Hanging in London

It was late summer and I stayed where I live in London for a while, normally I'm out on the road. First of all it is one of the largest cities on earth. The official population is 9.9 million, but that does not include millions more who commute to it for work, tourists, illegal immigrants, people visiting family or friends and business people who may be there for weeks and probably some more. Figure around 20 million. It is also very expensive with tons of public (but unreliable) transport and that's just the general stuff. I pay little attention to the place so did some research and I was in for a rather big surprise.

I live in the southeast corner of it. The rush hours are about 2-3 hours long each, depending on where you work and the drivers are not all that good, but improving. Fortunately where I reside is kind of quiet most of the time. Because it's such a big city there are large numbers of emergency vehicles going by with their sirens on. Folk going up and down on sidewalks (they're called footpaths here). Kids and adults with electric scooters and bicycles, which are illegal and a lot of them get busted.

Non rush hour traffic in a suburb.

I was a bit surprised on this road, there is very little litter. Elsewhere, however, I would say: if it's litter, it's London. The stuff is all over the place. Getting out and walking around is something I like to do, but the pollution is high here, which gives me catarrh, and it is invisible. Are people friendly? Not particularly, though found the non natives okay and the English working class. The middle class are another matter.

Dishonesty

I personally have been lied to by many white middle class English people and in 2 cases they attempted to kill me, just because I have a North American accent. I went to another town, outside of London. In it I asked 5 different people, all middle class natives, where the post office was (I knew). All 5 of them told me absolute lies. A German backpacker had a map in his hand and showed me where it was. A middle class woman came back, shouting at me for not believing her. She was one of the liars. I basically told her to shove it.

But it gets worse. Censorship is the rule here. Some years back I met an art director of a major London newspaper. He told me how he'd been on the job for a couple of days and found out every word, comma and image was controlled by a government censor. He walked out after that from what I gather. The poor English people are lied to constantly by their government, the media and education. How terribly sad that is. You do get that in other countries, but not to the extent it is practiced here. If you look carefully, until the internet, nearly all they did was lie about the USA and Israel (the 2 countries which kicked them out) and other countries. It still goes on!

Where to avoid big time
When in the city, I attend a special Metropolitan Police panel. Women, be careful! Turn your intuition on high! England has a very high rape problem, one of the highest in the world. Do not walk alone, especially after dark or down dodgy looking streets. Avoid all parks after dark.

I have traveled over a lot of this corner of the globe in my life. I was brought up to respect and be friendly with people, regardless of their color etc. In Southeast London is a very nasty little town named Beckenham. It is the most racist place I have ever encountered (I was safer in Harlem and South Chicago). It's mainly white middle class English and they will not even sell you a house unless you are also. It was here that the 2 attempts on my life, mentioned earlier, took place and in both cases they were white middle class. The few working class people are fine.

Then there are the immigrants. London apparently has around 300+ different languages spoken here. There are more immigrants than English people here now and a visit to a village where the middle class English who'd left London to live, proved not good. Personally if I need to know something, I ask the immigrants. Some have been born here but still speak their home tongue and prove very helpful.

But it may not be their fault

This is an island nation. All over the world there are many such places and they all have one thing in common. Over thousands of years they have become inbred, their IQ's are low and they cannot help it. I have to give them room on that. However, the Englishh will lie about it and had probably the nastiest empire on earth. In India alone they exterminated somewhere over 100 million people, to prove how wonderful their empire was, and that is just one country—that is just plain evil! Yes, the Spanish Empire was bad, but not to this degree. The name has been changed to commonwealth, but if we're honest it is still an empire and whoever sits on the throne gets billions of UK Pounds each year.

Is there anything good about this country?

Oh yes! If you get up high and look across the London area, it looks a bit like a forest. There are hundreds of parks and a huge amount of trees. I like to get out and walk, so do just that often. A few of the parks were large and empty during the week, I 'm often the only one there and it's nice to get away from it all.

Then there are the trails. For such a little country there are officially 3,600 miles of national ones, but that's only around the entire coast line. Inside that must be about 100,000 miles of other trails (they call them footpaths instead) and I've walked a lot of them over the years. In summer the countryside is beautiful and in nearly all hikes I saw no one. I rains a lot here so waterproofs are a necessity and high hiking boots to keep the water out. I use Quechua boots from Decathlon because they were the only ones in the country I found that did not slip in the wet. Had to laugh at that...

I found a park near me and sat in this tree for a while. It was very quiet and peaceful.

Summing it all up

Not all English people are bad, there are those who have been fine but they are a minority and traveling around to different countries even Canada, the USA and parts of Eastern Europe I find it very sad that the British are what they are and the lies they have been told all their lives about other countries adds to it all.

Tourist areas are the same worldwide, full of people getting ripped off and thinking it's nice, they have't got a clue. Get away from those parts of the city and you will find some nice suburbs where people are friendly and for the most part okay.

London is extremely expensive so eating out can cost you a bomb and English food is terrible. Look around in the suburbs where the locals come from other countries and you will find their food costs a lot less and tastes great. That's because those locals will not eat it if it isn't. As for coffee, I found the English coffee shops stuff is terrible, a few may be okay. Go to Italian cafes, Starbucks or similar, once again the locals will show you.

Finally

I know this has sounded very negative but, when it all hits you in the face and you were not expecting it, there is truth and I will not deny that. Sometimes I wish I didn't do the research.

Sad really...

Oct 11, 2026