East Dulwich in the New Statesman

[Brendan]

Although you?re right, this dead horse has had just about enough I think.

And why on the gods? green earth am I letting idiots in charge of keyboards get to me. I should know better.

[mockney piers]

Well that's typical of a south African. I can't express how often I've had to avoid yet another saffa bumping my ankles with their oh so wonderful furry feet and diminutive stature, nose (3 ft) up in the air looking down on us all from down there.

You used to know where you stood in this place. Good old fashioned values, the Irish with their pointy ears and hand crafts bows mixed beautifully wih the jamiacans with their roots deep in the earth and their regenerative draft, which you could get for tuppence in the working class non-organic magic potion shop, before it was AbraStardabra. But the saffers and the mumsies with their slavering teeth and sunken dugs, god they get my goat, and sometimes kill it right there on the spot as I'm trying to get from A to B, me you understand, DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW IMPORTANT I AM?

Seriously though, mean spirited cunts, many of you should be ashamed. I thought this couldn't annoy me either, like a bruise you rub continuously, but there you go again, trolls, worst of the lot.

[Brendan]

And, breath...

[iaineasy]

.b

[Shaggy]

I was going to write something that would enlighten you all, but I just can't be arsed.

[MrBen]

I have to agree with Eater that there are way better places to bring up a kid London though. Like Scotland for example. Or Australia. Or Sweden.

[MrBen]

Before hastily adding that there are worse: Afghanistan, Somalia, Bangladesh. I've not heard of the same problems in coffee bars / oversized buggies in those countries.

[Jeremy]

Scotland? Yeah, that country doesn't have any problems at all...

[MrBen]

Course it does. But I'd personally choose the countryside I grew up in over SE15 any day. Lower crime, pollution, cheaper cost of living, easier to get around, beautiful in many parts... call me daft. Just my own criteria.

[*Bob*]

That's what most Scots say.

(The ones who'll never leave the South of England)

[MrBen]

I'm working on it!

[SeanMacGabhann]

you are choosing specific parts of Scotland against SE15 - it could just as easily be an estate on the outskirts of Fort William compared to, say, Hampstead

There are pros and minuses to everywhere (how trite I know) but I wouldn't be inherently against bringing up kids in London - so many stimuli (positive ones I mean) compared to small-town living.

Plus, I fear that the sort of childhood MrBen and I shared in Hibernian towns is no longer the case there - I get an email every other week from my family who still live there reporting the latest young suicide

All that said I can't imagine growing up without the miles of beach I had just 5 minutes from my door....

[*Bob*]

The weather's better in Peckham, that's for sure.

[annaj]

Do the people who say that London is a terrible place to raise children not realise how rude that is to those of us who were raised here?

We moved half way through my childhood from South London to the supposedly idyllic countryside where I was bullied for being from That London and drugs, drink, petty crime, self harm and teenage pregnancy were all common through sheer boredom and frustration.

And yet I ended up a fairly functional adult, because it's your parents that bring you up not the town you live in and good parents can live anywhere.

[Brendan]

I think I?m going to raise my children in London. In the countryside there won?t be enough people for my wife to ram off the pavement with the perambulator.

[LegalEagle-ish]

Brendan Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> I think I?m going to raise my children in London.

> In the countryside there won?t be enough people

> for my wife to ram off the pavement with the

> perambulator.

Lol, I get to go for a second wave of ankle busting with my granddaughter's buggy. Great stuff!

[Ted Max]

Worse, they don't have pavements. All babies in the countryside drive untaxed Subarus runnning on Red Diesel, while their parents lie in the boot injecting each other with sheep dip and strangling badgers.

It's not the idyll some make it out to be.

[annaj]

I know you're both joking and I'm taking this waaaay too seriously, but there is a grain of truth in there (not the babies driving bit, obviously)

County living is completely car dependant, which, quite apart from not being very green, I would imagine could be quite isolating for a new mother.

[????]

annaj Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Do the people who say that London is a terrible

> place to raise children not realise how rude that

> is to those of us who were raised here?

> We moved half way through my childhood from South

> London to the supposedly idyllic countryside where

> I was bullied for being from That London and

> drugs, drink, petty crime, self harm and teenage

> pregnancy were all common through sheer boredom

> and frustration.

> And yet I ended up a fairly functional adult,

> because it's your parents that bring you up not

> the town you live in and good parents can live

> anywhere.

Come on Anna, you're being a bit sensitive - they're juts funny head shaped country bumpkins

[Muley]

Ah, the country...

It ain't Bugaboos you need to fear there, it's farmers with their tractors, trailers and combines taking up the entire lane, which might even be tarmac'ed, if you're lucky, while forcing you to cower in the hedge. And psychotic farm dogs trying to chew the tires off your vehicle while it's still moving. And roving herds of sheep straying into your garden and eating it. And the 'your family haven't lived here for the last ten generations, so you must think you're better than us' mentality.

Mind you, those Young Farmers barn dances were a laugh.

[LegalEagle-ish]

I think I'd be right at home in the country. I'd love a pack of mad farm dogs. You're allowed firearms too, innit?

[MrBen]

Yep - I had a shotgun for clay pigeons at 16 years old. Much like Peckham. But with more rain.

[LegalEagle-ish]

I quite like the wilds of Scotland, much cheaper and interesting than the wilds of East Dulwich.

[Asset]

I spent some of my childhood in the countryside in Scotland and some of it in London (and some of it in various other places inbetween which we won't go into now).

As Sean says there are pros and cons to both.

I am bringing both my kids up in London at the moment and they're doing all right thanks very much. They are lucky in that we regularly ferry them to the countryside for some enforced fresh air and yomping which I am well aware many inner city kids don't experience but it's not so bad growing up here. Let's face it, if you bring them up in the country they'll bugger off and move to London as soon as they can and then you'll never see the little darlings except at Christmas maybe.

Also, small country towns have big drink and drug cultures 'cos there aint nothing else to do.

[AnotherPaul]

I went for a walk this morning and you can see by the photos I took outside the baths, on Lordship Lane and in the Village, the author of that Statesman piece may have a point.

It's getting like War of the Worlds out there, terrifying and stuff.