Nice people thread part 7 - a thread in its prime

chewmylegoff

kabayiri wrote: »

Thank you to all the NPs for the London break suggestions.

It was a good, if tiring, visit.

London observations from a Northerner (probably a chimney sweep or window cleaner I hear you say) :-

- wow, i mean, wow, just where do all the people come from? The place is heaving with people.

- Tower of London - BIG TICK - the Yeoman talk was just class; he put context and humour to everything you saw.

- Natural History Museum : the place just oozes knowledge. It's what I imagine wikipedia would look like if you made it physical.

- London Euston : oh dear, it doesn't deal with problems and disruptions very well; confusion abounded.

- a different culture to the rest of UK? : Is it me or is every person who serves you in a bar or the hotel or fast food restaurant of non-UK origin? I'm not presenting this as a negative, I just get the feeling London as a working city would collapse without all these people performing all the crucial supporting roles. You just don't get an inkling of how this works out in the villages and towns of Cheshire, for example.

- err, did I mention the people? Too busy for me to live in. It feels much busier than the mid-late 90s.

The clan shall return

it is definitely a lot busier than the late 90s. i would say that things have got very noticeably a lot busier in the last 5 years. everything used to be busy, now it's bloody rammed. probably me just getting older and more intolerant though!

it's not just all the people in restaurants, fast food etc. it is almost any low paid job. cleaners, security staff, bar staff, sandwich shops, post room, carers, nursing home staff etc etc etc - all of these sorts of jobs are almost exclusively staffed by immigrants - there are some exceptions e.g. john lewis retail staff are noticeably different to pret a manger staff.

london would be totally screwed if immigrants were not prepared to work for £6.19 an hour and live in overcrowded housing.

lostinrates

kabayiri wrote: »

This is it really LIR. It's almost an immersion thing. You have to be in the midst of it all, to understand how it works. Flexible, highly mobile labour force drives a city like this.

This is quite an alien concept to people out in the rural towns and villages. It leaves the impression that London is completely different in its dynamic to the rest of the country.

I've heard a similar complaint levelled at the Parisians by people in the French regions too. It's possibly a capital city thing.

Funnily enough, I deleted part of my post saying similar, but I think it's also an era thing. I think in my mind Paris must have been incredible when Josephine baker was there. And Venice a few centuries before, constantinople when it was Constantinople maybe? Ancient Rome? Cairo? Athens? I know new York has it for many but in truth, for me the old world aspect is still part of it. I think new York is probably iconic enough to claim its place in lirs time and place zeitgeist thing.

ATM it seems that belin is zeitgeist -y. I dunno why, haven't been don't know much about it. I do feel that I lived in London during some of its years whene had an arts and fashion zeitgeist moment. While i will always lve London, it's harder to find those bits now.

kabayiri

Just read the forums about Americans who have no access to affordable dentistry. Some go to extreme lengths. It's informative but depressing. It makes you realise what a privilege access to quality dentistry really is.

The crunch is that it's always expensive, its just how you choose to fund it.

lostinrates

kabayiri wrote: »

The crunch .

ouchy ouch ouch.

Spirit_2

lostinrates wrote: »

Is there anywhere you could holiday where the teeth Could be done less expensively?

He is a nervous patient and has to be sedated. He had two back teeth out a few years ago and has refused to go back for the implants..until now...and he now also needs crowns replaced. As he has plucked up the courage to go I do not want to put him off.

chewmylegoff

kabayiri wrote: »

Just read the forums about Americans who have no access to affordable dentistry. Some go to extreme lengths. It's informative but depressing. It makes you realise what a privilege access to quality dentistry really is.

The crunch is that it's always expensive, its just how you choose to fund it.

i hadn't been to the dentist for ages and was actually quite surprised that the price wasn't as high as i was expecting. £48 for initial assessment (which lasted half an hour), then £80 per filling. Frankly it seemed quite cheap to me - that was private charges in the middle of richmond.

i've got insurance but i was expecting it to be much more expensive. i was trying to work out how the dentist made any money when he was drilling out my rotten teeth.

it took him 1 hour to do 2 fillings = £160, with a dental nurse there and needs all the materials, tools, admin staff and rent.

would have cost you £150/hour to have me incompetently look at your books when i had 3 years of experience adding stuff up as a trainee accountant...

kabayiri

chewmylegoff wrote: »

it is definitely a lot busier than the late 90s. i would say that things have got very noticeably a lot busier in the last 5 years. everything used to be busy, now it's bloody rammed. probably me just getting older and more intolerant though!
...

It felt like it was running at full capacity. I doubt we have seen the end of London growth though. If I were an economic migrant, I'd flock to the place with the most job opportunities. In the UK that is definitely London.

vivatifosi

chewmylegoff wrote: »

i hadn't been to the dentist for ages and was actually quite surprised that the price wasn't as high as i was expecting. £48 for initial assessment (which lasted half an hour), then £80 per filling. Frankly it seemed quite cheap to me - that was private charges in the middle of richmond.

i've got insurance but i was expecting it to be much more expensive. i was trying to work out how the dentist made any money when he was drilling out my rotten teeth.

it took him 1 hour to do 2 fillings = £160, with a dental nurse there and needs all the materials, tools, admin staff and rent.

would have cost you £150/hour to have me incompetently look at your books when i had 3 years of experience adding stuff up as a trainee accountant...

According to my dentist, because most dentists want to live in London and the South East, the vast majority live inside, or just outside of the M25. This means that there's actually dentists charging much higher non-NHS charges when you go a long way from London - particularly if its somewhere they don't want to live - than in the South East. It also means that there are a lot of parts of the country where access to a dentist is more limited. I think that's a fair summary of what he said. It's quite hard to ask questions when there's a hand in your mouth.

Spirit_2

kabayiri wrote: »

.

- Natural History Museum : the place just oozes knowledge. It's what I imagine wikipedia would look like if you made it physical.


- a different culture to the rest of UK? : Is it me or is every person who serves you in a bar or the hotel or fast food restaurant of non-UK origin?

I loved the wikipedia analogy. Thank you many times.

There was a quote from Ken Livingstone when he was Mayor something along the lines of "I can't remember the last time I was served in a restaurant by a Londoner".

(said with a nasally twang and probably different words).

michaels

Left work at 5.45. Left the building at 6.45 having spent an hour stuck in the lift after a very sudden stop (life flashing before eyes moment) followed by 60 minutes waiting for engineer to open doors - luckily it was only a small step down not completely between floors. My fellow trappees were a very posh 6 weeks into to the job Cambridge Historian fast streamer (annoying posh knob) and a lady who probably was ok if she had not been desperate for a fag at the start and unable to stop talking by the end...