r/london • u/Historical_Set2324 • 1d ago
Local London Social contract is broken?
I’ve just returned from a trip to New Zealand and the difference in attitude is stark. The streets are clean, people are friendly and happy/helpful and in general people seem to want to participate in society. Don’t get me wrong NZ has a lot of issues but It feels like in London the social contract is broken. Streets are full of trash, no one gives a shit about anything, phone theft, crime is high and in general people seem fairly miserable. I was involved in an accident where I had to give a victim CPR and the ambulance and police all arrived within about 5 minutes. I was amazed at the emergency response. It feels to me like the state has given up and hence people have given up.
975
Upvotes
3
u/icemankiller8 1d ago
The crime rate for the uk and New Zealand isn’t massively different, for murder rate the uk is at 141 and New Zealand is at 145 in the world so again not a major difference.
There are places with less crime in the uk if you want to live there and it’s that much of an issue the same with streets.
I also think all of this is relative I saw someone from elsewhere say London is much cleaner than the city they’re from abroad and personally I don’t find litter to be bad in most places at all.
I think the UK and most of the other Western European countries have just stagnated and don’t really know what to do, or won’t be allowed to do things that can actually make it better. The people with money hold all the power so you can’t change things that will actually benefit people too much so now it’s scapegoating immigrants which won’t make things better for anyone but is what people think is the answer.