Comments by "Helen Trope" (@heliotropezzz333) on "Owen Jones meets Joey Barton: 'Homophobia in football shows the problems the UK faces'" video.

IsleofSkye. From your moniker it doesn't sound as though you live in London's East End either. I worked there for some years and had to visit clothing factories as part of my job. These were mostly staffed by Muslims who were always very polite and hospitable to me. I haven't walked down those streets late at night but then, as a woman, I wouldn't walk down any streets late at night unless they are well lit streets near my home.
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I worked in the Elephant and Castle area too - a very interesting area. I came to London, from elsewhere in the UK, for work reasons and I couldn't live anywhere else now being a city person. It's a pity that so many original Londoners left London but not all did. You get used to diversity. There's maybe some sense of loss for what went before but then again the past is a different country as they say. I miss diversity when I leave London now. It seems very odd to go to places where everyone is white English. I think that many people who seem to fear it most live in places where there is hardly any but I understand people's dislike of rapid change and sadness if they feel a loss of the community they knew. If they'd stayed though, it would not have been lost to them to the same extent.
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I'm more of an optimist. People do mix more and become more culturally attuned over the generations. It's a timing thing unless there are barriers against it - unemployment and racism would be barriers for instance. My background is Norman and Celtic - one that oppressed the Anglo Saxons and the other that was oppressed by the Anglo-Saxons, but there's no point getting exercised about that now is there?
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Many people also can't afford to buy a house in London but want to have one before they start a family. That's another reason to move out but I also think many of those who moved out moved for a better quality of life, better housing for their money, cleaner air, less crowded more laid back life. Fortunately we bought before the ridiculous inflation in house prices - had to save until my thirties to do so though. I don't live in the inner city -too expensive, too much concrete and noise and and too many cars - but a few miles out where it's greener. If I was a young person now I could not hope to buy anywhere in London. In a way immigrants enabled them to do that because they were ready to buy their houses at a time before it was fashionable to move into and "gentrify" some of these areas.
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