs never been better for most people. Who among you would rather be living in the 80's again? Really?
One wonders what the future will bring. AI is clearly a challenge to many ways of earning a living. How far can it go? Will there be jobs in the future? How then does a society allocate wealth? How do you generate wealth?
Lots of questions, few answers. One thing I will add - interest in studying at University doesn't seem to be declining - we have seen record interest at our recent two Open Days. The University apocalypse has not yet started.
It will. If you think about it, it is inevitable
Some big wig in the Spectator is predicting that 80% of universities will shut within 10 years. That seems hyperbolic to me, but the direction is clear
Well, that would release a hell of a lot of modern studio flats onto the market, as good affordable housing. Subject to government changing the regulations to allow non-students to live in places that small.
(Are student flats counted in housebuilding stats? They're too small for normal habitation by law so maybe not...)
Chatted with the site surveyor of some student accommodation in West London, a while back. He was pretty open that, when you looked at soil stacks etc, the plan was obviously to build in conversion to "normal" flats. So a few non structural walls go, change the kitchen and bathrooms etc but the building itself is ready for it.
He reckoned that the idea was that the student gentrify the locality, while paying off the original paper on the building. Then covert and sell. And use part of the money to build new student accommodation, not far away, in another dodgy bit.
Sounds like a good thing. Why wouldn't that be something to be open about?
Student accommodation is a way round the planning laws requiring x amount of affordable housing.
IIRC, converting it for full domestic doesn’t trigger those rules.
Those laws should be abolished anyway.
All new housing improves affordability. All construction improves supply and affordability is supply versus demand.
Yes. Requiring a proportion of a development to be "affordable" is displacement activity from tackling the core problem of a mismatch between demand and supply.
But if you don't ensure a proportion of affordable housing in developments, you get a geographical distribution of affordability, resulting in a Paris rather than what has been familiar in London of greater social mixing in areas.
That was achieved in London by councils building homes for social renting - which I think is likely the only way Britain is going build enough homes to bring prices down.
What do PBers think? Is London better or worse than it was 10 years ago? Fraser Nelson cites several stats that back up his point. Cleaner air, less crime
And yet I don’t know a single person of any age that agrees with him. At most they might say it’s stagnant, no change - the majority would say worse
So what’s going on?
"And yet I don’t know a single person of any age that agrees with him."
That's probably because of the people you associate with. They're either other right-wing nutcases, or sane people who just nod politely as they think: "who is this ranting nutter? I'd better just agree..."
That's a thing about conversations: they can be directed quite easily, especially if people have not got firm views on the matter.
I live in NW1. Have you ever been to NW1, or indeed north London? Most of my friends in London are left wing - yet they all feel the city has gone down hill
My kids think this. Everyone thinks this
Which handily shows the problem is you.
Believing that some things about London haven't got worse recently is a faith. It's not based on real life.
That's not what he's saying, though. He is saying *everyone* thinks the same as him. It's bullshit.
I think the village I live in is a very nice place to live. I'd give it 8.5 out of 10. Not perfect, but pleasant. I've just been to the dentist; a mile walk there along a quietish road with wide pavements, and a mile walk back through a country park. If I talk to people about the village, they agree it's a nice place to live. Perhaps because I'm positive about it.
But I'm not so braindead stupid as to think that everyone feels the same way. Occasionally on a village FB group someone will say: "I'm thinking of moving to the village. What is it like?" The responses are generally "It's great!". But you also get a few: "It's a hellhole; crime is everywhere and the kids are out of control!!!!!"
If you up to people and says: "Isn't this place an absolute hellhole compared to ten years ago, eh?", you'll get more people saying that it's a hellhole than if you say "Isn't this place lovely?"
Main complaint here is the fact that there aren't as many pubs as Once Upon a Time.
There were a lot in the dim and distant, though!
On the other hand, if like me you like specialist craft beer and/or real ale pubs, London is much better than it used to be. There has been a bit of a clearing-out of small breweries and hence taprooms, but that is a national thing, and you can still do a Bermondsey Beer Mile crawl.
However I go into London much less often than I used to. A period of rail engineering work was followed by Covid was followed by train strikes and it just wasn't worth the effort. They have only recently reinstated a late enough service to make it possible to go to a midweek gig and get home without missing the encore
Sadly I can't go to London now, unless it's to a specific, and car-accessible, location. However we've a wine bar recently opened locally which I think does craft beer.
Which I'm going to try one of these days, when I can get up courage to try their steps with my walking aid.
Unfortunately what your local wine bar might sell is brands like Beavertown which have been bought out by the multinationals, dumbed down, and no longer really count as Craft. But still admittedly a much better product than John Smith's Smooth of course.
I could be wrong... but there are loads of gastropubs out there that pride themselves on their wine list, but expect their beer drinking clients to be happy with Doom Bar. Often it's the terms of the pub lease of course but wine people often really don't seem to understand beer
I would argue that the area of Central London where my apartment is (Shaftesbury Avenue) has gotten worse. We're right by Forbidden Planet, and the number of homeless drug addicts on the street has dramatically increased in the post Covid period.
I used to go up Tottenham Court Road way quite a bit and that was a very grim area in the late 80s through to much of the 90s. Whenever I read these "London is done" stories I always think that they can't remember just how bad it was before.
I came to london in the 80s. It was much worse than it is now almost everywhere. So this is a straw man
I was honestly asking opinions on Fraser Nelson’s tweet that “london is a better city than it was ten years ago”
Because most of my friends would disagree with this and the rest would shrug and say “no better no worse”
For me it is exactly this last decade where it has declined (not compared to the 1980s when it was totally on its arse)
However there are PBers who genuinely believe london is better, like Fraser, and that’s interesting to hear
Do you think London had more character, atmosphere, etc in the 80s compared to now?
I’m wary of saying Yes because I was 21 in the 1980s! And a lot of things are more fun when you’re 21
Overall, in my very subjective opinion london improved as a city - in some ways, dramatically - up until 2010 or so - then it plateaued; then it began a slide from about 2015 which was very gentle but may now be accelerating
Recent migration patterns have been bad for London and it is not good that native Brits are being replaced
Hopefully if property prices do collapse that might mean ordinary Brits can reclaim their capital city. So that’s one upside
That puts Peak London in the early 2010s. If I were making a popular history documentary, narrowing that down to 2012 would be trite, lazy... and probably accurate enough. Real improvements (cleaner air, King's Cross, Elizabeth Line) alongside perceptions of things getting grottier. Not even exciting edginess (which never did anything for me, but I'm sure some pine for).
The difficult thing to process is that, although "we" didn't vote for this, we probably did vote (with our wallets and our ballots) for things that were pretty likely to lead to something like this. See also the messed-up housing market. We expect developers to provide below-market housing because we aren't willing to pay for it honestly though taxes.
London is a big place. Some parts of it, eg the corner I live in, are probably as good as they have ever been, and are still on an upwards trajectory.
Indeed. Some parts of the centre of London, like Leicester square, have gone a bit stale, for instance. Other areas are thriving.
What do PBers think? Is London better or worse than it was 10 years ago? Fraser Nelson cites several stats that back up his point. Cleaner air, less crime
And yet I don’t know a single person of any age that agrees with him. At most they might say it’s stagnant, no change - the majority would say worse
So what’s going on?
"And yet I don’t know a single person of any age that agrees with him."
That's probably because of the people you associate with. They're either other right-wing nutcases, or sane people who just nod politely as they think: "who is this ranting nutter? I'd better just agree..."
That's a thing about conversations: they can be directed quite easily, especially if people have not got firm views on the matter.
I live in NW1. Have you ever been to NW1, or indeed north London? Most of my friends in London are left wing - yet they all feel the city has gone down hill
My kids think this. Everyone thinks this
Which handily shows the problem is you.
Believing that some things about London haven't got worse recently is a faith. It's not based on real life.
That's not what he's saying, though. He is saying *everyone* thinks the same as him. It's bullshit.
I think the village I live in is a very nice place to live. I'd give it 8.5 out of 10. Not perfect, but pleasant. I've just been to the dentist; a mile walk there along a quietish road with wide pavements, and a mile walk back through a country park. If I talk to people about the village, they agree it's a nice place to live. Perhaps because I'm positive about it.
But I'm not so braindead stupid as to think that everyone feels the same way. Occasionally on a village FB group someone will say: "I'm thinking of moving to the village. What is it like?" The responses are generally "It's great!". But you also get a few: "It's a hellhole; crime is everywhere and the kids are out of control!!!!!"
If you up to people and says: "Isn't this place an absolute hellhole compared to ten years ago, eh?", you'll get more people saying that it's a hellhole than if you say "Isn't this place lovely?"
Main complaint here is the fact that there aren't as many pubs as Once Upon a Time.
There were a lot in the dim and distant, though!
On the other hand, if like me you like specialist craft beer and/or real ale pubs, London is much better than it used to be. There has been a bit of a clearing-out of small breweries and hence taprooms, but that is a national thing, and you can still do a Bermondsey Beer Mile crawl.
However I go into London much less often than I used to. A period of rail engineering work was followed by Covid was followed by train strikes and it just wasn't worth the effort. They have only recently reinstated a late enough service to make it possible to go to a midweek gig and get home without missing the encore
Sadly I can't go to London now, unless it's to a specific, and car-accessible, location. However we've a wine bar recently opened locally which I think does craft beer.
Which I'm going to try one of these days, when I can get up courage to try their steps with my walking aid.
Unfortunately what your local wine bar might sell is brands like Beavertown which have been bought out by the multinationals, dumbed down, and no longer really count as Craft. But still admittedly a much better product than John Smith's Smooth of course.
I could be wrong... but there are loads of gastropubs out there that pride themselves on their wine list, but expect their beer drinking clients to be happy with Doom Bar. Often it's the terms of the pub lease of course but wine people often really don't seem to understand beer
I know what you mean. We have a couple of local breweries, though, which make very acceptable beers, and annually our cricket club does a festival with plenty of small local makers involved.
London may be falling. But here’s some actual good news (Telegraph)
“GPs to roll out weight-loss jabs to 250,000 people Almost a quarter of million people across England will be prescribed Mounjaro on NHS over next three years”
But why stop at the extremely obese? Give it to all obese or heavily overweight people. It will do more for the NHS than any other single measure as so many ailments are linked to weight
What do PBers think? Is London better or worse than it was 10 years ago? Fraser Nelson cites several stats that back up his point. Cleaner air, less crime
And yet I don’t know a single person of any age that agrees with him. At most they might say it’s stagnant, no change - the majority would say worse
So what’s going on?
"And yet I don’t know a single person of any age that agrees with him."
That's probably because of the people you associate with. They're either other right-wing nutcases, or sane people who just nod politely as they think: "who is this ranting nutter? I'd better just agree..."
That's a thing about conversations: they can be directed quite easily, especially if people have not got firm views on the matter.
I live in NW1. Have you ever been to NW1, or indeed north London? Most of my friends in London are left wing - yet they all feel the city has gone down hill
My kids think this. Everyone thinks this
Which handily shows the problem is you.
Believing that some things about London haven't got worse recently is a faith. It's not based on real life.
That's not what he's saying, though. He is saying *everyone* thinks the same as him. It's bullshit.
I think the village I live in is a very nice place to live. I'd give it 8.5 out of 10. Not perfect, but pleasant. I've just been to the dentist; a mile walk there along a quietish road with wide pavements, and a mile walk back through a country park. If I talk to people about the village, they agree it's a nice place to live. Perhaps because I'm positive about it.
But I'm not so braindead stupid as to think that everyone feels the same way. Occasionally on a village FB group someone will say: "I'm thinking of moving to the village. What is it like?" The responses are generally "It's great!". But you also get a few: "It's a hellhole; crime is everywhere and the kids are out of control!!!!!"
If you up to people and says: "Isn't this place an absolute hellhole compared to ten years ago, eh?", you'll get more people saying that it's a hellhole than if you say "Isn't this place lovely?"
Main complaint here is the fact that there aren't as many pubs as Once Upon a Time.
There were a lot in the dim and distant, though!
On the other hand, if like me you like specialist craft beer and/or real ale pubs, London is much better than it used to be. There has been a bit of a clearing-out of small breweries and hence taprooms, but that is a national thing, and you can still do a Bermondsey Beer Mile crawl.
However I go into London much less often than I used to. A period of rail engineering work was followed by Covid was followed by train strikes and it just wasn't worth the effort. They have only recently reinstated a late enough service to make it possible to go to a midweek gig and get home without missing the encore
Sadly I can't go to London now, unless it's to a specific, and car-accessible, location. However we've a wine bar recently opened locally which I think does craft beer.
Which I'm going to try one of these days, when I can get up courage to try their steps with my walking aid.
Unfortunately what your local wine bar might sell is brands like Beavertown which have been bought out by the multinationals, dumbed down, and no longer really count as Craft. But still admittedly a much better product than John Smith's Smooth of course.
I could be wrong... but there are loads of gastropubs out there that pride themselves on their wine list, but expect their beer drinking clients to be happy with Doom Bar. Often it's the terms of the pub lease of course but wine people often really don't seem to understand beer
Could be worse, last Friday due to driving I was sat on a beach on the Lizard drinking Doom Bar zero.
Which is actually made by Cameron’s in Hartlepool.
Upside it tastes vaguely like beer but you can’t claim it’s a local beer when it’s made 20 miles further away than where I live and home is 8 hours drive from where I was
London peaked in the late 00s and early 10s, it's been downhill since then. I say that as an almost lifetime resident and having lived in North, East and West London. Since about 2015/2016 London has become grimy, the streets aren't clean, you get public transport dickheads playing their music for everyone to hear or having extremely loud conversations that no one wants to listen to. Muggings, stabbings and other crime against the person have been getting worse since then, home burglary and car theft are now endemic and seemingly unstoppable (my house is literally a fortress with security systems, CCTV, sensor lights, window locks, auto locking door systems etc...). The endless activists and protestors shitting up the centre is becoming wearisome, especially given that they will make precisely zero difference to whatever it is they're campaigning against.
I've finally reached the point at almost 38 years where I'm done with London. I'm sick of the mayor constantly jumping on whatever nonsense bandwagon, I'm sick of the Met prioritising online "crime" because it's easy for them to make arrests, I'm sick of having insanely high council tax and shit roads in return.
If I were an investor, I'd be selling my London assets over the next few years. It's only going to get worse as the city becomes more transient and people with historic links to the city continue to leave for the home counties or overseas. My parents are doing the unthinkable and putting their house up for sale and moving out to Hertfordshire. My dad has lived in London for 63 of his 70 years, he's seen the city at it's worst with skinheads running around beating up brown and black people, he's seen decades of development and even he's fed up. I don't think this is uncommon either. Middle class flight from London is a very real, very big problem and the mayor and the police are directly responsible.
What do PBers think? Is London better or worse than it was 10 years ago? Fraser Nelson cites several stats that back up his point. Cleaner air, less crime
And yet I don’t know a single person of any age that agrees with him. At most they might say it’s stagnant, no change - the majority would say worse
So what’s going on?
"And yet I don’t know a single person of any age that agrees with him."
That's probably because of the people you associate with. They're either other right-wing nutcases, or sane people who just nod politely as they think: "who is this ranting nutter? I'd better just agree..."
That's a thing about conversations: they can be directed quite easily, especially if people have not got firm views on the matter.
I live in NW1. Have you ever been to NW1, or indeed north London? Most of my friends in London are left wing - yet they all feel the city has gone down hill
My kids think this. Everyone thinks this
Which handily shows the problem is you.
Believing that some things about London haven't got worse recently is a faith. It's not based on real life.
That's not what he's saying, though. He is saying *everyone* thinks the same as him. It's bullshit.
I think the village I live in is a very nice place to live. I'd give it 8.5 out of 10. Not perfect, but pleasant. I've just been to the dentist; a mile walk there along a quietish road with wide pavements, and a mile walk back through a country park. If I talk to people about the village, they agree it's a nice place to live. Perhaps because I'm positive about it.
But I'm not so braindead stupid as to think that everyone feels the same way. Occasionally on a village FB group someone will say: "I'm thinking of moving to the village. What is it like?" The responses are generally "It's great!". But you also get a few: "It's a hellhole; crime is everywhere and the kids are out of control!!!!!"
If you up to people and says: "Isn't this place an absolute hellhole compared to ten years ago, eh?", you'll get more people saying that it's a hellhole than if you say "Isn't this place lovely?"
Main complaint here is the fact that there aren't as many pubs as Once Upon a Time.
There were a lot in the dim and distant, though!
On the other hand, if like me you like specialist craft beer and/or real ale pubs, London is much better than it used to be. There has been a bit of a clearing-out of small breweries and hence taprooms, but that is a national thing, and you can still do a Bermondsey Beer Mile crawl.
However I go into London much less often than I used to. A period of rail engineering work was followed by Covid was followed by train strikes and it just wasn't worth the effort. They have only recently reinstated a late enough service to make it possible to go to a midweek gig and get home without missing the encore
Sadly I can't go to London now, unless it's to a specific, and car-accessible, location. However we've a wine bar recently opened locally which I think does craft beer.
Which I'm going to try one of these days, when I can get up courage to try their steps with my walking aid.
Unfortunately what your local wine bar might sell is brands like Beavertown which have been bought out by the multinationals, dumbed down, and no longer really count as Craft. But still admittedly a much better product than John Smith's Smooth of course.
I could be wrong... but there are loads of gastropubs out there that pride themselves on their wine list, but expect their beer drinking clients to be happy with Doom Bar. Often it's the terms of the pub lease of course but wine people often really don't seem to understand beer
I've said it before - there are two types of beer drinker. Confronted with a choice of say six local ales and Green King IPA, they will either go "oh great, I'll have a Green King IPA" or they will go "great, they have some local ales I can try". There is a reason why so many highstreets are identical, why McDonalds is so popular and why Green King IPA is everywhere - an awful lot of people like what they know.
Happily there are people who like new things too. I'm not sure, but I suspect PB has a lot more of the latter than the former.
That is of course quite right. There are lots of pubs that have a great changing range of beers, but keep a tap for say Courage Best because some of their customers will drink nothing else. And I am sure there are a lot of people who will consume anything they are told to by the marketing guys. But I am always surprised at people who run a gastropub with restaurant-style food and a wine list that *isn't* from Bookers who assume their beer-drinking clients are "commodity" drinkers. Maybe there are foodies out there who like to drink Doom Bar with a meal.
I would argue that the area of Central London where my apartment is (Shaftesbury Avenue) has gotten worse. We're right by Forbidden Planet, and the number of homeless drug addicts on the street has dramatically increased in the post Covid period.
I used to go up Tottenham Court Road way quite a bit and that was a very grim area in the late 80s through to much of the 90s. Whenever I read these "London is done" stories I always think that they can't remember just how bad it was before.
I came to london in the 80s. It was much worse than it is now almost everywhere. So this is a straw man
I was honestly asking opinions on Fraser Nelson’s tweet that “london is a better city than it was ten years ago”
Because most of my friends would disagree with this and the rest would shrug and say “no better no worse”
For me it is exactly this last decade where it has declined (not compared to the 1980s when it was totally on its arse)
However there are PBers who genuinely believe london is better, like Fraser, and that’s interesting to hear
Do you think London had more character, atmosphere, etc in the 80s compared to now?
I’m wary of saying Yes because I was 21 in the 1980s! And a lot of things are more fun when you’re 21
Overall, in my very subjective opinion london improved as a city - in some ways, dramatically - up until 2010 or so - then it plateaued; then it began a slide from about 2015 which was very gentle but may now be accelerating
Recent migration patterns have been bad for London and it is not good that native Brits are being replaced
Hopefully if property prices do collapse that might mean ordinary Brits can reclaim their capital city. So that’s one upside
That puts Peak London in the early 2010s. If I were making a popular history documentary, narrowing that down to 2012 would be trite, lazy... and probably accurate enough. Real improvements (cleaner air, King's Cross, Elizabeth Line) alongside perceptions of things getting grottier. Not even exciting edginess (which never did anything for me, but I'm sure some pine for).
The difficult thing to process is that, although "we" didn't vote for this, we probably did vote (with our wallets and our ballots) for things that were pretty likely to lead to something like this. See also the messed-up housing market. We expect developers to provide below-market housing because we aren't willing to pay for it honestly though taxes.
London is a big place. Some parts of it, eg the corner I live in, are probably as good as they have ever been, and are still on an upwards trajectory.
Indeed. Some parts of the centre of London, like Leicester square, have gone a bit stale, for instance. Other areas are thriving.
A lot of the action is in Zone 2-3 now, that is a process underway before Covid but accelerated by it. I go into the centre for work and the theatre, that's it. Food, drinking and dancing options are all better in SE14 and its environs.
London might be paradise to you southern softies, but get out of your bubble and head up the M1 and you'll find a different world. Loughborough. Got the university and not much else . Any bit of land/ empty building finds itself turned into student accommodation or bulldozed for student accommodation. The Carillion Shopping Centre has been the focal point of the Town Centre as long as I can remember. It's currently empty, shops having had all their tenancies terminated so the owners can knock it down and build an eight floor student accommodation block, right slap bang in the middle of the town. There's a planning wrangle currently going on. The massive Cineworld has closed and the restaurants and bars that were destined to open in the adjoining development never really happened- fully half the units have been empty since it was completed. Very few shops survive in the town longer than 6 months, unless it's fast food, Turkish barber or nail bar. Even the charity shops are moving out. We have no idea what a museum or art gallery is. Still, the empty shops do give the homeless some doorways to sleep in.
Tell me about it. Somebody took the little city I grew up in and loved and replaced it with a sweaty turd. Norwich is dying on its arse. There's no Thursday night late shopping anymore, the two shopping centres are deserted and full of nonsense shops and phone screen repair shacks. The nightlife is non existent or violent. There's a big Primark and last year a massive Poundland opened. Grim. The last remaining treasures- the market and the lanes will no doubt get flattened soon enough.
Based on that I wonder how much correlation there is between "prefer/hate internet shopping" and "my area is getting better/worse to live".
The problem is that the councils etc haven't worked out that internet shopping is here to stay. Physical shops are simply worth a lot less, in many many places.
Nor, indeed, have landlords...
In many cases, their lending arrangements with the banks don’t allow them to reduce rents…
By the way I’d define hyper-central quite narrowly, and place KX, Farringdon, Clerkenwell, Marylebone, Pimlico and the square mile outside it. Those are merely “central”
The actual City of London not in hyper-central London? Yes, if you take the point of view of the tourist. The places they might ideally want to stay and search on booking.com, before accepting they’ll need to be a small tube journey from the sites. Those extend only over a rectangle from roughly Marble Arch to Westminster Abbey to Covent Garden to Russell Square.
I think "hyper-central London" could be described as rectangle that contained Park Lane on its Westerly side, and Gower Street on its Easterly, with the Northern edge being Euston Road / Marylebone Road, and the Southern edge being The Mall / The Strand.
I love history and reading about history. I've just started Dominic Sandbrook's "Who dares wins", about the history of Britain in the years 1979-1982 (essentially Maggie's first three years). Its starts with a stark depiction of the UK in terminal decline - nothing works, the nation is getting poorer, hotels are terrible, with rude staff and poor service (Fawlty Tower's is regarded as not that far from reality) and so on. Strikingly it records the New York Times laying into the UK from afar.
Its all so strikingly reminiscent of current times. What's interesting is when you move beyond the doomsayers, as Sandbrook does, it wasn't actually that bad. Were people better off in 1980 than in 1960? Undoubtedly. They had better houses, central heating, TV's , more stuff in general. And yet the air of decline was all around. Sandbrook points out that the real mallaise for Britain was that it was the first major industrial economy to start to move away from the traditional industries (coal, steel etc) to services, and so it looked like the 'sick man of Europe' mainly because it was the first country to undergo this process, not through an inherent problem.
The opening chapter resonates with me. We have so many people claiming national decline, and saying how awful it is, when at the same time arguably life ahs never been better for most people. Who among you would rather be living in the 80's again? Really?
One wonders what the future will bring. AI is clearly a challenge to many ways of earning a living. How far can it go? Will there be jobs in the future? How then does a society allocate wealth? How do you generate wealth?
Lots of questions, few answers. One thing I will add - interest in studying at University doesn't seem to be declining - we have seen record interest at our recent two Open Days. The University apocalypse has not yet started.
It will. If you think about it, it is inevitable
Some big wig in the Spectator is predicting that 80% of universities will shut within 10 years. That seems hyperbolic to me, but the direction is clear
Well, that would release a hell of a lot of modern studio flats onto the market, as good affordable housing. Subject to government changing the regulations to allow non-students to live in places that small.
(Are student flats counted in housebuilding stats? They're too small for normal habitation by law so maybe not...)
Chatted with the site surveyor of some student accommodation in West London, a while back. He was pretty open that, when you looked at soil stacks etc, the plan was obviously to build in conversion to "normal" flats. So a few non structural walls go, change the kitchen and bathrooms etc but the building itself is ready for it.
He reckoned that the idea was that the student gentrify the locality, while paying off the original paper on the building. Then covert and sell. And use part of the money to build new student accommodation, not far away, in another dodgy bit.
Sounds like a good thing. Why wouldn't that be something to be open about?
Student accommodation is a way round the planning laws requiring x amount of affordable housing.
IIRC, converting it for full domestic doesn’t trigger those rules.
Those laws should be abolished anyway.
All new housing improves affordability. All construction improves supply and affordability is supply versus demand.
Yes. Requiring a proportion of a development to be "affordable" is displacement activity from tackling the core problem of a mismatch between demand and supply.
But if you don't ensure a proportion of affordable housing in developments, you get a geographical distribution of affordability, resulting in a Paris rather than what has been familiar in London of greater social mixing in areas.
That was achieved in London by councils building homes for social renting - which I think is likely the only way Britain is going build enough homes to bring prices down.
I am strongly in favour of councils building homes for social renting. It is not something that has been supported in recent decades. I note the LibDems favour it.
By the way I’d define hyper-central quite narrowly, and place KX, Farringdon, Clerkenwell, Marylebone, Pimlico and the square mile outside it. Those are merely “central”
The actual City of London not in hyper-central London? Yes, if you take the point of view of the tourist. The places they might ideally want to stay and search on booking.com, before accepting they’ll need to be a small tube journey from the sites. Those extend only over a rectangle from roughly Marble Arch to Westminster Abbey to Covent Garden to Russell Square.
I think "hyper-central London" could be described as rectangle that contained Park Lane on its Westerly side, and Gower Street on its Easterly, with the Northern edge being Euston Road / Marylebone Road, and the Southern edge being The Mall / The Strand.
Anyone who disagrees with me is wrong.
Isn't it anything with a C in the postcode? WC, EC and the newly minted NC?
I would argue that the area of Central London where my apartment is (Shaftesbury Avenue) has gotten worse. We're right by Forbidden Planet, and the number of homeless drug addicts on the street has dramatically increased in the post Covid period.
I used to go up Tottenham Court Road way quite a bit and that was a very grim area in the late 80s through to much of the 90s. Whenever I read these "London is done" stories I always think that they can't remember just how bad it was before.
This is why the question is impossible to answer. Tottenham Court Road is much cleaner and safer than it used to be but I never go there anymore because all of the electronics and audio shops are gone. I used to love walking up Tottenham Court Road looking in the windows and occasionally buying some interesting bit of outdated electronics that the shops still had stock of. Which of these two situations makes Tottenham Court Road 'better' is entirely subjective.
I used to buy new mobile phones on Tottenham Court Road, in the brief period before buying everything online.
If I was at leisure I used to do a shopping trip starting at the Waterstones in Gower Street (brilliant second hand section from all of the UCL academics), walking up Tottenham Court Road to look at the electronics, visit the second hand bookshops in Charing Cross and finish up with the weird shops in Cecil Court. There are still a couple of good bookshops in Charing Cross Road but they're being edged out by Korean shops and eateries.
I’m so old - and a UCL alumnus - I can remember when that Waterstone’s was a Dillion’s
That corner of London definitely had more “character” back then
Yes it did, I lived in London 1995-2002 and frequented that area. It was getting a bit seedy even then but the bookshops etc was great, there was a big map shop on Charing Cross Road I used to go to when travelling, can't remember the name.
Stuff changes. Until my 9th birthday (1963) I lived in Wandsworth. It wasn't posh. My parents rented a flat in a house. That house is now worth £5 - £10 million. A huge change.
In the late 70s early 80s my girlfriend rented a shared house in Leytonstone. A friend of mine's son is buying there and I was surprised at it used to be very rough. Apparently that isn't the case now at all. It is rather nice.
By the way I’d define hyper-central quite narrowly, and place KX, Farringdon, Clerkenwell, Marylebone, Pimlico and the square mile outside it. Those are merely “central”
The actual City of London not in hyper-central London? Yes, if you take the point of view of the tourist. The places they might ideally want to stay and search on booking.com, before accepting they’ll need to be a small tube journey from the sites. Those extend only over a rectangle from roughly Marble Arch to Westminster Abbey to Covent Garden to Russell Square.
I think "hyper-central London" could be described as rectangle that contained Park Lane on its Westerly side, and Gower Street on its Easterly, with the Northern edge being Euston Road / Marylebone Road, and the Southern edge being The Mall / The Strand.
Anyone who disagrees with me is wrong.
Isn't it anything with a C in the postcode? WC, EC and the newly minted NC?
The postal centre is probably a bit further east than most people would recognise as the centre of London.
I love history and reading about history. I've just started Dominic Sandbrook's "Who dares wins", about the history of Britain in the years 1979-1982 (essentially Maggie's first three years). Its starts with a stark depiction of the UK in terminal decline - nothing works, the nation is getting poorer, hotels are terrible, with rude staff and poor service (Fawlty Tower's is regarded as not that far from reality) and so on. Strikingly it records the New York Times laying into the UK from afar.
Its all so strikingly reminiscent of current times. What's interesting is when you move beyond the doomsayers, as Sandbrook does, it wasn't actually that bad. Were people better off in 1980 than in 1960? Undoubtedly. They had better houses, central heating, TV's , more stuff in general. And yet the air of decline was all around. Sandbrook points out that the real mallaise for Britain was that it was the first major industrial economy to start to move away from the traditional industries (coal, steel etc) to services, and so it looked like the 'sick man of Europe' mainly because it was the first country to undergo this process, not through an inherent problem.
The opening chapter resonates with me. We have so many people claiming national decline, and saying how awful it is, when at the same time arguably life ahs never been better for most people. Who among you would rather be living in the 80's again? Really?
One wonders what the future will bring. AI is clearly a challenge to many ways of earning a living. How far can it go? Will there be jobs in the future? How then does a society allocate wealth? How do you generate wealth?
Lots of questions, few answers. One thing I will add - interest in studying at University doesn't seem to be declining - we have seen record interest at our recent two Open Days. The University apocalypse has not yet started.
It will. If you think about it, it is inevitable
Some big wig in the Spectator is predicting that 80% of universities will shut within 10 years. That seems hyperbolic to me, but the direction is clear
Well, that would release a hell of a lot of modern studio flats onto the market, as good affordable housing. Subject to government changing the regulations to allow non-students to live in places that small.
(Are student flats counted in housebuilding stats? They're too small for normal habitation by law so maybe not...)
Chatted with the site surveyor of some student accommodation in West London, a while back. He was pretty open that, when you looked at soil stacks etc, the plan was obviously to build in conversion to "normal" flats. So a few non structural walls go, change the kitchen and bathrooms etc but the building itself is ready for it.
He reckoned that the idea was that the student gentrify the locality, while paying off the original paper on the building. Then covert and sell. And use part of the money to build new student accommodation, not far away, in another dodgy bit.
Sounds like a good thing. Why wouldn't that be something to be open about?
Student accommodation is a way round the planning laws requiring x amount of affordable housing.
IIRC, converting it for full domestic doesn’t trigger those rules.
Those laws should be abolished anyway.
All new housing improves affordability. All construction improves supply and affordability is supply versus demand.
Yes. Requiring a proportion of a development to be "affordable" is displacement activity from tackling the core problem of a mismatch between demand and supply.
But if you don't ensure a proportion of affordable housing in developments, you get a geographical distribution of affordability, resulting in a Paris rather than what has been familiar in London of greater social mixing in areas.
That was achieved in London by councils building homes for social renting - which I think is likely the only way Britain is going build enough homes to bring prices down.
I am strongly in favour of councils building homes for social renting. It is not something that has been supported in recent decades. I note the LibDems favour it.
I would point out that councils have often not dobe a great job with building social housing in the past - and anythig which has councillors spending large amounts of taxpayers money with a few large firms tends to be a magnet for corruption.
London peaked in the late 00s and early 10s, it's been downhill since then. I say that as an almost lifetime resident and having lived in North, East and West London. Since about 2015/2016 London has become grimy, the streets aren't clean, you get public transport dickheads playing their music for everyone to hear or having extremely loud conversations that no one wants to listen to. Muggings, stabbings and other crime against the person have been getting worse since then, home burglary and car theft are now endemic and seemingly unstoppable (my house is literally a fortress with security systems, CCTV, sensor lights, window locks, auto locking door systems etc...). The endless activists and protestors shitting up the centre is becoming wearisome, especially given that they will make precisely zero difference to whatever it is they're campaigning against.
I've finally reached the point at almost 38 years where I'm done with London. I'm sick of the mayor constantly jumping on whatever nonsense bandwagon, I'm sick of the Met prioritising online "crime" because it's easy for them to make arrests, I'm sick of having insanely high council tax and shit roads in return.
If I were an investor, I'd be selling my London assets over the next few years. It's only going to get worse as the city becomes more transient and people with historic links to the city continue to leave for the home counties or overseas. My parents are doing the unthinkable and putting their house up for sale and moving out to Hertfordshire. My dad has lived in London for 63 of his 70 years, he's seen the city at it's worst with skinheads running around beating up brown and black people, he's seen decades of development and even he's fed up. I don't think this is uncommon either. Middle class flight from London is a very real, very big problem and the mayor and the police are directly responsible.
We don’t need the rich! Let the selfish bastards leave!
Well, they are leaving now. And the drain risks becoming a terrible flood and then london property will implode - and the entire economy of the city will be upended with dire consequences for UK PLC
London might be paradise to you southern softies, but get out of your bubble and head up the M1 and you'll find a different world. Loughborough. Got the university and not much else . Any bit of land/ empty building finds itself turned into student accommodation or bulldozed for student accommodation. The Carillion Shopping Centre has been the focal point of the Town Centre as long as I can remember. It's currently empty, shops having had all their tenancies terminated so the owners can knock it down and build an eight floor student accommodation block, right slap bang in the middle of the town. There's a planning wrangle currently going on. The massive Cineworld has closed and the restaurants and bars that were destined to open in the adjoining development never really happened- fully half the units have been empty since it was completed. Very few shops survive in the town longer than 6 months, unless it's fast food, Turkish barber or nail bar. Even the charity shops are moving out. We have no idea what a museum or art gallery is. Still, the empty shops do give the homeless some doorways to sleep in.
Tell me about it. Somebody took the little city I grew up in and loved and replaced it with a sweaty turd. Norwich is dying on its arse. There's no Thursday night late shopping anymore, the two shopping centres are deserted and full of nonsense shops and phone screen repair shacks. The nightlife is non existent or violent. There's a big Primark and last year a massive Poundland opened. Grim. The last remaining treasures- the market and the lanes will no doubt get flattened soon enough.
Based on that I wonder how much correlation there is between "prefer/hate internet shopping" and "my area is getting better/worse to live".
The problem is that the councils etc haven't worked out that internet shopping is here to stay. Physical shops are simply worth a lot less, in many many places.
It isn't really councils is it, it's their pension fund owners not wanting to acknowledge the losses in value on their portfolio - that their provincial ex-WHSmith's isn't actually worth £50,000 a year rent.
I love history and reading about history. I've just started Dominic Sandbrook's "Who dares wins", about the history of Britain in the years 1979-1982 (essentially Maggie's first three years). Its starts with a stark depiction of the UK in terminal decline - nothing works, the nation is getting poorer, hotels are terrible, with rude staff and poor service (Fawlty Tower's is regarded as not that far from reality) and so on. Strikingly it records the New York Times laying into the UK from afar.
Its all so strikingly reminiscent of current times. What's interesting is when you move beyond the doomsayers, as Sandbrook does, it wasn't actually that bad. Were people better off in 1980 than in 1960? Undoubtedly. They had better houses, central heating, TV's , more stuff in general. And yet the air of decline was all around. Sandbrook points out that the real mallaise for Britain was that it was the first major industrial economy to start to move away from the traditional industries (coal, steel etc) to services, and so it looked like the 'sick man of Europe' mainly because it was the first country to undergo this process, not through an inherent problem.
The opening chapter resonates with me. We have so many people claiming national decline, and saying how awful it is, when at the same time arguably life ahs never been better for most people. Who among you would rather be living in the 80's again? Really?
One wonders what the future will bring. AI is clearly a challenge to many ways of earning a living. How far can it go? Will there be jobs in the future? How then does a society allocate wealth? How do you generate wealth?
Lots of questions, few answers. One thing I will add - interest in studying at University doesn't seem to be declining - we have seen record interest at our recent two Open Days. The University apocalypse has not yet started.
It will. If you think about it, it is inevitable
Some big wig in the Spectator is predicting that 80% of universities will shut within 10 years. That seems hyperbolic to me, but the direction is clear
Well, that would release a hell of a lot of modern studio flats onto the market, as good affordable housing. Subject to government changing the regulations to allow non-students to live in places that small.
(Are student flats counted in housebuilding stats? They're too small for normal habitation by law so maybe not...)
Chatted with the site surveyor of some student accommodation in West London, a while back. He was pretty open that, when you looked at soil stacks etc, the plan was obviously to build in conversion to "normal" flats. So a few non structural walls go, change the kitchen and bathrooms etc but the building itself is ready for it.
He reckoned that the idea was that the student gentrify the locality, while paying off the original paper on the building. Then covert and sell. And use part of the money to build new student accommodation, not far away, in another dodgy bit.
Sounds like a good thing. Why wouldn't that be something to be open about?
Student accommodation is a way round the planning laws requiring x amount of affordable housing.
IIRC, converting it for full domestic doesn’t trigger those rules.
Those laws should be abolished anyway.
All new housing improves affordability. All construction improves supply and affordability is supply versus demand.
Yes. Requiring a proportion of a development to be "affordable" is displacement activity from tackling the core problem of a mismatch between demand and supply.
But if you don't ensure a proportion of affordable housing in developments, you get a geographical distribution of affordability, resulting in a Paris rather than what has been familiar in London of greater social mixing in areas.
That was achieved in London by councils building homes for social renting - which I think is likely the only way Britain is going build enough homes to bring prices down.
I am strongly in favour of councils building homes for social renting. It is not something that has been supported in recent decades. I note the LibDems favour it.
I would point out that councils have often not dobe a great job with building social housing in the past - and anythig which has councillors spending large amounts of taxpayers money with a few large firms tends to be a magnet for corruption.
Not even that. If councils are operating social housing, the temptation to campaign on "vote for us to cut your rents" is too hard to resist. And, in the short term, you can get away with cutting rents by taking a maintainence minibreak. So councils did.
But in the real world, someone has to subsidise housing for at least some people. And the current model is almost certainly worse for everyone, except rentiers.
Really striking how even Reform imitate language of liberal consensus. Britain was built on attracting the brightest and the best!
It empirically wasn’t. Anglophone world meant Britain was a society built on *emigration*. Interesting that even insurgent right adopts US rhetoric.
That's an extremely simplistic view of how Britain "was built".
Presuming that means the period of industrial revolution and empire, then there was both enormous internal migration - from countryside to the new cities - and a very large influx of immigration from Ireland in the middle of the 19th Century. There were essentially no controls on immigration until the beginning of the 20th C.
Empirically, I think it's also been shown that there was a significantly higher incidence of entrepreneurship amongst the immigrant population than that of the native population.
That there was net migration during the 19th Century doesn't really capture the full dynamic, and trying to draw conclusions about the 21st C based on that (whichever side of the ideological divide you find yourself) is pretty silly.
London has only recently returned to its pre-WWII population size. Inner London saw a big decline in population from the 1930s to a nadir in the 1980s. It has risen since then, but remains below pre-WWII levels. People were "fleeing" London for the suburbs in the 1930s. Friends now aren't fleeing London, but are fleeing London property prices.
London peaked in the late 00s and early 10s, it's been downhill since then. I say that as an almost lifetime resident and having lived in North, East and West London. Since about 2015/2016 London has become grimy, the streets aren't clean, you get public transport dickheads playing their music for everyone to hear or having extremely loud conversations that no one wants to listen to. Muggings, stabbings and other crime against the person have been getting worse since then, home burglary and car theft are now endemic and seemingly unstoppable (my house is literally a fortress with security systems, CCTV, sensor lights, window locks, auto locking door systems etc...). The endless activists and protestors shitting up the centre is becoming wearisome, especially given that they will make precisely zero difference to whatever it is they're campaigning against.
I've finally reached the point at almost 38 years where I'm done with London. I'm sick of the mayor constantly jumping on whatever nonsense bandwagon, I'm sick of the Met prioritising online "crime" because it's easy for them to make arrests, I'm sick of having insanely high council tax and shit roads in return.
If I were an investor, I'd be selling my London assets over the next few years. It's only going to get worse as the city becomes more transient and people with historic links to the city continue to leave for the home counties or overseas. My parents are doing the unthinkable and putting their house up for sale and moving out to Hertfordshire. My dad has lived in London for 63 of his 70 years, he's seen the city at it's worst with skinheads running around beating up brown and black people, he's seen decades of development and even he's fed up. I don't think this is uncommon either. Middle class flight from London is a very real, very big problem and the mayor and the police are directly responsible.
We don’t need the rich! Let the selfish bastards leave!
Well, they are leaving now. And the drain risks becoming a terrible flood and then london property will implode - and the entire economy of the city will be upended with dire consequences for UK PLC
Remember I started predicting this some time ago
What I find really galling is that European countries saw the success of our non-doms system and replicated it just as Labour decided to shit it all up.
That's only half the issue though, the other half is that the middle wealthy, middle classes are beginning to realise that London isn't for them either. I don't think it's a white/not white thing either. Outside of a few Indian strongholds like Harrow, Pinner and Wembley there's the beginnings of an exodus of Indians either to those three areas or outside of London entirely up to Hertfordshire. One of my ex colleagues just bought a house in St Albans and she's been messaging my wife constantly to come up and have a tour so we move up there too. The train is leaving London, I think it might be time to board.
Really striking how even Reform imitate language of liberal consensus. Britain was built on attracting the brightest and the best!
It empirically wasn’t. Anglophone world meant Britain was a society built on *emigration*. Interesting that even insurgent right adopts US rhetoric.
That's an extremely simplistic view of how Britain "was built".
Presuming that means the period of industrial revolution and empire, then there was both enormous internal migration - from countryside to the new cities - and a very large influx of immigration from Ireland in the middle of the 19th Century. There were essentially no controls on immigration until the beginning of the 20th C.
Empirically, I think it's also been shown that there was a significantly higher incidence of entrepreneurship amongst the immigrant population than that of the native population.
That there was net migration during the 19th Century doesn't really capture the full dynamic, and trying to draw conclusions about the 21st C based on that (whichever side of the ideological divide you find yourself) is pretty silly.
You don't have to go back to the 19th century. Even post-war Britain had fairly consistent net emigration until the late 90s.
London has only recently returned to its pre-WWII population size. Inner London saw a big decline in population from the 1930s to a nadir in the 1980s. It has risen since then, but remains below pre-WWII levels. People were "fleeing" London for the suburbs in the 1930s. Friends now aren't fleeing London, but are fleeing London property prices.
This is wrong. The population today is well over its prewar peak of 8.6m. It’s now about 9-9.5m
I would argue that the area of Central London where my apartment is (Shaftesbury Avenue) has gotten worse. We're right by Forbidden Planet, and the number of homeless drug addicts on the street has dramatically increased in the post Covid period.
I used to go up Tottenham Court Road way quite a bit and that was a very grim area in the late 80s through to much of the 90s. Whenever I read these "London is done" stories I always think that they can't remember just how bad it was before.
This is why the question is impossible to answer. Tottenham Court Road is much cleaner and safer than it used to be but I never go there anymore because all of the electronics and audio shops are gone. I used to love walking up Tottenham Court Road looking in the windows and occasionally buying some interesting bit of outdated electronics that the shops still had stock of. Which of these two situations makes Tottenham Court Road 'better' is entirely subjective.
I used to buy new mobile phones on Tottenham Court Road, in the brief period before buying everything online.
If I was at leisure I used to do a shopping trip starting at the Waterstones in Gower Street (brilliant second hand section from all of the UCL academics), walking up Tottenham Court Road to look at the electronics, visit the second hand bookshops in Charing Cross and finish up with the weird shops in Cecil Court. There are still a couple of good bookshops in Charing Cross Road but they're being edged out by Korean shops and eateries.
I’m so old - and a UCL alumnus - I can remember when that Waterstone’s was a Dillion’s
That corner of London definitely had more “character” back then
Yes it did, I lived in London 1995-2002 and frequented that area. It was getting a bit seedy even then but the bookshops etc was great, there was a big map shop on Charing Cross Road I used to go to when travelling, can't remember the name.
Stuff changes. Until my 9th birthday I lived in Wandsworth. It wasn't posh. My parents rented a flat in a house. That house is now worth £5 - £10 million. A huge change.
In the late 70s early 80s my girlfriend rented a shared house in Leytonstone. A friend of mine's son is buying there and I was surprised at it used to be very rough. Apparently that isn't the case now at all. It is rather nice.
London is always changing. Some places are on the up. Others - once nice - have fallen victim to changing work or shopping patterns.
The trick is to avoid buying at the top (or selling at the bottom).
London has only recently returned to its pre-WWII population size. Inner London saw a big decline in population from the 1930s to a nadir in the 1980s. It has risen since then, but remains below pre-WWII levels. People were "fleeing" London for the suburbs in the 1930s. Friends now aren't fleeing London, but are fleeing London property prices.
This is wrong. The population today is well over its prewar peak of 8.6m. It’s now about 9-9.5m
Rule no 1 never accept the first quote from any insurer about anything. If they drop.the price to keep.you then they were ripping you off with the first quote.
Which, as a company in a free market, is pretty much their duty. For the market to work, the seller has got to pitch for as much as they think they can get away with and the buyer as little as possible. Then they are meant to haggle to get to something both sides are happy with.
But yes, it's a hassle, for some a very disagreeable hassle. I'd much rather not bother, and would happily pay quite a bit more to not do so.
(See also, utility contracts and salaries. High pay is often more about willingness to demand it as any intrinsic worth of the job or brilliance at it.)
The best compliment I ever received from a client was “you were very expensive but well worth it”.
I would argue that the area of Central London where my apartment is (Shaftesbury Avenue) has gotten worse. We're right by Forbidden Planet, and the number of homeless drug addicts on the street has dramatically increased in the post Covid period.
I used to go up Tottenham Court Road way quite a bit and that was a very grim area in the late 80s through to much of the 90s. Whenever I read these "London is done" stories I always think that they can't remember just how bad it was before.
This is why the question is impossible to answer. Tottenham Court Road is much cleaner and safer than it used to be but I never go there anymore because all of the electronics and audio shops are gone. I used to love walking up Tottenham Court Road looking in the windows and occasionally buying some interesting bit of outdated electronics that the shops still had stock of. Which of these two situations makes Tottenham Court Road 'better' is entirely subjective.
I used to buy new mobile phones on Tottenham Court Road, in the brief period before buying everything online.
If I was at leisure I used to do a shopping trip starting at the Waterstones in Gower Street (brilliant second hand section from all of the UCL academics), walking up Tottenham Court Road to look at the electronics, visit the second hand bookshops in Charing Cross and finish up with the weird shops in Cecil Court. There are still a couple of good bookshops in Charing Cross Road but they're being edged out by Korean shops and eateries.
I’m so old - and a UCL alumnus - I can remember when that Waterstone’s was a Dillion’s
That corner of London definitely had more “character” back then
Yes it did, I lived in London 1995-2002 and frequented that area. It was getting a bit seedy even then but the bookshops etc was great, there was a big map shop on Charing Cross Road I used to go to when travelling, can't remember the name.
Stuff changes. Until my 9th birthday I lived in Wandsworth. It wasn't posh. My parents rented a flat in a house. That house is now worth £5 - £10 million. A huge change.
In the late 70s early 80s my girlfriend rented a shared house in Leytonstone. A friend of mine's son is buying there and I was surprised at it used to be very rough. Apparently that isn't the case now at all. It is rather nice.
London is always changing. Some places are on the up. Others - once nice - have fallen victim to changing work or shopping patterns.
The trick is to avoid buying at the top (or selling at the bottom).
I really, really wish I had bought a flat in Farringdon in the 2010s. It still feels like a community, and in addition to being walkable to the centre AND the city, is now incredibly easy to get to both Gatwick and Heathrow.
By the way I’d define hyper-central quite narrowly, and place KX, Farringdon, Clerkenwell, Marylebone, Pimlico and the square mile outside it. Those are merely “central”
The actual City of London not in hyper-central London? Yes, if you take the point of view of the tourist. The places they might ideally want to stay and search on booking.com, before accepting they’ll need to be a small tube journey from the sites. Those extend only over a rectangle from roughly Marble Arch to Westminster Abbey to Covent Garden to Russell Square.
I think "hyper-central London" could be described as rectangle that contained Park Lane on its Westerly side, and Gower Street on its Easterly, with the Northern edge being Euston Road / Marylebone Road, and the Southern edge being The Mall / The Strand.
Anyone who disagrees with me is wrong.
I think your hyper central London is too far north and west. In reality there is nothing of interest north of Oxford Street except the place that is excluded by your placement of the easterly boundary - namely the British Museum. I think hyper central London should have Oxford Street as its northern boundary, with a northern redoubt taking in Bloomsbury and the British Museum. The eastern boundary is Southampton Row and Kingsway, to take in theatre land. I would extend it over Waterloo Bridge and along the South Bank as far as Tate Modern to the east (or at least the National Theatre) and Westminster Bridge to the west, then along Birdcage Walk to Victoria and then up to Park Lane. Hyper central London needs to include the Palace of Westminster, the British Museum and the London Eye.
I would argue that the area of Central London where my apartment is (Shaftesbury Avenue) has gotten worse. We're right by Forbidden Planet, and the number of homeless drug addicts on the street has dramatically increased in the post Covid period.
I used to go up Tottenham Court Road way quite a bit and that was a very grim area in the late 80s through to much of the 90s. Whenever I read these "London is done" stories I always think that they can't remember just how bad it was before.
This is why the question is impossible to answer. Tottenham Court Road is much cleaner and safer than it used to be but I never go there anymore because all of the electronics and audio shops are gone. I used to love walking up Tottenham Court Road looking in the windows and occasionally buying some interesting bit of outdated electronics that the shops still had stock of. Which of these two situations makes Tottenham Court Road 'better' is entirely subjective.
I used to buy new mobile phones on Tottenham Court Road, in the brief period before buying everything online.
If I was at leisure I used to do a shopping trip starting at the Waterstones in Gower Street (brilliant second hand section from all of the UCL academics), walking up Tottenham Court Road to look at the electronics, visit the second hand bookshops in Charing Cross and finish up with the weird shops in Cecil Court. There are still a couple of good bookshops in Charing Cross Road but they're being edged out by Korean shops and eateries.
I’m so old - and a UCL alumnus - I can remember when that Waterstone’s was a Dillion’s
That corner of London definitely had more “character” back then
Yes it did, I lived in London 1995-2002 and frequented that area. It was getting a bit seedy even then but the bookshops etc was great, there was a big map shop on Charing Cross Road I used to go to when travelling, can't remember the name.
Stuff changes. Until my 9th birthday I lived in Wandsworth. It wasn't posh. My parents rented a flat in a house. That house is now worth £5 - £10 million. A huge change.
In the late 70s early 80s my girlfriend rented a shared house in Leytonstone. A friend of mine's son is buying there and I was surprised at it used to be very rough. Apparently that isn't the case now at all. It is rather nice.
London is always changing. Some places are on the up. Others - once nice - have fallen victim to changing work or shopping patterns.
The trick is to avoid buying at the top (or selling at the bottom).
Agree that London is a city that's always been changing and always will, however, and it's a big one. If you've lived here for 20+ years you can see how it's generally been getting worse. The enshittification of the city has now reached alarming levels and the silent majority who work hard and just want to get on in life are being driven out by the mayor and high crime rates. London's domestic generational wealth is waving goodbye to the city and the mayor and police seem to be clueless as to how to stop it.
London is about the same as it ever was. Grimy, glittering, run down, regenerated. You were taking your life into your own hands if you wandered off the main drag around Portobello not so very long ago and wouldn't have dreamed going to the front line (ie All Saints), the very same place now where you can buy a one bedroom flat for £1m.
People have mentioned (@Leon as an incomer is always fixated on) Kings X but plenty of other places now - just look at the Hackney area over the past decade or two.
Isn't that "Network State" stuff? He builds a habitable entity out of the control of the local jurisdiction, and uses it as a money-laundering tax haven with few workers/much automation and uses it to interact with the autocracies. A very smart business move in the present climate.
Also, Alfie Moore - he of the It's a Fair Cop (excellent) podcast - told us that London is not in the top 6 murder areas in London. No.1 is Gloucestershire ffs.
Did I mention that London property is about to crater?
Right on cue
"London isn't as sought after as it was a decade ago" - some eye-catching quotes in this great piece on the "chronic decline" of the prime central London housing market, from my colleague Damian Shepherd“
I love history and reading about history. I've just started Dominic Sandbrook's "Who dares wins", about the history of Britain in the years 1979-1982 (essentially Maggie's first three years). Its starts with a stark depiction of the UK in terminal decline - nothing works, the nation is getting poorer, hotels are terrible, with rude staff and poor service (Fawlty Tower's is regarded as not that far from reality) and so on. Strikingly it records the New York Times laying into the UK from afar.
Its all so strikingly reminiscent of current times. What's interesting is when you move beyond the doomsayers, as Sandbrook does, it wasn't actually that bad. Were people better off in 1980 than in 1960? Undoubtedly. They had better houses, central heating, TV's , more stuff in general. And yet the air of decline was all around. Sandbrook points out that the real mallaise for Britain was that it was the first major industrial economy to start to move away from the traditional industries (coal, steel etc) to services, and so it looked like the 'sick man of Europe' mainly because it was the first country to undergo this process, not through an inherent problem.
The opening chapter resonates with me. We have so many people claiming national decline, and saying how awful it is, when at the same time arguably life ahs never been better for most people. Who among you would rather be living in the 80's again? Really?
One wonders what the future will bring. AI is clearly a challenge to many ways of earning a living. How far can it go? Will there be jobs in the future? How then does a society allocate wealth? How do you generate wealth?
Lots of questions, few answers. One thing I will add - interest in studying at University doesn't seem to be declining - we have seen record interest at our recent two Open Days. The University apocalypse has not yet started.
I think life was better in the 80s in some respects, not all.
70's, apart from the Winter of Discontent, were better than now, as were the early 80's. Not personally, especially later, but that was due to my poor decision making.
Don't beat yourself up over it. Nobody gets to their older years without scars
I would argue that the area of Central London where my apartment is (Shaftesbury Avenue) has gotten worse. We're right by Forbidden Planet, and the number of homeless drug addicts on the street has dramatically increased in the post Covid period.
I used to go up Tottenham Court Road way quite a bit and that was a very grim area in the late 80s through to much of the 90s. Whenever I read these "London is done" stories I always think that they can't remember just how bad it was before.
This is why the question is impossible to answer. Tottenham Court Road is much cleaner and safer than it used to be but I never go there anymore because all of the electronics and audio shops are gone. I used to love walking up Tottenham Court Road looking in the windows and occasionally buying some interesting bit of outdated electronics that the shops still had stock of. Which of these two situations makes Tottenham Court Road 'better' is entirely subjective.
I used to buy new mobile phones on Tottenham Court Road, in the brief period before buying everything online.
If I was at leisure I used to do a shopping trip starting at the Waterstones in Gower Street (brilliant second hand section from all of the UCL academics), walking up Tottenham Court Road to look at the electronics, visit the second hand bookshops in Charing Cross and finish up with the weird shops in Cecil Court. There are still a couple of good bookshops in Charing Cross Road but they're being edged out by Korean shops and eateries.
I’m so old - and a UCL alumnus - I can remember when that Waterstone’s was a Dillion’s
That corner of London definitely had more “character” back then
Yes it did, I lived in London 1995-2002 and frequented that area. It was getting a bit seedy even then but the bookshops etc was great, there was a big map shop on Charing Cross Road I used to go to when travelling, can't remember the name.
Stuff changes. Until my 9th birthday I lived in Wandsworth. It wasn't posh. My parents rented a flat in a house. That house is now worth £5 - £10 million. A huge change.
In the late 70s early 80s my girlfriend rented a shared house in Leytonstone. A friend of mine's son is buying there and I was surprised at it used to be very rough. Apparently that isn't the case now at all. It is rather nice.
London is always changing. Some places are on the up. Others - once nice - have fallen victim to changing work or shopping patterns.
The trick is to avoid buying at the top (or selling at the bottom).
Agree that London is a city that's always been changing and always will, however, and it's a big one. If you've lived here for 20+ years you can see how it's generally been getting worse. The enshittification of the city has now reached alarming levels and the silent majority who work hard and just want to get on in life are being driven out by the mayor and high crime rates. London's domestic generational wealth is waving goodbye to the city and the mayor and police seem to be clueless as to how to stop it.
I've liven in London on and off since 1997 and in our current neighbourhood for 14years and I'd say all the places I frequent are on the up still. I can't speak to places I don't go to. I think it's the same as it always has been, some are tired of life, and hence tired of London. They are free to leave, this isn't East Germany.
Also, Alfie Moore - he of the It's a Fair Cop (excellent) podcast - told us that London is not in the top 6 murder areas in London. No.1 is Gloucestershire ffs.
Would have thought London would definitely be in the top 6 murder areas in London. It’s a Fair Cop is excellent, one of the few things we might agree on.
I would argue that the area of Central London where my apartment is (Shaftesbury Avenue) has gotten worse. We're right by Forbidden Planet, and the number of homeless drug addicts on the street has dramatically increased in the post Covid period.
I used to go up Tottenham Court Road way quite a bit and that was a very grim area in the late 80s through to much of the 90s. Whenever I read these "London is done" stories I always think that they can't remember just how bad it was before.
This is why the question is impossible to answer. Tottenham Court Road is much cleaner and safer than it used to be but I never go there anymore because all of the electronics and audio shops are gone. I used to love walking up Tottenham Court Road looking in the windows and occasionally buying some interesting bit of outdated electronics that the shops still had stock of. Which of these two situations makes Tottenham Court Road 'better' is entirely subjective.
I used to buy new mobile phones on Tottenham Court Road, in the brief period before buying everything online.
If I was at leisure I used to do a shopping trip starting at the Waterstones in Gower Street (brilliant second hand section from all of the UCL academics), walking up Tottenham Court Road to look at the electronics, visit the second hand bookshops in Charing Cross and finish up with the weird shops in Cecil Court. There are still a couple of good bookshops in Charing Cross Road but they're being edged out by Korean shops and eateries.
I’m so old - and a UCL alumnus - I can remember when that Waterstone’s was a Dillion’s
That corner of London definitely had more “character” back then
Yes it did, I lived in London 1995-2002 and frequented that area. It was getting a bit seedy even then but the bookshops etc was great, there was a big map shop on Charing Cross Road I used to go to when travelling, can't remember the name.
Stuff changes. Until my 9th birthday I lived in Wandsworth. It wasn't posh. My parents rented a flat in a house. That house is now worth £5 - £10 million. A huge change.
In the late 70s early 80s my girlfriend rented a shared house in Leytonstone. A friend of mine's son is buying there and I was surprised at it used to be very rough. Apparently that isn't the case now at all. It is rather nice.
London is always changing. Some places are on the up. Others - once nice - have fallen victim to changing work or shopping patterns.
The trick is to avoid buying at the top (or selling at the bottom).
Agree that London is a city that's always been changing and always will, however, and it's a big one. If you've lived here for 20+ years you can see how it's generally been getting worse. The enshittification of the city has now reached alarming levels and the silent majority who work hard and just want to get on in life are being driven out by the mayor and high crime rates. London's domestic generational wealth is waving goodbye to the city and the mayor and police seem to be clueless as to how to stop it.
I've liven in London on and off since 1997 and in our current neighbourhood for 14years and I'd say all the places I frequent are on the up still. I can't speak to places I don't go to. I think it's the same as it always has been, some are tired of life, and hence tired of London. They are free to leave, this isn't East Germany.
By the way I’d define hyper-central quite narrowly, and place KX, Farringdon, Clerkenwell, Marylebone, Pimlico and the square mile outside it. Those are merely “central”
The actual City of London not in hyper-central London? Yes, if you take the point of view of the tourist. The places they might ideally want to stay and search on booking.com, before accepting they’ll need to be a small tube journey from the sites. Those extend only over a rectangle from roughly Marble Arch to Westminster Abbey to Covent Garden to Russell Square.
I think "hyper-central London" could be described as rectangle that contained Park Lane on its Westerly side, and Gower Street on its Easterly, with the Northern edge being Euston Road / Marylebone Road, and the Southern edge being The Mall / The Strand.
Anyone who disagrees with me is wrong.
Nope you are wrong. It is place to place.
There are very few places in London that you aren't 200 yards from likely or at least possible death. Any description of "hyper London" which includes the words "Euston" and "Road" together is a category error. Plus what about Chelsea and heaven in SW7. Plus Holland Park plus...
All these bloody foreigners coming over here and opining on what is the "real" London.
Also, Alfie Moore - he of the It's a Fair Cop (excellent) podcast - told us that London is not in the top 6 murder areas in London. No.1 is Gloucestershire ffs.
per capita, for a single year, yes, but it was 10 people total. For violent crime overall, no, not close.
When you are dealing with such tiny numbers one or two incidents can massively effect the year to year figures e.g. I have a friend who lives in Bath, they had 3-4 murders in the space of a couple of months, awful, terrible, they were really worried about what was becoming of the place, turns out they were all interlinked and related to drugs / gangs out of Bristol.
London may be falling. But here’s some actual good news (Telegraph)
“GPs to roll out weight-loss jabs to 250,000 people Almost a quarter of million people across England will be prescribed Mounjaro on NHS over next three years”
But why stop at the extremely obese? Give it to all obese or heavily overweight people. It will do more for the NHS than any other single measure as so many ailments are linked to weight
Possibly, although I would say two things. Firstly we don't have a lot of long time scale studies - I have seen suggestions that there may be a drop off after 6-12 months (similar to gastric band surgery etc). People often overcome the effects. Secondly I have a suspicion that not everyone will tolerate it - it can make significant changes to how you eat. One friend who is using it for diabetes has found it quite challenging. He no longer gets the enjoyment out of food that he did and needs to be very careful if he is eating out. No point having a starter as he then would struggle to eat his main. Now that may be good for weight loss, less so for having a nice meal out.
I would argue that the area of Central London where my apartment is (Shaftesbury Avenue) has gotten worse. We're right by Forbidden Planet, and the number of homeless drug addicts on the street has dramatically increased in the post Covid period.
I used to go up Tottenham Court Road way quite a bit and that was a very grim area in the late 80s through to much of the 90s. Whenever I read these "London is done" stories I always think that they can't remember just how bad it was before.
This is why the question is impossible to answer. Tottenham Court Road is much cleaner and safer than it used to be but I never go there anymore because all of the electronics and audio shops are gone. I used to love walking up Tottenham Court Road looking in the windows and occasionally buying some interesting bit of outdated electronics that the shops still had stock of. Which of these two situations makes Tottenham Court Road 'better' is entirely subjective.
I used to buy new mobile phones on Tottenham Court Road, in the brief period before buying everything online.
If I was at leisure I used to do a shopping trip starting at the Waterstones in Gower Street (brilliant second hand section from all of the UCL academics), walking up Tottenham Court Road to look at the electronics, visit the second hand bookshops in Charing Cross and finish up with the weird shops in Cecil Court. There are still a couple of good bookshops in Charing Cross Road but they're being edged out by Korean shops and eateries.
I’m so old - and a UCL alumnus - I can remember when that Waterstone’s was a Dillion’s
That corner of London definitely had more “character” back then
Yes it did, I lived in London 1995-2002 and frequented that area. It was getting a bit seedy even then but the bookshops etc was great, there was a big map shop on Charing Cross Road I used to go to when travelling, can't remember the name.
Stuff changes. Until my 9th birthday I lived in Wandsworth. It wasn't posh. My parents rented a flat in a house. That house is now worth £5 - £10 million. A huge change.
In the late 70s early 80s my girlfriend rented a shared house in Leytonstone. A friend of mine's son is buying there and I was surprised at it used to be very rough. Apparently that isn't the case now at all. It is rather nice.
London is always changing. Some places are on the up. Others - once nice - have fallen victim to changing work or shopping patterns.
The trick is to avoid buying at the top (or selling at the bottom).
Agree that London is a city that's always been changing and always will, however, and it's a big one. If you've lived here for 20+ years you can see how it's generally been getting worse. The enshittification of the city has now reached alarming levels and the silent majority who work hard and just want to get on in life are being driven out by the mayor and high crime rates. London's domestic generational wealth is waving goodbye to the city and the mayor and police seem to be clueless as to how to stop it.
I've liven in London on and off since 1997 and in our current neighbourhood for 14years and I'd say all the places I frequent are on the up still. I can't speak to places I don't go to. I think it's the same as it always has been, some are tired of life, and hence tired of London. They are free to leave, this isn't East Germany.
You're not actually a Londoner then.
I think I'm still free to comment on the subject of London, unless site policy has changed.
I would argue that the area of Central London where my apartment is (Shaftesbury Avenue) has gotten worse. We're right by Forbidden Planet, and the number of homeless drug addicts on the street has dramatically increased in the post Covid period.
I used to go up Tottenham Court Road way quite a bit and that was a very grim area in the late 80s through to much of the 90s. Whenever I read these "London is done" stories I always think that they can't remember just how bad it was before.
This is why the question is impossible to answer. Tottenham Court Road is much cleaner and safer than it used to be but I never go there anymore because all of the electronics and audio shops are gone. I used to love walking up Tottenham Court Road looking in the windows and occasionally buying some interesting bit of outdated electronics that the shops still had stock of. Which of these two situations makes Tottenham Court Road 'better' is entirely subjective.
I used to buy new mobile phones on Tottenham Court Road, in the brief period before buying everything online.
If I was at leisure I used to do a shopping trip starting at the Waterstones in Gower Street (brilliant second hand section from all of the UCL academics), walking up Tottenham Court Road to look at the electronics, visit the second hand bookshops in Charing Cross and finish up with the weird shops in Cecil Court. There are still a couple of good bookshops in Charing Cross Road but they're being edged out by Korean shops and eateries.
I’m so old - and a UCL alumnus - I can remember when that Waterstone’s was a Dillion’s
That corner of London definitely had more “character” back then
Yes it did, I lived in London 1995-2002 and frequented that area. It was getting a bit seedy even then but the bookshops etc was great, there was a big map shop on Charing Cross Road I used to go to when travelling, can't remember the name.
Stuff changes. Until my 9th birthday I lived in Wandsworth. It wasn't posh. My parents rented a flat in a house. That house is now worth £5 - £10 million. A huge change.
In the late 70s early 80s my girlfriend rented a shared house in Leytonstone. A friend of mine's son is buying there and I was surprised at it used to be very rough. Apparently that isn't the case now at all. It is rather nice.
London is always changing. Some places are on the up. Others - once nice - have fallen victim to changing work or shopping patterns.
The trick is to avoid buying at the top (or selling at the bottom).
Agree that London is a city that's always been changing and always will, however, and it's a big one. If you've lived here for 20+ years you can see how it's generally been getting worse. The enshittification of the city has now reached alarming levels and the silent majority who work hard and just want to get on in life are being driven out by the mayor and high crime rates. London's domestic generational wealth is waving goodbye to the city and the mayor and police seem to be clueless as to how to stop it.
It is also a white/non white thing
At a certain point diversity leads to lower trust societies, with greater atomisation. This is no one’s fault - whatever their colour - it is a known fact of human sociology
London has I fear tipped over the edge when insane levels of “diversity” have become a net negative as social trust is eroding in parallel
Sad but true. If I was a younger man with a family I’d get the heck out. And I would definitely not invest for a few years - see how things pan out. @rcs1000 is brave
As it happens I am tempted to stay put because
1. I kind of want to witness what happens to a world city with these revolutionary changes (remember there is another one coming, as well)
2. My kids are safely elsewhere - St Andrews, Australia
3. I still like my flat and neighbourhood especially now I am turning it into a decadent cocoon (the flat)
And
4. I am still paid to travel half the time and london remains possibly the best hub for doing that, in the world
Also, Alfie Moore - he of the It's a Fair Cop (excellent) podcast - told us that London is not in the top 6 murder areas in London. No.1 is Gloucestershire ffs.
Would have thought London would definitely be in the top 6 murder areas in London. It’s a Fair Cop is excellent, one of the few things we might agree on.
Ah yes I mis-typed. It is excellent. I think he's somehow still employed by plod, isn't he.
As to our other disagreements you are evidently not reading my posts thoroughly because all I do is set down transparent truths.
I would argue that the area of Central London where my apartment is (Shaftesbury Avenue) has gotten worse. We're right by Forbidden Planet, and the number of homeless drug addicts on the street has dramatically increased in the post Covid period.
I used to go up Tottenham Court Road way quite a bit and that was a very grim area in the late 80s through to much of the 90s. Whenever I read these "London is done" stories I always think that they can't remember just how bad it was before.
This is why the question is impossible to answer. Tottenham Court Road is much cleaner and safer than it used to be but I never go there anymore because all of the electronics and audio shops are gone. I used to love walking up Tottenham Court Road looking in the windows and occasionally buying some interesting bit of outdated electronics that the shops still had stock of. Which of these two situations makes Tottenham Court Road 'better' is entirely subjective.
I used to buy new mobile phones on Tottenham Court Road, in the brief period before buying everything online.
If I was at leisure I used to do a shopping trip starting at the Waterstones in Gower Street (brilliant second hand section from all of the UCL academics), walking up Tottenham Court Road to look at the electronics, visit the second hand bookshops in Charing Cross and finish up with the weird shops in Cecil Court. There are still a couple of good bookshops in Charing Cross Road but they're being edged out by Korean shops and eateries.
I’m so old - and a UCL alumnus - I can remember when that Waterstone’s was a Dillion’s
That corner of London definitely had more “character” back then
Yes it did, I lived in London 1995-2002 and frequented that area. It was getting a bit seedy even then but the bookshops etc was great, there was a big map shop on Charing Cross Road I used to go to when travelling, can't remember the name.
Stuff changes. Until my 9th birthday I lived in Wandsworth. It wasn't posh. My parents rented a flat in a house. That house is now worth £5 - £10 million. A huge change.
In the late 70s early 80s my girlfriend rented a shared house in Leytonstone. A friend of mine's son is buying there and I was surprised at it used to be very rough. Apparently that isn't the case now at all. It is rather nice.
London is always changing. Some places are on the up. Others - once nice - have fallen victim to changing work or shopping patterns.
The trick is to avoid buying at the top (or selling at the bottom).
Agree that London is a city that's always been changing and always will, however, and it's a big one. If you've lived here for 20+ years you can see how it's generally been getting worse. The enshittification of the city has now reached alarming levels and the silent majority who work hard and just want to get on in life are being driven out by the mayor and high crime rates. London's domestic generational wealth is waving goodbye to the city and the mayor and police seem to be clueless as to how to stop it.
I've liven in London on and off since 1997 and in our current neighbourhood for 14years and I'd say all the places I frequent are on the up still. I can't speak to places I don't go to. I think it's the same as it always has been, some are tired of life, and hence tired of London. They are free to leave, this isn't East Germany.
"All the places I frequent" is obviously subject to discrimination though, you may have just stopped going to the crap places, or visited once and never again
Rule no 1 never accept the first quote from any insurer about anything. If they drop.the price to keep.you then they were ripping you off with the first quote.
Which, as a company in a free market, is pretty much their duty. For the market to work, the seller has got to pitch for as much as they think they can get away with and the buyer as little as possible. Then they are meant to haggle to get to something both sides are happy with.
But yes, it's a hassle, for some a very disagreeable hassle. I'd much rather not bother, and would happily pay quite a bit more to not do so.
(See also, utility contracts and salaries. High pay is often more about willingness to demand it as any intrinsic worth of the job or brilliance at it.)
The best compliment I ever received from a client was “you were very expensive but well worth it”.
Dare we ask what trade you were in ?
Plasterer. Worth his weight in gold ‘e is.
CORGI registered plumber & sparky. Worth their weight in Plutonium, they are.
Also, Alfie Moore - he of the It's a Fair Cop (excellent) podcast - told us that London is not in the top 6 murder areas in London. No.1 is Gloucestershire ffs.
Would have thought London would definitely be in the top 6 murder areas in London. It’s a Fair Cop is excellent, one of the few things we might agree on.
London has the highest homicide rate for a region (15.1 per million, over West Midlands on 13.7; 2023 figures). However, at a more detailed level, by police force area, London is not top. That's Cleveland (22.4), Derbyshire and then Lincolnshire (2024 figures). The Metropolitan Police area is 7th on those numbers (13.1).
Comments
So you have lots of well meaning people, lost in disconnected bubbles.
From an OR point of view that is an absurd system.
I presume this is a result of the shift system interacting with agency?
I was honestly asking opinions on Fraser Nelson’s tweet that “london is a better city than it was ten years ago”
Because most of my friends would disagree with this and the rest would shrug and say “no better no worse”
For me it is exactly this last decade where it has declined (not compared to the 1980s when it was totally on its arse)
However there are PBers who genuinely believe london is better, like Fraser, and that’s interesting to hear
I stood up to a fare-dodger on the Tube while TfL just shrugs
It is infuriating to watch authorities turn a blind eye to this blatant flouting of the law" (£)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/consumer-affairs/stood-up-fare-dodger-tube-tfl-shrugs/
While I make most purchases online I still use the town centre Waitrose as when I go shopping I typically need stuff *for today*. And I can make my own substitutions, impulse purchases, pick up reductions etc
Really striking how even Reform imitate language of liberal consensus. Britain was built on attracting the brightest and the best!
It empirically wasn’t. Anglophone world meant Britain was a society built on *emigration*. Interesting that even insurgent right adopts US rhetoric.
"There should be a concerted effort by government to revive these places. Eastbourne, Worthing, Hastings. All have gorgeous architecture just like this - & proximity to the cool sea air! High speed internet, high speed rail to London & funds to rebuild urban fabric."
I was very relieved that it wasn’t Spearmint Rhino when I was in halls as I think it would have been a bit awkward explaining to my old man why I was spending thousands a week and not doing any study.
However I go into London much less often than I used to. A period of rail engineering work was followed by Covid was followed by train strikes and it just wasn't worth the effort. They have only recently reinstated a late enough service to make it possible to go to a midweek gig and get home without missing the encore
It doesn't stop miserable old gits from complaining.
Focus is on the experience. The shop sales themselves will probably just about cover the day to day running costs it incurs this year, but the experience we provide is of huge value to our mostly online/mail-order business.
The only shops that have opened in our prosperous, historic, near-seaside market town this year are those that also market experiences, offer advice, or have alternative streams of income.
If you just sell a widget, you're always going to be undercut by the internet.
There is no need for an online sales tax; business just needs to adapt to the realities. You need to provide value add in a retail setting, or you die.
Which I'm going to try one of these days, when I can get up courage to try their steps with my walking aid.
Overall, in my very subjective opinion london improved as a city - in some ways, dramatically - up until 2010 or so - then it plateaued; then it began a slide from about 2015 which was very gentle but may now be accelerating
Recent migration patterns have been bad for London and it is not good that native Brits are being replaced
Hopefully if property prices do collapse that might mean ordinary Brits can reclaim their capital city. So that’s one upside
Every day London becomes a bit more disorderly. The police report that shoplifting increased by more than 50% last year, a far sharper increase than in other regions, and thefts such as pickpocketing increased by 41%, with mobile phones plucked like low-hanging fruit. Transport for London (TfL) calculates that fare dodging costs the transit system £400 million ($540 million) a year, but the real figure may be much higher.
But these crime figures only capture a small proportion of the disorder. Delivery drivers cycle at high speed, often on the pavement, frequently scattering pedestrians in their path. The bikes have electric motors and thick tires; the drivers usually wear masks or balaclavas to conceal their faces, regardless of the heat. The sickly sweet smell of marijuana is ubiquitous in large parts of London (and certainly in Clapham where I live).
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-06-23/londoners-are-losing-patience-with-do-nothing-and-disorder
That corner of London definitely had more “character” back then
That article came out on the same morning Fraser Nelson made his latest ludicrous woke Pollyanna everything-is-brilliant tweet
I could be wrong... but there are loads of gastropubs out there that pride themselves on their wine list, but expect their beer drinking clients to be happy with Doom Bar. Often it's the terms of the pub lease of course but wine people often really don't seem to understand beer
Horrid realisations!!!
Manchester is better than it was 10 years ago. The city centre has grown astonishingly and is full of cool hidden little neighbourhoods. It still has a lot of improving to do to become the top tier European city it could be. But Manchester 2025 is more like Copenhagen 2025 than it is like Manchester 1980. Which was dreadful.
I can also report that Stockport, Sale, Altrincham, Warrington, Bury are also better than they were ten years ago. Wigan always seems on the cusp of a leap forward but has been there for a decade or more; Bolton has declined, and Rochdale, Oldham and Ashton are all as depressing as ever (though I read today that Oldham is one of the most in-demand property hotspots in the country).
Further afield, Liverpool and Sheffield have both improved a lot in the last 10-15 years.
The difficult thing to process is that, although "we" didn't vote for this, we probably did vote (with our wallets and our ballots) for things that were pretty likely to lead to something like this. See also the messed-up housing market. We expect developers to provide below-market housing because we aren't willing to pay for it honestly though taxes.
Decrease rents and business rates drop, keep rents high and it’s hard to justify business rates being reduced because the models don’t allow it
I've said it before - there are two types of beer drinker. Confronted with a choice of say six local ales and Green King IPA, they will either go "oh great, I'll have a Green King IPA" or they will go "great, they have some local ales I can try". There is a reason why so many highstreets are identical, why McDonalds is so popular and why Green King IPA is everywhere - an awful lot of people like what they know.
Happily there are people who like new things too. I'm not sure, but I suspect PB has a lot more of the latter than the former.
We have a couple of local breweries, though, which make very acceptable beers, and annually our cricket club does a festival with plenty of small local makers involved.
“GPs to roll out weight-loss jabs to 250,000 people
Almost a quarter of million people across England will be prescribed Mounjaro on NHS over next three years”
But why stop at the extremely obese? Give it to all obese or heavily overweight people. It will do more for the NHS than any other single measure as so many ailments are linked to weight
Which is actually made by Cameron’s in Hartlepool.
Upside it tastes vaguely like beer but you can’t claim it’s a local beer when it’s made 20 miles further away than where I live and home is 8 hours drive from where I was
I've finally reached the point at almost 38 years where I'm done with London. I'm sick of the mayor constantly jumping on whatever nonsense bandwagon, I'm sick of the Met prioritising online "crime" because it's easy for them to make arrests, I'm sick of having insanely high council tax and shit roads in return.
If I were an investor, I'd be selling my London assets over the next few years. It's only going to get worse as the city becomes more transient and people with historic links to the city continue to leave for the home counties or overseas. My parents are doing the unthinkable and putting their house up for sale and moving out to Hertfordshire. My dad has lived in London for 63 of his 70 years, he's seen the city at it's worst with skinheads running around beating up brown and black people, he's seen decades of development and even he's fed up. I don't think this is uncommon either. Middle class flight from London is a very real, very big problem and the mayor and the police are directly responsible.
Anyone who disagrees with me is wrong.
In the late 70s early 80s my girlfriend rented a shared house in Leytonstone. A friend of mine's son is buying there and I was surprised at it used to be very rough. Apparently that isn't the case now at all. It is rather nice.
Well, they are leaving now. And the drain risks becoming a terrible flood and then london property will implode - and the entire economy of the city will be upended with dire consequences for UK PLC
Remember I started predicting this some time ago
But in the real world, someone has to subsidise housing for at least some people. And the current model is almost certainly worse for everyone, except rentiers.
Presuming that means the period of industrial revolution and empire, then there was both enormous internal migration - from countryside to the new cities - and a very large influx of immigration from Ireland in the middle of the 19th Century.
There were essentially no controls on immigration until the beginning of the 20th C.
Empirically, I think it's also been shown that there was a significantly higher incidence of entrepreneurship amongst the immigrant population than that of the native population.
That there was net migration during the 19th Century doesn't really capture the full dynamic, and trying to draw conclusions about the 21st C based on that (whichever side of the ideological divide you find yourself) is pretty silly.
That's only half the issue though, the other half is that the middle wealthy, middle classes are beginning to realise that London isn't for them either. I don't think it's a white/not white thing either. Outside of a few Indian strongholds like Harrow, Pinner and Wembley there's the beginnings of an exodus of Indians either to those three areas or outside of London entirely up to Hertfordshire. One of my ex colleagues just bought a house in St Albans and she's been messaging my wife constantly to come up and have a tour so we move up there too. The train is leaving London, I think it might be time to board.
The trick is to avoid buying at the top (or selling at the bottom).
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyepy2zz11o
Always feels like an activity that is a when not if.
Worth his weight in gold ‘e is.
And most importantly, St. John and Brutto!
People have mentioned (@Leon as an incomer is always fixated on) Kings X but plenty of other places now - just look at the Hackney area over the past decade or two.
That's what makes London London.
Or he could be building a bunker for billionaires, just in case of...something
Either way, that guy is going to die very rich...
It’s a Fair Cop is excellent, one of the few things we might agree on.
Make it half a million.
There are very few places in London that you aren't 200 yards from likely or at least possible death. Any description of "hyper London" which includes the words "Euston" and "Road" together is a category error. Plus what about Chelsea and heaven in SW7. Plus Holland Park plus...
All these bloody foreigners coming over here and opining on what is the "real" London.
When you are dealing with such tiny numbers one or two incidents can massively effect the year to year figures e.g. I have a friend who lives in Bath, they had 3-4 murders in the space of a couple of months, awful, terrible, they were really worried about what was becoming of the place, turns out they were all interlinked and related to drugs / gangs out of Bristol.
At a certain point diversity leads to lower trust societies, with greater atomisation. This is no one’s fault - whatever their colour - it is a known fact of human sociology
London has I fear tipped over the edge when insane levels of “diversity” have become a net negative as social trust is eroding in parallel
Sad but true. If I was a younger man with a family I’d get the heck out. And I would definitely not invest for a few years - see how things pan out. @rcs1000 is brave
As it happens I am tempted to stay put because
1. I kind of want to witness what happens to a world city with these revolutionary changes (remember there is another one coming, as well)
2. My kids are safely elsewhere - St Andrews, Australia
3. I still like my flat and neighbourhood especially now I am turning it into a decadent cocoon (the flat)
And
4. I am still paid to travel half the time and london remains possibly the best hub for doing that, in the world
As to our other disagreements you are evidently not reading my posts thoroughly because all I do is set down transparent truths.