(snip)

All these people in outer London suburbs who like to deny they are part of
the metropolis and think they live in rural Kent, Surrey, Essex, Herts or
'Middlesex' should take their heads out of the sand.

(snip)

........ as always it will takes generations to catch up...


As I pay council tax to the London borough of Redbridge (a name invented to
cover the cobbling together of several disparate places - Ilford, Woodford,
bits of Chadwell Heath, etc, - each with their own individual identity)I
have to accept that I live in part of Greater London. However, that does
not and never will mean that I'm a "Londoner".

My spouse and I both lived further out in Essex "proper" before we married.
The need to find somewhere to live for us and our child, within reasonable
commuting distance of our jobs which were then in the Square Mile, brought
us more or less accidentally to this borough. Just because we stepped over
an invisible line, it didn't mean we stopped being Essex people.

I don't think my head is in the sand; I appreciate the benefits of a better
bus service with lower fares than those enjoyed (endured?) by my friends
further out in deeper Essex; I shall probably make good use of my freebie
pass when I'm 60 if I haven't bailed out to somewhere saner. However, I
don't appreciate the higher crime rate, the greater urban squalor, the
higher insurance premiums, overpopulation and NOISE!
My interests, work and loyalties lie outwards into Essex and I feel little
or no affinity with "London".

It WILL take a generation or two for attitudes to change because you can't
change the way people feel inside their own heads. To those who were born
in Ilford, Essex or those who grew up knowing Ilford as part of Essex, I
think that will always be the case. And likewise for people in Bexley, Kent;
Croydon, surrey, etc. To their children and grandchildren and younger
newcomers from other parts of the world, it will be more natural to think of
it as part of London.