fire in London tower block

[stewartingram]

As one who lives in the Fens (Cambridgeshire) and I work in London, I have to agree London IS expensive. Even buying a simple small bottle of Coke from somewhere like Tesco or similar is much more expensive.

I've been doing a little light hearted survey during my bus commute bteween Kings X & Waterloo. I have this theory that if food related retail premises* were all closed down, there wouldn't be much left.

[* takeaways, cafes, pubs/off licence, restaurants, coffee shops & similar].

Then remove the "proper" food shops (corner shops, Tesco Express etc), followed by the "service" shops (banks, estate agents, doctor/dentist/opticians & the like).

What is left? VERY little except in small areas - perhaps such as Oxford St, or closer to work, Lower Marsh at Waterloo (where the Ian Allan shop is). Then compare this to what you find outside London.

Why would anyone choose to live in London? The best part for me (though I actually enjoy the work there) is my seat home on the 387 unit from KGX.

 

Stewart

[Coryton]

In terms of high streets, one of the things that surprises me about local and national government policy making is that it often seems to pursue top down solutions which pay little or no attention to human behaviours and what people actually want and is instead driven by political dogma or what politicians believe people should want. Why I find this surprising is that most politicians have a heightened (if intuitive and not formal) grasp of certain psychological principles in order to understand electoral dynamics and are usually pretty attuned to what their voters want on many things. Yet when it comes to policy the same people seem to believe that we will all simply fall into line and co-operate with some abstract ideal in a mechanistic way and then appear to be genuinely surprised when people end up shopping somewhere else or whatever.

 

I do think the civil service needs a "predicting unintended consequences" department that new legislation/rules is passed through.

 

Put them in the shoes of whoever is affected and think what they'd actually do.

 

Having said that, I think that whoever was behind the finer details of rail privatisation did a pretty good job with that sort of thing, e.g. preventing the operator controlling ticket prices on a given flow from undercutting with an operator-only ticket (and then being able to push up the price of the any-operator one).

[Zomboid]

As one who lives in the Fens (Cambridgeshire) and I work in London, I have to agree London IS expensive. Even buying a simple small bottle of Coke from somewhere like Tesco or similar is much more expensive.

I've been doing a little light hearted survey during my bus commute bteween Kings X & Waterloo. I have this theory that if food related retail premises* were all closed down, there wouldn't be much left.

[* takeaways, cafes, pubs/off licence, restaurants, coffee shops & similar].

Then remove the "proper" food shops (corner shops, Tesco Express etc), followed by the "service" shops (banks, estate agents, doctor/dentist/opticians & the like).

What is left? VERY little except in small areas - perhaps such as Oxford St, or closer to work, Lower Marsh at Waterloo (where the Ian Allan shop is). Then compare this to what you find outside London.

Why would anyone choose to live in London? The best part for me (though I actually enjoy the work there) is my seat home on the 387 unit from KGX.

 

Stewart

I have much the same experience, being a commuter.

I guess the food shops thing is because people everywhere always need food, but they don't always need new trousers or a set of Lego etc. Though I have come to the conclusion that if, in London, you're never more than 5m from a rat, you're also never more than 2.7m from a Pret a Manger.

 

I used to live there as a student, and back then I couldn't understand how students managed to get a reputation for partying. I could just about afford to eat, and going out was a once a term kind of event. But I actually liked the city at the time. I must be getting old now though, it's got too crowded and expensive for me.

[APOLLO]

There's lots to do and see in London for free, the Museums, sights etc, but you don't do those every day if you live there. (Museums ask for donations, no problem for me - they get what I give them, not what they ask !!).

 

London, like all capital cities is a magnet for immigrants, legal and illegal and affordable housing will always be a problem. Perhaps a house price correction is due, this is an interesting article. London interestingly is not at the top of the property bubble list.

 

http://uk.businessinsider.com/housing-bubble-risk-cities-ubs-2017-9?r=US&IR=T/#sydney-4

 

I visit Bangkok every couple of years, have family & friends there. It can be both expensive (very) and affordable depending mainly on distance from the "centre". Food is very cheap (and very good also) - there is a wide choice of international cuisine there - even a pie shop and an English fish & chip shop (no cod - it's red snapper and very nice).

My brother in law has a lovely 4 bed detached house, fairly new, all mod cons about 5 miles from the new airport - around 15 miles from the city centre not that you would notice the city seems to sprawl for ever. He paid about the same 10 years as my 4 bed detached house in Wigan was worth around the same time.  What gets you over there are medical costs, private school fees and the like - we take a bit for granted over here. Can be very expensive for an expat with a young family (his employer helps). No social security also. 

 

Brit15

[The Stationmaster]

Most bank cards are contactless these days and you just touch them on the readers as you start and end your journey. Same price as an Oyster card complete with daily and weekly fare capping. Even if you only do it once a year it will save you money.

 

Nah - for some of us far more expensive than an Oyster Card (one of the benefits from being an Oyster Card 'guinea pig' (i.e. trial user) happens to be that you don't pay for your, perpetually renewing, Oyster Card   And in any case i don't like making contactless use of my bank cards nor do i like the lack of security that comes with contactless cards.

 

Back to town centres - our town has two reasonable sized central car parks and one of them works out as 'free' if you happen to spend enough in the adjacent branch of Waitrose plus both are now free on Saturday afternoons 'to encourage shoppers'.  But inevitably, despite time limited ticketing, they are both used for longer term parking and are invariably full during most of weekdays and Saturdays - hence we drive about 10 miles to use a different branch of Waitrose.  best answer is probably a multi-storey car park on one of the two, but that will 'spoil the look of the town'.   Seems you can't win whichever way you want to do things.   Oh and we also have three long term car parks - one of which is 50% empty most of the time while another is even less used, both involve a walk of about 6-8 minutes to reach the town centre.