Quote: (06-03-2018 04:50 AM)Constitution45 Wrote:
Quote: (06-03-2018 02:27 AM)jordypip23 Wrote:
I haven't been to London in many many years (I am from the USA). I was still a kid essentially the last time I was out there so this must have been the early 90's.
I totally understand the situation that is taking place over there. I do have a question for you UK natives, however. As someone that casually follows the industry of finance to some degree, I do understand that London still remains a global financial capital. It is up in there in a category of cities that includes very few other places (New York City, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai, etc.). Are the folks in this type of business (and its ancillary businesses) representing an extremely small piece of the London pie? Surely they aren't among the crowd that desire the country to turn into a repressive, hardline Islamic regime, no?
I get it though. A slum in London actually seems worse than a mainstream decent area in Dubai (one of the less hardline actual Islamic rooted cities).
London is a very big city for starters, around 8 to 12 million, depends if you want to count the 'outer boroughs' suburban areas, but even then the population stats aren't really precise on the boundaries of the city.
The business types traditionally lived out of London and commuted in, or lived in the suburbs. This has changed slightly, as places like Brixton, Peckham etc, basically all of the rough ghetto areas have professionals living in them.
A lot of people argued that this made these areas particularly safer and 'trendy'. I'd agree that they are no longer no go areas like they used to, but crime is still very high in these areas. Council estates and gangs are embedded in the area and won't really go away. The professionals who live in these places are a transient population mostly, apart from the hardcore ones that have purchased properties for exuberant prices.
Usually you can tell a big difference between day and night. The professionals are mostly middle class left wingers, they are quite clueless to things, but usually they move out by the time they want children, because they realise that growing up in an area and living there are two different things.
Rich and poor mostly live on top of each other or on the same street. So there will be stabbings and murders on expensive residential streets, because a few roads away there is a notorious estate
Overwhelmingly though you will go through large swathes of London which frankly just look shit and run down. Council estates have been revamped and coloured up but when you go inside them, they are just the same.
The areas in London which are the worst, will be places like Croydon, Enfield, Newham, Haringey. The professionals are in very slim numbers there and they are just gone simply put. Watch 'streetblogs' on instagram to see what I mean and the mindset.
Central London will attract tourist related crime, there are a lot of prostitutes around Soho still. You do have gangs around London and elsewhere travelling in to commit crime in the centre.
Sounds kind of like New York / Manhattan in the 1980's when the crime rate was much higher.