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Ok, I know I might be relatively lucky, but just to provide a different anecdote: I spend 34% of my take-home income to live in a big studio in a leafy neighbourhood with Edwardian houses, 35 minutes from work door to door taking the tube, next to 2 parks. I'm pretty happy. Like all big cities London has better and worse neighbourhoods and the experience you get living in them varies greatly.

34% to live in a studio sounds ludicrous to someone paying 25% to live in a townhouse (in a smaller city in the south).

Yes... Perhaps it's because so much other housing is so expensive in London, relatively many other properties can look like a bargain

25% on the studio, and another 25% on utilities, car and food.

A hellhole full of scum... I don't know where these people have been, but that isn't the London I know.

You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.