Preparedness for when

moneyistooshorttomention

greenbee wrote: »

MTSM - if you live in a rural area, decent wellies are a must. I tend to wear wellies from about October-April (or June, based on yesterday's weather...), and walking boots or sandals the rest of the time. Like you, I was forced out of my own local area - in my case by the need to find employment.

Yep....perfectly clean jeans being coated in mud up to my knees a few times and trainers getting filthy when I went for a walk - and I soon learnt how to avoid all that extra washing and footwear cleaning...

nobodyspecial

Try living in London where you can't even think about identifying incomers let alone resent them. Where your children have to move away even to be able to afford to rent let alone buy. But I forget, those born and bred in London don't deserve consideration or sympathy, we're all rich lol Would someone please advise where my bulging bank account is located ?

fuddle

thriftwizard wrote: »

I'm caught between city & country here, in what used to be a small rural market town that's been here forever, but is increasingly becoming a "dormitory" suburb of a big conurbation. We're rapidly losing all our small local businesses as the big guys can afford much higher rents & rates, so are being encouraged by the landlords & the Council. There are twice as many new homes allowed for on our Local Plan than currently exist, but no new schools, surgeries, car parking spaces or other facilities. We have tiny medieval streets that are already clogged with school-run traffic & you can't park in town on Thursdays for well-to-do retirees blowing their pension money on Costa coffees. The trouble is, it came quite high up in the top 10 places to live about 15 years ago...

It was quiet when we moved here 23 years ago, and there were lots of little, interesting & useful local shops & businesses. Virtually all gone now, with the rents doubling year on year, the advent of a biggish upmarket supermarket on our old cricket pitch & an enormous "craft barn" a few miles away. Our street was a happy mixture of young & old, incomers & born-&-bred & our kids grew up playing out with all the others; now all the smaller houses go to up-&-coming young "finance" people who tart them up, taking out all the walls & installing lots of shiny black plastic and run two huge 4x4s each which have to be parked on the road; one car is easily as wide as the house, the other will be parked outside someone else's!

Meanwhile our own kids can't even afford to rent a one-bed flat in the town they call home. The "newbies" complain loudly about chickens, bellringing practice, windfall fruit attracting rats & wasps, mud on the road, jumble sales, allotments, and people who simply won't grow window boxes full petunias in order to win Best Street in Xxx-In-Bloom. They want it to be perfect, so that when they come to sell on to move right out to the roses-round-the-door cottage, they'll get the best possible price.

To give another member of this forum her fair due, there are good people here & plenty of them, both local & incomers, and I suspect that one day, when the supermarkets & big box stores pull out from the "fringes", it will return to being a small but significant bustling market town. But for now, I sometimes think I'd like to move to somewhere more industrial, though I'm rural born & bred (though from further West) just to get away from the "nimby" mindset!

I'm an incomer to the above mentioned small town. We moved with DH's job and settled in the nearest place. It's home while my children are in very good schools and then we'll be off further north where rents are cheaper.

I don't accept the incomer slant at all. We are trying hard to just make it here. Certainly not of the nimby attitude.

We've just taken on an allotment. We'll have it for 4 months as developers are building houses on the land. If you look past the traffic issue, this town is 'a nice place to live' Why? Because the people here do look after it, are proud of it and are part of it. Incomers are part of that and are to be encouraged in my opinion. What we need to direct angst towards, I feel, is the council planners, land owners, landlords etc who are trying to make more and more money out of selling this 'nice place to live' ideal.

I feel the nimby attitude is ingrained here and has been for a very long time. I've spent the Iast year and a half with the local elderly and I have to say that many of them are pretty precious in their ideals and opinions of their local area.

To have pride is a very good thing to have so please don't knock those of us who try to look after what we have. When you come from collapsed mining communities where people have given up on themselves and their homes, you might have a different view and I for one am very lucky to be trying to make it 'in a nice place to live' without a nimby attitude.

GreyQueen

nobodyspecial wrote: »

Try living in London where you can't even think about identifying incomers let alone resent them. Where your children have to move away even to be able to afford to rent let alone buy. But I forget, those born and bred in London don't deserve consideration or sympathy, we're all rich lol Would someone please advise where my bulging bank account is located ?

FWIW, 4 generations ago my Mum's people were living in the West Country and had been for centuries. The family name is as common as muck in that part of the world. Then, after a spell in the workhouse, great-grandad moved to Hoxton New Town. The clan have been true East Enders for a few generations, most of them are presently in the Walthamstow area. Mum was exported 100+ miles to the countryside as an under-10 in fosterage, and never went back.

I grew up in a market town in the sixties and seventies with a huge population of ex-Londoners who'd left to get away from cramped, unaffordable housing and, as a side effect, away from immigraton. They were extremely racist in their statements against people of colour, which was pretty unpleasant to hear. They changed our small town in many ways which were not welcomed by the locals, including bringing a very urban mindset, hitherto rare social problems becoming commonplace, and having a noticably slack attitude to other people's property (nicking anything which wasn't bolted down, basicially, and unbolting the rest).

Growing up there meant that I, as a bumpkin-on-paper, was more than able to manage in a rough inner city hundreds of miles away as a teenaged student. Now that cohort are in their sixties and seventies, they are beyatching about the town being full of Eastern Europeans. The indigenes like me and Dad's side of the family smile wryly at that, of course, but our ex-Londoners don't 'get it'.

If you look at how London grew, in the 19th century in particular, you can clearly see that a lot of it was relocation from other parts of the UK into the capitol, for work. Which means that, historically, the difference between Londoners and the rest of isn't there.

Of course you're not rich just because you live inside the M25, and there will be plenty of people who wouldn't have a hope in hell of buying/ renting what they have now, if they had to start again. And their kids are stuffed as adults trying to get a home.

I think the trouble is that there is so much hot money in London that it starts to feel like a foriegn country to many of us who live outside it. That isn't the fault of individuals. There is also a resentment that Chance has dealt some people in London a winning hand, in respect of owning ridiculously over-valued property. Which then allows some London property owners to sell very modest homes for silly money and move out to regions where their plump budget distorts the property-buying/ rental market for everyone else, who didn't benefit from the original property inflation but get to suffer the consequences.

moneyistooshorttomention

My point exactly - re knock-on effect.

Londoners (and others...) move to "nice places to live" and the people in those nice places find there are too many people/cars and house prices rise....and they move and become incomers elsewhere....etc etc (with some of the older locals trying to make them feel like "furriners" - even though they aren't).

....and many of the ******* councillors in those "nice places" that are busily trying to attract others are locals themselves (against the wishes of their local electorate)...!!!

fuddle

I think there's a point being missed here and that is relocation due to work. Many people don't just up sticks to move to a nicer place. They go where the work is, where they feel they can make it.

We live in a era where work is a drive away and where opportunity is a commute away. Sensible people look at their situation and think about making the change to improve their lives.

I'm not sure of the knock on effect that has been described as housing will be occupied by someone, incomer or not.

I would dare say that a high number of us do not live in the immediate locality that we were born in and that so many of us, at some point, have been an incomer.

mardatha

I don't mind incomers to a place at all, it livens up the locals and stop inbreeding lol - much needed in some places I've lived!
But i think a lot of the pains-in-the-a$$- type incomers probably moaned before, probably the type who find fault and that's why they moved in the first place.
We got a lot of money in this village from the windfarm and got to vote on what to use to for. one of the options, suggested by rich guy who bought a house converted from a derelict farm steading, was to "plant trees". They locals, when they had recovered from hysterics, told him we already had sodding trees and he just hadn't noticed them! What does a tiny quiet lonely village need trees for ?! (we all got money towards a new eco household appliance instead which was much more useful!)

thriftwizard

Fuddle, we're incomers here too, albeit 23 years ago; I'm not knocking incomers. And we too have always felt welcomed by residents whose ancestry here goes back into the mists of time. It's not incomers per se who are turning it into a clone town, but specifically the wealthier ones (old or young) and residents who want all the facilities & familiar shops they'd have in Town without any of the drawbacks, and the landlords whose bandwagon has never looked shinier! The same ones who resisted the setting-up of the Food Bank like mad, because it "would bring down the tone of the area" to admit there's anyone here who needs one. Let 'em starve rather than be poor on our pavements...

What we need to direct angst towards, I feel, is the council planners, land owners, landlords etc who are trying to make more and more money out of selling this 'nice place to live' ideal.

Couldn't agree more. Seems to me they have very little idea of what actually constitutes a "nice place to live" and the goose that laid the golden egg has its head perilously close to the chopping board!

moneyistooshorttomention

:mad: to town planners in "nice places to live" too.

We all move for different reasons - could be a job (essential to live). Could be getting on with the garden (essential to a gardener) - so if you haven't GOT a garden in the first place...(ie only a "courtyard garden" and having to use pots). Also you cant enjoy your peace and quiet of a detached house if you're still in the terrace house you started with.

It boils down to if you cant live "your" lifestyle where you are (be it because of lack of money because of no job) or lack of something essential to a "your" home then you have to move - but there is a case for you could get a "your" home in "your" area if house prices hadn't been pushed up and hence pushed out of your own area because of circumstances that aren't even personal to you iyswim.

The knock-on effects are quite widespread - ripples spread out to family and friends who no longer have "their" people nearby - because they've had to move.

EDIT: yep....stepped in to try and assist the local Food Bank out of a difficulty I could see looming for them...

fuddle

Losing my posts all the time so have just about given up but wanted to say that I hear you thriftwizard.

I do see why you say what you say, it is pretty obvious the way it has gone and the way it is going to go but I wanted to say that I felt it was more of a collected town's attitude from those who want to make money out of the town, not incomers attitude.


MTSTM you make a very valid point about the difficulties of moving away from the extended family. We have no childcare back up and although we cope it's certainly not ideal.