London Has Peaked

cells

padington wrote: »

London was a !!!!!! hole in the early eighties from my memory. Wood Green where I live now was just full of rubbish. You just had to wade through it. In Muswell hill where I was brought up we used to have gangs of skin heads sniffing glue at the top of my road. The local pubs would were edgy. It's was common for a fist to be put through the space invaders in the Minstral boy and fights were allowed to be fought till blood was everywhere as long as they were taken 'outside'. Archway used to have a large Scrolling neon sign advertising how many millions were out of work. Mentally ill people all over Archway were endlessly scouring the road to pick up fag butts from the floor. Oxford street was horrible place. Trafalgar square was just full of pigeon !!!!!!. Finsbury Park was dangerous and full of needles. When businesses shut down, they stayed shut down. There were derelict corners of London all over the place.

London wasn't an attractive place to be then, hence why it didn't attract many people. Even Londoners dreamt of the 'good life' and escaping to the country. Now old people dream of getting a nice safe apartment in Covent Garden in walking distance of all the amazing world leading cultural offerings.

Things certainly have changed from my experience.

Population in the 80s had already turned. Between 1981 -1991 London added ~300,000 people so all those things you note didn't seem to matter

So I am still leaning towards the big upturn in London being immigration and a swing in persons per home rather than somehow London getting much better or being a fantastic place to live. Its still a shithole unless you can insulate yourself from the poverty and ignorance by buying into areas that are less crap than the average.

also I think equating houses getting expensive with things getting a lot better is a very weak link. London can still be a sub average place for the majority and house prices go up

also note a lot of shanty towns grow very rapidly in population and its not because of some amazing culture or arts or good pubs (all that is pretty much BS)

padington

cells wrote: »

Population in the 80s had already turned. Between 1981 -1991 London added ~300,000 people so all those things you note didn't seem to matter

So I am still leaning towards the big upturn in London being immigration and a swing in persons per home rather than somehow London getting much better or being a fantastic place to live. Its still a shithole unless you can insulate yourself from the poverty and ignorance by buying into areas that are less crap than the average.

also I think equating houses getting expensive with things getting a lot better is a very weak link. London can still be a sub average place for the majority and house prices go up

also note a lot of shanty towns grow very rapidly in population and its not because of some amazing culture or arts or good pubs (all that is pretty much BS)

How many shanty towns in the world do you know where more billionaires than anywhere else want to reside ?

cells

Billionaires don't reside in 30 of the 33 boroughs so I guess we both agree that 90% of london is not special at all

also it's probably got more to do with non dom tax reasons than london being 'special'

cells

padington wrote: »

How many shanty towns in the world do you know where more billionaires than anywhere else want to reside ?

I wasn't the one saying a booming population is evidence of some greatness quality of London.

Clearly booming populations can be for other reasons and they can boom despite everything being crap

padington

cells wrote: »

Billionaires don't reside in 30 of the 33 boroughs so I guess we both agree that 90% of london is not special at all

also it's probably got more to do with non dom tax reasons than london being 'special'

It's not the hallowed ground of one particular area that makes London so special. It's the people that make London an amazing place.

So much talent, so much innovation, so much knowledge, so many connections, so many liberal people, so many open minded people, so many rational people and so many of them with such a good sense of humour.

padington

cells wrote: »

I wasn't the one saying a booming population is evidence of some greatness quality of London.

Clearly booming populations can be for other reasons and they can boom despite everything being crap

People travel to find a better life. Sometimes they move from rural poverty to shanty towns and sometime they try to storm the gates of the most fashionable generous liberal safe democracy that enjoys a wealth of emplyment opportunities.

On the whole it tends to mean that higher populations are because of some form of relative greatness which were accessible from the life they left behind.

padington

cells wrote: »

Population in the 80s had already turned. Between 1981 -1991 London added ~300,000 people so all those things you note didn't seem to matter

So I am still leaning towards the big upturn in London being immigration and a swing in persons per home rather than somehow London getting much better or being a fantastic place to live. Its still a shithole unless you can insulate yourself from the poverty and ignorance by buying into areas that are less crap than the average.

also I think equating houses getting expensive with things getting a lot better is a very weak link. London can still be a sub average place for the majority and house prices go up

also note a lot of shanty towns grow very rapidly in population and its not because of some amazing culture or arts or good pubs (all that is pretty much BS)

In 1981 The worlds most loved princess entered into the limelight which became a globally watched event, followed by two royal births. Thatcher developed a privatisation blue print which almost the whole world adopted and Britian put distance over its dark days of 1979. There is lots of evidence to suggest the rising population between 1981 and 1991 was because of developments on the ground.

Whilst at the same time 1991 ended with Britons youth dancing euphorically to acid house and enjoying four KLF classics and within four more years New York declaring that the home of Brit pop was the coolest place on earth.

Our cultural are allure was entirely consistent of population growth together with the global pull towards cities generally because of the end of industrialism and the end of the need to live near the factories and the ability to live in the nearest coolest city.

Jonbvn

padington wrote: »

On the whole it tends to mean that higher populations are because of some form of relative greatness which were accessible from the life they left behind.

IMHO this is a bit OTT? I really like "The Smoke" and what it offers. However, it is not Shangri La (for me at least).

padington

Jonbvn wrote: »

IMHO this is a bit OTT? I really like "The Smoke" and what it offers. However, it is not Shangri La (for me at least).

Have you been to secret cinema or a recent punch drunk production or ever been on the bum bum train ?

You won't find any of that in Derbyshire or Eastborne or Rotherham or Paris or even Tokyo.

We're knocking it out of the park down here.

Not to forget the greatest show on earth we recently put on.

Out,_Vile_Jelly

If you grow up in the provinces big cities will always be alluring, and London is the biggest and shiniest. There will always be a stream of young people happy to work unglamorous jobs and endure grotty flatshares during their 20s. Some love it enough to stay, others will tire of it and move to the suburbs after a few years.

I grew up in Dorset and when I went to university I had only been to a nightclub once. This was because going out on the raz involved massively expensive taxis back from the nearest town with a club, or someone had to volunteer to drive everyone back round all the villages. Obviously I moan about the Tube like all Londoners, but as a born yokel I know that the public transport here is actually awesome. There are downsides to living in London, but for most who grew up in Yokel-on-the-Wold, there is enough to outweigh those.