Migration into and out of London
Discussion
This came up as a subject on another thread so I thought a few people might find this interesting.
Basically there has been net migration of UK citizens out of London for decades.
From 1980 until recently this has hovered around a loss of 50,000 Uk citizens a year.
Recently this has risen sharply in 2003 and 2004 it was roughly 75,000 and 100,000 respectively.
In contrast Net Immigration from overseas into London has been positive over the period-hovering at around 25,000 a year in 1980-95, beforetaking off at that point and it has exceeded 75,000 per annum in the last few years
Full Economist Article below.
More foreigners than ever are coming to London, and more Britons are leaving
THE scene is so familiar as to be unremarkable: two businessmen of different nationalities in a London restaurant being served by a waiter from a third country, all of them speaking English. But such encounters illustrate a remarkable change going on in London. Foreigners are moving in, and Britons are moving out, faster than at any time on record. The consequences are being felt across the country.
Before the second world war, London's population grew steadily, along with that of most other British cities. After the war, along with that of most other British cities, it shrank—first because of the policy of shifting people out of the slums into new towns, and second because of the decline of the heavy industries which had brought people to the cities in the first place.
In the 1990s, other cities went on shrinking. Manchester's population dropped by 10% in 1991-2001, Liverpool's by 8%, Newcastle's by 6% and Birmingham's by 3%. London grew by 4.8% over the period, partly because it has a high birth rate, but mostly because the foreigners started arriving.
Britain's previous big wave of migration, in the 1960s and 1970s, shipped in south Asian workers, many of them to man the textile mills of the north. But these days, the jobs are in the south, so that's where the immigrants go. According to Migration Watch, a lobby group, two-thirds of the immigrants who have turned up in Britain since the mid-1990s have come to London. London's net gain of foreigners, after taking into account those who left as well as those who came, was 120,000 in 2000. And that's just the legal ones.
This has helped keep London's economy buzzing. According to Experian Business Strategies, a consultancy, the city's average annual growth rate in 1995-2002 was 3.3%, compared with 2.5% for the country as a whole. That's not just because London's population has grown a mite faster than Britain's. Employers say the workforce has changed. “I can get much better quality these days,” says Hari Salem, a hairdresser in South Kensington. “These foreign kids do everything before you ask them to. They show up the others' laziness. They make them get off their bottoms.”
Who are these people? The mix has changed since the 1970s brought mostly Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. These days, they come from everywhere—though, according to a Home Office report published in 2002, the proportion from high-income countries (as defined by the World Bank) is relatively high. While 67% of new immigrants to Britain come from high-income countries, 30% of those into Germany and 24% of those into France do. And Britain has more top foreign bosses (see article) than Germany, France or America.
There's something in the standard picture of the American banker and the Somali cleaner. Immigrants are economically polarised. Compared with the locals, more have degrees, but more have no qualifications at all (though that is partly explained by the fact that so many of them are students). On average, they earn 19% more than locals, but that disguises some sharp variations. White immigrants, by and large, earn quite a bit more than locals. Brown and black ones earn less.
Immigrants work more in growing businesses—such as health—than locals do, and less in shrinking ones—such as manufacturing. They are more self-employed than locals—at the top of the scale, 25% of Middle Easterners and 19% of Eastern Europeans are self-employed, compared with 11% of British-born people.
The foreigners' arrival has changed London visibly. New ethnic villages have sprung up all over the place. The Arabs have long been in Bayswater, the West Indians in Brixton, the Punjabis in Southall and the Bangladeshis in Tower Hamlets. Now the Poles are in Lambeth and Southwark, the Algerians and Moroccans are in Finsbury Park, the Kosovans and Albanians are in Enfield and Newham, the Iraqis in Barnet and the Congolese in Croydon.
The Europeans and Americans are all over central London. Foreign accents have long been as common as local ones in Mayfair; now that is true in large parts of Kensington, Chelsea, Holland Park and Notting Hill. Indigenous professionals, who would have lived in those areas in the 1970s and 1980s, have been forced to colonise dodgier boroughs such as Hackney and Lambeth.
The foreigners have helped drive London property prices further above those of the rest of the country. Over the past decade, according to figures from the Nationwide Building Society, prices in London have risen more than half as fast again as those in the rest of Britain.
Rising property prices hurt those struggling to get on to the ladder. But for those already on it, they have been a boon. Home-owning Londoners have found themselves sitting on large piles of cash. That has allowed them to do what Londoners, traditionally, long to do: move out.
The Home Office publishes statistics on immmigration. See also the Greater London Authority, Migration Watch, Experian Business Strategies, Greater London Group and the Countryside Agency.
The British have always been romantic about the countryside. While the great Dutch portraits are of dour-looking burghers and the French ones of half-clad ladies in luxurious interiors, Gainsborough painted gentlemen and their wives complacently surveying their rolling acres. The great French 19th-century novels—Flaubert and Balzac, for instance—are resolutely bourgeois. The great British 19th-century novels are either rural—Austen and Eliot—or they are about how horrible towns are—Dickens and Mrs Gaskell.
While prosperous French merchants built grand townhouses, 19th-century British industrialists aped the aristocracy and settled in the country. Poorer people have long shared the rural romance too. In an opinion poll in 1939, 61% said that they would like to live in the countryside. According to a Gallup survey in 1997, 54% would like to live in the countryside or a village, well over twice the number (24%) who currently do. Adding on the number who would like to live in a small town, 72% would like to live outside a city. “Quietness”, “escape from the rat-race”, “fewer non-white people” were some of the reasons given in a survey in 1994.
For those who find London's ethnic mix threatening, high levels of immigration have given them reason as well as opportunity to move out. They have increased pressure on London's stretched public services, too. More immigrants mean more children with a poor command of English. They struggle at school and make life difficult for teachers. In Inner London, 38% of children get five or more good GCSEs; in England as a whole, 48% do. Rising property prices have made it harder to recruit teachers and nurses. In London, 12% of teachers are unqualified or temporary. In England as a whole, the figure is 6%. Rich people, as a result, feel condemned to send their children to expensive private schools (fees around £10,000 a year at secondary level): 16% of secondary school children go to independent schools in London, compared with 8% across England as a whole.
While the drawbacks to living in London have increased, so those to living in the countryside have diminished. “Not only does the countryside have the best schools and hospitals,” points out Tony Travers, head of the Greater London Group at the London School of Economics, “but it also has universal provision of services, like post offices and buses, mandated by central government. Broadband is now available almost everywhere. And these days, as shops have improved, you're never very far from a sun-dried tomato.”
So, fleeing poor public services, crime and congestion, and armed with the cash they have liberated from their homes, Londoners have been heading for the countryside in ever-larger numbers. The exodus, according to Tony Champion of Newcastle University, has always been made up of three groups: retired people, long-distance commuters, and those who have found jobs in the countryside. But these days, distance working—mobile phones, internet connections—and more flexible retirement ages have blurred the distinctions between the three groups. People often move out to commute in to their City job, then wind the job down but turn themselves into consultants and work from home.
Where are the townies moving to? Not just, as might be expected, to the home counties. Property in Surrey, Hampshire, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire is as expensive as in rich London, and councils are reluctant to let developers build. So areas farther afield have been growing faster recently (see chart). Farming's decline has helped the townies. According to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, nearly half the people who bought farms in the second quarter of this year were non-farmers.
Unexpected places are booming. Ely, not so long ago a sad little East Anglian town whose disproportionately large cathedral symbolised the area's centuries-old decline, has been the fastest-growing district outside the City of London over the past decade. “If you had lived here ten years ago, you wouldn't recognise it,” says Ray Harding, who runs community services at the East Cambridgeshire District Council. The town centre, which looked as though it was dying in the mid-1990s, has been revived by cafes, bookshops and art galleries. The downside, he says, is that you can't get a place in the station car park after 7.30 in the morning or a seat on the train home from London in the evening.
The influx from London is helping the rural economy. Townies who buy in to the countryside are an important source of growth. According to a report published by the Countryside Agency in March 2003, incomers (most of them former city-dwellers) are responsible for two-thirds of the new businesses formed in the countryside. And each of those businesses creates, on average, 1.7 jobs.
The outflow also sharpens the difference between London and the rest of the country. London is more foreign than the rest of Britain; more ethnically diverse; more economically polarised; faster-breeding; younger—and getting more so. The countryside, meanwhile, is as white as ever, and getting older. The divide between London and the rest of the country is also causing tensions—over London's disproportionate contribution to taxes, for instance, while public services in the capital are so bad.
And this process is likely to go on. London's financial services industry may have slowed down, but next year will bring a further boost to foreign immigration, when ten new countries join the EU. The other big EU countries will not give the Union's new citizens the right to work straight away; they intend to phase it in. Britain, in contrast, will give the newcomers free access to the labour market from the start. The Home Office reckons that will mean 5,000-13,000 extra net migrants a year, but since 20,000 people from those countries tried and failed to get into Britain in 2001, that seems likely to be an underestimate.
That is unlikely to trouble the government. Immigration may be politically sensitive, but the government understands how migration has driven London's economy, and London has driven Britain's. It wants the motor to keep on running.
>>> Edited by JagLover on Monday 11th April 16:07
Basically there has been net migration of UK citizens out of London for decades.
From 1980 until recently this has hovered around a loss of 50,000 Uk citizens a year.
Recently this has risen sharply in 2003 and 2004 it was roughly 75,000 and 100,000 respectively.
In contrast Net Immigration from overseas into London has been positive over the period-hovering at around 25,000 a year in 1980-95, beforetaking off at that point and it has exceeded 75,000 per annum in the last few years
Full Economist Article below.
More foreigners than ever are coming to London, and more Britons are leaving
THE scene is so familiar as to be unremarkable: two businessmen of different nationalities in a London restaurant being served by a waiter from a third country, all of them speaking English. But such encounters illustrate a remarkable change going on in London. Foreigners are moving in, and Britons are moving out, faster than at any time on record. The consequences are being felt across the country.
Before the second world war, London's population grew steadily, along with that of most other British cities. After the war, along with that of most other British cities, it shrank—first because of the policy of shifting people out of the slums into new towns, and second because of the decline of the heavy industries which had brought people to the cities in the first place.
In the 1990s, other cities went on shrinking. Manchester's population dropped by 10% in 1991-2001, Liverpool's by 8%, Newcastle's by 6% and Birmingham's by 3%. London grew by 4.8% over the period, partly because it has a high birth rate, but mostly because the foreigners started arriving.
Britain's previous big wave of migration, in the 1960s and 1970s, shipped in south Asian workers, many of them to man the textile mills of the north. But these days, the jobs are in the south, so that's where the immigrants go. According to Migration Watch, a lobby group, two-thirds of the immigrants who have turned up in Britain since the mid-1990s have come to London. London's net gain of foreigners, after taking into account those who left as well as those who came, was 120,000 in 2000. And that's just the legal ones.
This has helped keep London's economy buzzing. According to Experian Business Strategies, a consultancy, the city's average annual growth rate in 1995-2002 was 3.3%, compared with 2.5% for the country as a whole. That's not just because London's population has grown a mite faster than Britain's. Employers say the workforce has changed. “I can get much better quality these days,” says Hari Salem, a hairdresser in South Kensington. “These foreign kids do everything before you ask them to. They show up the others' laziness. They make them get off their bottoms.”
Who are these people? The mix has changed since the 1970s brought mostly Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. These days, they come from everywhere—though, according to a Home Office report published in 2002, the proportion from high-income countries (as defined by the World Bank) is relatively high. While 67% of new immigrants to Britain come from high-income countries, 30% of those into Germany and 24% of those into France do. And Britain has more top foreign bosses (see article) than Germany, France or America.
There's something in the standard picture of the American banker and the Somali cleaner. Immigrants are economically polarised. Compared with the locals, more have degrees, but more have no qualifications at all (though that is partly explained by the fact that so many of them are students). On average, they earn 19% more than locals, but that disguises some sharp variations. White immigrants, by and large, earn quite a bit more than locals. Brown and black ones earn less.
Immigrants work more in growing businesses—such as health—than locals do, and less in shrinking ones—such as manufacturing. They are more self-employed than locals—at the top of the scale, 25% of Middle Easterners and 19% of Eastern Europeans are self-employed, compared with 11% of British-born people.
The foreigners' arrival has changed London visibly. New ethnic villages have sprung up all over the place. The Arabs have long been in Bayswater, the West Indians in Brixton, the Punjabis in Southall and the Bangladeshis in Tower Hamlets. Now the Poles are in Lambeth and Southwark, the Algerians and Moroccans are in Finsbury Park, the Kosovans and Albanians are in Enfield and Newham, the Iraqis in Barnet and the Congolese in Croydon.
The Europeans and Americans are all over central London. Foreign accents have long been as common as local ones in Mayfair; now that is true in large parts of Kensington, Chelsea, Holland Park and Notting Hill. Indigenous professionals, who would have lived in those areas in the 1970s and 1980s, have been forced to colonise dodgier boroughs such as Hackney and Lambeth.
The foreigners have helped drive London property prices further above those of the rest of the country. Over the past decade, according to figures from the Nationwide Building Society, prices in London have risen more than half as fast again as those in the rest of Britain.
Rising property prices hurt those struggling to get on to the ladder. But for those already on it, they have been a boon. Home-owning Londoners have found themselves sitting on large piles of cash. That has allowed them to do what Londoners, traditionally, long to do: move out.
The Home Office publishes statistics on immmigration. See also the Greater London Authority, Migration Watch, Experian Business Strategies, Greater London Group and the Countryside Agency.
The British have always been romantic about the countryside. While the great Dutch portraits are of dour-looking burghers and the French ones of half-clad ladies in luxurious interiors, Gainsborough painted gentlemen and their wives complacently surveying their rolling acres. The great French 19th-century novels—Flaubert and Balzac, for instance—are resolutely bourgeois. The great British 19th-century novels are either rural—Austen and Eliot—or they are about how horrible towns are—Dickens and Mrs Gaskell.
While prosperous French merchants built grand townhouses, 19th-century British industrialists aped the aristocracy and settled in the country. Poorer people have long shared the rural romance too. In an opinion poll in 1939, 61% said that they would like to live in the countryside. According to a Gallup survey in 1997, 54% would like to live in the countryside or a village, well over twice the number (24%) who currently do. Adding on the number who would like to live in a small town, 72% would like to live outside a city. “Quietness”, “escape from the rat-race”, “fewer non-white people” were some of the reasons given in a survey in 1994.
For those who find London's ethnic mix threatening, high levels of immigration have given them reason as well as opportunity to move out. They have increased pressure on London's stretched public services, too. More immigrants mean more children with a poor command of English. They struggle at school and make life difficult for teachers. In Inner London, 38% of children get five or more good GCSEs; in England as a whole, 48% do. Rising property prices have made it harder to recruit teachers and nurses. In London, 12% of teachers are unqualified or temporary. In England as a whole, the figure is 6%. Rich people, as a result, feel condemned to send their children to expensive private schools (fees around £10,000 a year at secondary level): 16% of secondary school children go to independent schools in London, compared with 8% across England as a whole.
While the drawbacks to living in London have increased, so those to living in the countryside have diminished. “Not only does the countryside have the best schools and hospitals,” points out Tony Travers, head of the Greater London Group at the London School of Economics, “but it also has universal provision of services, like post offices and buses, mandated by central government. Broadband is now available almost everywhere. And these days, as shops have improved, you're never very far from a sun-dried tomato.”
So, fleeing poor public services, crime and congestion, and armed with the cash they have liberated from their homes, Londoners have been heading for the countryside in ever-larger numbers. The exodus, according to Tony Champion of Newcastle University, has always been made up of three groups: retired people, long-distance commuters, and those who have found jobs in the countryside. But these days, distance working—mobile phones, internet connections—and more flexible retirement ages have blurred the distinctions between the three groups. People often move out to commute in to their City job, then wind the job down but turn themselves into consultants and work from home.
Where are the townies moving to? Not just, as might be expected, to the home counties. Property in Surrey, Hampshire, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire is as expensive as in rich London, and councils are reluctant to let developers build. So areas farther afield have been growing faster recently (see chart). Farming's decline has helped the townies. According to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, nearly half the people who bought farms in the second quarter of this year were non-farmers.
Unexpected places are booming. Ely, not so long ago a sad little East Anglian town whose disproportionately large cathedral symbolised the area's centuries-old decline, has been the fastest-growing district outside the City of London over the past decade. “If you had lived here ten years ago, you wouldn't recognise it,” says Ray Harding, who runs community services at the East Cambridgeshire District Council. The town centre, which looked as though it was dying in the mid-1990s, has been revived by cafes, bookshops and art galleries. The downside, he says, is that you can't get a place in the station car park after 7.30 in the morning or a seat on the train home from London in the evening.
The influx from London is helping the rural economy. Townies who buy in to the countryside are an important source of growth. According to a report published by the Countryside Agency in March 2003, incomers (most of them former city-dwellers) are responsible for two-thirds of the new businesses formed in the countryside. And each of those businesses creates, on average, 1.7 jobs.
The outflow also sharpens the difference between London and the rest of the country. London is more foreign than the rest of Britain; more ethnically diverse; more economically polarised; faster-breeding; younger—and getting more so. The countryside, meanwhile, is as white as ever, and getting older. The divide between London and the rest of the country is also causing tensions—over London's disproportionate contribution to taxes, for instance, while public services in the capital are so bad.
And this process is likely to go on. London's financial services industry may have slowed down, but next year will bring a further boost to foreign immigration, when ten new countries join the EU. The other big EU countries will not give the Union's new citizens the right to work straight away; they intend to phase it in. Britain, in contrast, will give the newcomers free access to the labour market from the start. The Home Office reckons that will mean 5,000-13,000 extra net migrants a year, but since 20,000 people from those countries tried and failed to get into Britain in 2001, that seems likely to be an underestimate.
That is unlikely to trouble the government. Immigration may be politically sensitive, but the government understands how migration has driven London's economy, and London has driven Britain's. It wants the motor to keep on running.
>>> Edited by JagLover on Monday 11th April 16:07
JagLover said:
This came up as a subject on another thread so I thought a few people might find this interesting.
Basically there has been net migration of UK citizens out of London for decades.
From 1980 until recently this has hovered around a loss of 50,000 Uk citizens a year.
Recently this has risen sharply in 2003 and 2004 it was roughly 75,000 and 100,000 respectively.
In contrast Net Immigration from overseas into London has been positive over the period-hovering at around 25,000 a year in 1980-95, beforetaking off at that point and it has exceeded 75,000 per annum in the last few years
Full Economist Article below.
More foreigners than ever are coming to London, and more Britons are leaving
THE scene is so familiar as to be unremarkable: two businessmen of different nationalities in a London restaurant being served by a waiter from a third country, all of them speaking English. But such encounters illustrate a remarkable change going on in London. Foreigners are moving in, and Britons are moving out, faster than at any time on record. The consequences are being felt across the country.
Before the second world war, London's population grew steadily, along with that of most other British cities. After the war, along with that of most other British cities, it shrank—first because of the policy of shifting people out of the slums into new towns, and second because of the decline of the heavy industries which had brought people to the cities in the first place.
In the 1990s, other cities went on shrinking. Manchester's population dropped by 10% in 1991-2001, Liverpool's by 8%, Newcastle's by 6% and Birmingham's by 3%. London grew by 4.8% over the period, partly because it has a high birth rate, but mostly because the foreigners started arriving.
Britain's previous big wave of migration, in the 1960s and 1970s, shipped in south Asian workers, many of them to man the textile mills of the north. But these days, the jobs are in the south, so that's where the immigrants go. According to Migration Watch, a lobby group, two-thirds of the immigrants who have turned up in Britain since the mid-1990s have come to London. London's net gain of foreigners, after taking into account those who left as well as those who came, was 120,000 in 2000. And that's just the legal ones.
This has helped keep London's economy buzzing. According to Experian Business Strategies, a consultancy, the city's average annual growth rate in 1995-2002 was 3.3%, compared with 2.5% for the country as a whole. That's not just because London's population has grown a mite faster than Britain's. Employers say the workforce has changed. “I can get much better quality these days,” says Hari Salem, a hairdresser in South Kensington. “These foreign kids do everything before you ask them to. They show up the others' laziness. They make them get off their bottoms.”
Who are these people? The mix has changed since the 1970s brought mostly Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. These days, they come from everywhere—though, according to a Home Office report published in 2002, the proportion from high-income countries (as defined by the World Bank) is relatively high. While 67% of new immigrants to Britain come from high-income countries, 30% of those into Germany and 24% of those into France do. And Britain has more top foreign bosses (see article) than Germany, France or America.
There's something in the standard picture of the American banker and the Somali cleaner. Immigrants are economically polarised. Compared with the locals, more have degrees, but more have no qualifications at all (though that is partly explained by the fact that so many of them are students). On average, they earn 19% more than locals, but that disguises some sharp variations. White immigrants, by and large, earn quite a bit more than locals. Brown and black ones earn less.
Immigrants work more in growing businesses—such as health—than locals do, and less in shrinking ones—such as manufacturing. They are more self-employed than locals—at the top of the scale, 25% of Middle Easterners and 19% of Eastern Europeans are self-employed, compared with 11% of British-born people.
The foreigners' arrival has changed London visibly. New ethnic villages have sprung up all over the place. The Arabs have long been in Bayswater, the West Indians in Brixton, the Punjabis in Southall and the Bangladeshis in Tower Hamlets. Now the Poles are in Lambeth and Southwark, the Algerians and Moroccans are in Finsbury Park, the Kosovans and Albanians are in Enfield and Newham, the Iraqis in Barnet and the Congolese in Croydon.
The Europeans and Americans are all over central London. Foreign accents have long been as common as local ones in Mayfair; now that is true in large parts of Kensington, Chelsea, Holland Park and Notting Hill. Indigenous professionals, who would have lived in those areas in the 1970s and 1980s, have been forced to colonise dodgier boroughs such as Hackney and Lambeth.
The foreigners have helped drive London property prices further above those of the rest of the country. Over the past decade, according to figures from the Nationwide Building Society, prices in London have risen more than half as fast again as those in the rest of Britain.
Rising property prices hurt those struggling to get on to the ladder. But for those already on it, they have been a boon. Home-owning Londoners have found themselves sitting on large piles of cash. That has allowed them to do what Londoners, traditionally, long to do: move out.
The Home Office publishes statistics on immmigration. See also the Greater London Authority, Migration Watch, Experian Business Strategies, Greater London Group and the Countryside Agency.
The British have always been romantic about the countryside. While the great Dutch portraits are of dour-looking burghers and the French ones of half-clad ladies in luxurious interiors, Gainsborough painted gentlemen and their wives complacently surveying their rolling acres. The great French 19th-century novels—Flaubert and Balzac, for instance—are resolutely bourgeois. The great British 19th-century novels are either rural—Austen and Eliot—or they are about how horrible towns are—Dickens and Mrs Gaskell.
While prosperous French merchants built grand townhouses, 19th-century British industrialists aped the aristocracy and settled in the country. Poorer people have long shared the rural romance too. In an opinion poll in 1939, 61% said that they would like to live in the countryside. According to a Gallup survey in 1997, 54% would like to live in the countryside or a village, well over twice the number (24%) who currently do. Adding on the number who would like to live in a small town, 72% would like to live outside a city. “Quietness”, “escape from the rat-race”, “fewer non-white people” were some of the reasons given in a survey in 1994.
For those who find London's ethnic mix threatening, high levels of immigration have given them reason as well as opportunity to move out. They have increased pressure on London's stretched public services, too. More immigrants mean more children with a poor command of English. They struggle at school and make life difficult for teachers. In Inner London, 38% of children get five or more good GCSEs; in England as a whole, 48% do. Rising property prices have made it harder to recruit teachers and nurses. In London, 12% of teachers are unqualified or temporary. In England as a whole, the figure is 6%. Rich people, as a result, feel condemned to send their children to expensive private schools (fees around £10,000 a year at secondary level): 16% of secondary school children go to independent schools in London, compared with 8% across England as a whole.
While the drawbacks to living in London have increased, so those to living in the countryside have diminished. “Not only does the countryside have the best schools and hospitals,” points out Tony Travers, head of the Greater London Group at the London School of Economics, “but it also has universal provision of services, like post offices and buses, mandated by central government. Broadband is now available almost everywhere. And these days, as shops have improved, you're never very far from a sun-dried tomato.”
So, fleeing poor public services, crime and congestion, and armed with the cash they have liberated from their homes, Londoners have been heading for the countryside in ever-larger numbers. The exodus, according to Tony Champion of Newcastle University, has always been made up of three groups: retired people, long-distance commuters, and those who have found jobs in the countryside. But these days, distance working—mobile phones, internet connections—and more flexible retirement ages have blurred the distinctions between the three groups. People often move out to commute in to their City job, then wind the job down but turn themselves into consultants and work from home.
Where are the townies moving to? Not just, as might be expected, to the home counties. Property in Surrey, Hampshire, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire is as expensive as in rich London, and councils are reluctant to let developers build. So areas farther afield have been growing faster recently (see chart). Farming's decline has helped the townies. According to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, nearly half the people who bought farms in the second quarter of this year were non-farmers.
Unexpected places are booming. Ely, not so long ago a sad little East Anglian town whose disproportionately large cathedral symbolised the area's centuries-old decline, has been the fastest-growing district outside the City of London over the past decade. “If you had lived here ten years ago, you wouldn't recognise it,” says Ray Harding, who runs community services at the East Cambridgeshire District Council. The town centre, which looked as though it was dying in the mid-1990s, has been revived by cafes, bookshops and art galleries. The downside, he says, is that you can't get a place in the station car park after 7.30 in the morning or a seat on the train home from London in the evening.
The influx from London is helping the rural economy. Townies who buy in to the countryside are an important source of growth. According to a report published by the Countryside Agency in March 2003, incomers (most of them former city-dwellers) are responsible for two-thirds of the new businesses formed in the countryside. And each of those businesses creates, on average, 1.7 jobs.
The outflow also sharpens the difference between London and the rest of the country. London is more foreign than the rest of Britain; more ethnically diverse; more economically polarised; faster-breeding; younger—and getting more so. The countryside, meanwhile, is as white as ever, and getting older. The divide between London and the rest of the country is also causing tensions—over London's disproportionate contribution to taxes, for instance, while public services in the capital are so bad.
And this process is likely to go on. London's financial services industry may have slowed down, but next year will bring a further boost to foreign immigration, when ten new countries join the EU. The other big EU countries will not give the Union's new citizens the right to work straight away; they intend to phase it in. Britain, in contrast, will give the newcomers free access to the labour market from the start. The Home Office reckons that will mean 5,000-13,000 extra net migrants a year, but since 20,000 people from those countries tried and failed to get into Britain in 2001, that seems likely to be an underestimate.
That is unlikely to trouble the government. Immigration may be politically sensitive, but the government understands how migration has driven London's economy, and London has driven Britain's. It wants the motor to keep on running.
>>> Edited by JagLover on Monday 11th April 16:07
i think the net outflow of rich whites will cause the house prices to implode in london when it gets to the point that people just refuse to work there because it becomes a crime ridden dump. The only people i know that live there cant wait to get qualified and leave.
Hardcore2000 said:
i think the net outflow of rich whites will cause the house prices to implode in london when it gets to the point that people just refuse to work there because it becomes a crime ridden dump. The only people i know that live there cant wait to get qualified and leave.
Those of us who need to work in London (like me) will probably move more and more to the outskirts or into the surrounding countryside.
To me it's one of the best things about London. Where I worked there was only one person in the entire agency (advertsing) who had been born within earshot of Bow bells and only another 2 from the whole of Greater London.
Our neighbours (in W1) were French, Turkish and Croatian all were useful members of society and very hard workers, all contributed much and took little, all were professionals or managers and we enjoyed their company.
Sure there are loads of spongers but any city has that, very few British born people would work for the wages the Polish guy is pulling at the cafe on the corner, yet we were happy to eat the very reasonably priced breakfast every Sunday morning. Just as our agency found it useful to employ talented people from all over the world.
Most of the time we are net gainers and when not, take the massive equity that the foreigners have given you (according to article) and GTF out of there.
Our neighbours (in W1) were French, Turkish and Croatian all were useful members of society and very hard workers, all contributed much and took little, all were professionals or managers and we enjoyed their company.
Sure there are loads of spongers but any city has that, very few British born people would work for the wages the Polish guy is pulling at the cafe on the corner, yet we were happy to eat the very reasonably priced breakfast every Sunday morning. Just as our agency found it useful to employ talented people from all over the world.
Most of the time we are net gainers and when not, take the massive equity that the foreigners have given you (according to article) and GTF out of there.
sj78 said:People who drive Caterhams and Fiats always make sweeping statements.
London is a shithole
Couldn't have put it better myself
Actually, I'm delighted that you chaps don't like London. We would much rather that people who don't want to be here lived elsewhere. Those of us born and bred here know that nowhere else in the world offers a more cosmopolitan, more vibrant, more interesting collection of people, places and ideas.
Sorry if you don't get that where you come from...
willmcc said:
Most of the time we are net gainers and when not, take the massive equity that the foreigners have given you (according to article) and GTF out of there.
Oh I can agree with you that we are net gainers from alot of the foreigners that come here.
That doesn't mean I regard London as a nice place to live though.
bruce fielding said:
Actually, I'm delighted that you chaps don't like London. We would much rather that people who don't want to be here lived elsewhere. Those of us born and bred here know that nowhere else in the world offers a more cosmopolitan, more vibrant, more interesting collection of people, places and ideas.
Sorry if you don't get that where you come from...
Possibly as long as you don't mind driving for 2 hours before you ger to decent roads and can afford three times as much for a house with a garage
And IMHO you get more diversity in countryside and coastline than you do in a city
And "interesting collection of people"
I assume that means not making eye contact on public transport and the way you're meant to feel hugely "welcome" in the local pub >> BTW meant to say, how are you old fruit. Much track action this year
>> Edited by Incorrigible on Monday 11th April 17:00
bruce fielding said:
Incorrigible said:
London is a shithole
Couldn't have put it better myself
People who drive Caterhams and Fiats always make sweeping statements.
Actually, I'm delighted that you chaps don't like London. We would much rather that people who don't want to be here lived elsewhere. Those of us born and bred here know that nowhere else in the world offers a more cosmopolitan, more vibrant, more interesting collection of people, places and ideas.
Sorry if you don't get that where you come from...
'Maybe its because you're a Londoner'.....
Yeah sweeping statement maybe, but having lived in north, south and west London for ten years and having worked there both in the City and the West End until last year, I have experienced it myself.
I'm lucky that I can still travel in and stay with friends and get the exact same 'fantastic' social life London and it's £3.50 a bottle of beer provides, but get double the size of place to live.
For me the downsides more than outweigh the advantages.
I love living in London. I live in Dulwich, which is gorgeous, and my friends are all pretty near by. That art, museums, theatre and events on my doorstep (or half an hour away) are various and excellent.
Yes, it's dirty, and expensive, and crime is rising. But at this age, I love it. In the summer I close the door to my flat, head upstairs and sit out on the roof terrace overlooking the garden, with park and trees in the background, and toast life with a glass of Sancerre, thanks.
Yes, it's dirty, and expensive, and crime is rising. But at this age, I love it. In the summer I close the door to my flat, head upstairs and sit out on the roof terrace overlooking the garden, with park and trees in the background, and toast life with a glass of Sancerre, thanks.
Incorrigible said:
And IMHO you get more diversity in countryside and coastline than you do in a city
And "interesting collection of people"
BTW meant to say, how are you old fruit. Much track action this year
That first statement is incredible! "You 'baint from round these 'ere parrrts" is never heard in London!
The population where I live (Camden Town) are probably the most diverse in the world. And tourism means it gets even more complex at weekends. The pubs are a damned sight more unfriendly in the countryside, and the 'personal bubble' on public transport is the same in every city.
We could get back into that old City vs Country row, but why, in the worlds of President James Dale, "can't we all just... get along?"
And yes, lots of track action in my latest Atom (now a 220 Honda) but driving it in London is sooo cool. It's the ultimate cruise machine in town and anyone who says you can't have fun in one in the city is just kidding themselves.
Ah Camden 
the only place in London where I've struck up a conversation without the other bloke thinking I was from another planet
(Particularly ironic as he was dressed like he'd just landed from another planet)
I think there are nice bits but I can't even afford to have a (by my criteria) decent house in the crap bits
I think country pubs have changed quite a lot recently too, I haven't had one of those "darts stopping in mid air" moments for about 10 years. If you can bear the commute
I'd be happy to show you some
the only place in London where I've struck up a conversation without the other bloke thinking I was from another planet (Particularly ironic as he was dressed like he'd just landed from another planet)
I think there are nice bits but I can't even afford to have a (by my criteria) decent house in the crap bits
I think country pubs have changed quite a lot recently too, I haven't had one of those "darts stopping in mid air" moments for about 10 years. If you can bear the commute
I'd be happy to show you somebruce fielding said:
Incorrigible said:
London is a shithole
Couldn't have put it better myself
People who drive Caterhams and Fiats always make sweeping statements.
Actually, I'm delighted that you chaps don't like London. We would much rather that people who don't want to be here lived elsewhere. Those of us born and bred here know that nowhere else in the world offers a more cosmopolitan, more vibrant, more interesting collection of people, places and ideas.
Sorry if you don't get that where you come from...
London is full of criminals and general scum trying to fleece you of your money in the most diverse of ways. Its full of low lifes trying to parasite of a small population of hard working individuals who are forced to work there to put a roof over their familys heads. You will be hard pressed to find people who would choose to work there given a choice. Everyone i know working in the city is always getting ill due to the close proximity to other people on the public transport.
Everyone takes their own experience from the place, i decided early to not commute and looked at the massive price we paid to live as offset against commuting time.
One thing about central london though it does help to be:
1.Young
or
2. Loaded
or
3. Both(preferrably)
never been 3-
definitely not 1 -
so have to work on 2 if we are ever going to go back there, probable result might be to sell up but either way it was some of the best years I have had and still the most fun and genuinely cosmopoliton city I have lived in.
One thing about central london though it does help to be:
1.Young
or
2. Loaded
or
3. Both(preferrably)
never been 3-
definitely not 1 -
so have to work on 2 if we are ever going to go back there, probable result might be to sell up but either way it was some of the best years I have had and still the most fun and genuinely cosmopoliton city I have lived in.
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