I visited the UK several times throughout the later 90s, and spent my final visit in July of 2001. Each time, I watched the city deteriorate until it was unrecognizable. The 'spirit' that was so tangible in '90 had disappeared.
My husband and I will celebrate our fifth anniversary this year (good gravy!) and since we didn't have a honeymoon, we were thinking about different cities to go to. London was suggested, and nostalgia made me consider it--but the place is so different. Just a shell of what it was.
IMHO Britain day by day is turning more European (in the European Union sense). I have noticed in recent years angry readers who are furious with American retorts of European (I shall stress not necessarily British) anti-Americanism, and angry detractors of American patriotic articles on dates such as July 4 each year, have been Britons. These Britons are quite busy defending their European neighbours and joining them to bash their American brothers.
It is as if Thatcher's times as Prime Minister is ancient history now, and Britons have abandoned what she stood for in droves.
"The [English] Channel is wider than the Atlantic" is now firmly a thing of the past.
I have to correct you on this, it was a very violent time as well depending on where you visit. Do you forget the race riots in Brixton, the Notting Hill riots, the Miners strikes and riots
And as a native of London large parts of the city has been gentrified, the whole of the Thames Area.
And we still have the same spirit as yester year.
Most street crime now days is youngsters on youngsters.
By the what where were you a student, I had just left the Regular Army then, and was attending London University QMW
I have to correct you on this, it was a very violent time as well depending on where you visit. Do you forget the race riots in Brixton, the Notting Hill riots, the Miners strikes and riots
And as a native of London large parts of the city has been gentrified, the whole of the Thames Area.
And we still have the same spirit as yester year.
Most street crime now days is youngsters on youngsters.
By the what where were you a student, I had just left the Regular Army then, and was attending London University QMW
I, too, was a student in London during 1990. During the summer, which was a World Cup year. I've been back several times since, most recently in 2005. I couldn't agree more that it's a shell of it's former self. I don't want to return.