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Comment by mmarq | Hacker News Reader

In the rest of the UK, you’d get a lower salary than in central Italy and possibly East Germany (I haven’t checked the latter).

Inner London is different from the rest of the country because it’s the only part that looks like Western Europe. Starting in Putney, the UK is a giant periphery, with kilometres of houses and nothing to do apart from getting the train to Inner London. There’s more stuff to do in my grandmother’s village than in the entirety of West London after Hammersmith. At least, in that 1200 people village, there are 2 fully operational churches (one 1000 year old), a football field, 2-3 restaurants/cafes and a castle. Outside of inner London the density of foreigners drops dramatically, which in Brexit England tends to be a problem.

Why would anybody in their right mind go to Nowhereshire instead of going, say, to Berlin or Milan or even Perugia?

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Take a trip to Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Newcastle, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Leeds or Sheffield (preferably after the train strikes at the moment are over) and get back to us. Might change your mind about 'Nowhereshire'.

I haven’t been in Scotland, but I’ve been told Edinburgh is a very nice city.

I visited England and Wales for work and I went to Belfast a few times. I visited all the English cities in your list and they aren’t in the same league of random central Italian towns. They were so ugly and anonymous that I’d demand a premium of 50K to move there from London.

Edinburgh is very nice but Glasgow is the livelier of the two.

From your comments though, doesn't sound like the UK (other than London) is for you unfortunately. No hard feelings.

What an insane take. You obviously haven't visited anywhere outside London.

I’ve actually visited half the country, when I worked as a consultant. Weather in the north is horrid, much worse than in London, food is appalling in ways that can’t be described, pubs are all the same replica of a Wetherspoon or of a Young’s.

It could be that coming from central Italy I have very high expectations, maybe some form of Stendhal syndrome in reverse. But I haven’t had the same feeling when travelling in Germany or France. The UK outside of inner London is a distinctly ugly and boring place. Now it’s also the place in Western Europe with the worse supply chain disruptions and shortages.

You may have visited half the country, but it doesn't seem like you saw any of it.

> Weather in the north is horrid, much worse than in London, food is appalling in ways that can’t be described, pubs are all the same replica of a Wetherspoon or of a Young’s

Perhaps you were going to a Spoons or whatever Young's is by accident. Brilliant food all around the North - maybe check OpenTable or Google Maps and find some proper restaurants/street food vendors. I live near Glasgow and there's some excellent food in the area.

Yes, the weather isn't as good as London/the South. You learn to love it unless you're spoiled with the sun all the time.

I don’t mean to be dismissive, but if you come from southern/central Italy (or Spain or Greece, etc…), your idea of good food is significantly different from that of the English.

I have to wonder why you're even here if you're just going to insult/dismiss all of our cities/towns and the tastes of our people as a whole without putting in any effort.

p.s. we know Wetherspoons is microwave crap, but it's cheap and comes with a free beer. :)

Saying that Manchester is uglier than Florence and that Italian food is better than English food are not insults, but a factual statements.

I’m in Inner London because I have a very high paying job, that allowed me to buy a nice flat in a nice area and that allows me to fly to Europe even 5 times a month with my entire family, if I want. But I was very close from leaving the UK a few years ago, when it became evident that my 100K£ salary wasn’t enough to enjoy the same lifestyle of a friend of mine that lives in Berlin with an entry level s/w development job and 2 children.

Manchester has some beautiful architecture, some very interesting places to visit and in the UK we compensate with culture, people and nightlife. And there are some very good restaurants & eateries if you actually put some research & effort in.

Maybe your £100k salary would go (a lot) further if you moved away from London and to somewhere like Manchester - everyone knows London is stupidly expensive ;) I'm on like £40kish around Glasgow in a nearby town and quite comfortable - I'd feel like Elon Musk on your salary.

If Rome and Paris and Florence are in the Champions League of beauty and Milan is in second division, Manchester is a funny non-league football team that once in its history got through round 1 of the FA cup and then lost 7-0 against a premier league club.

You must be nuts. Bath and the West Country are the prettiest parts of the country by far.

No, I’m not. They aren’t particularly beautiful and, outside of the UK, people don’t even know what these places are, for a reason. Compare to, in random order, Verona, Rome, Florence or Pisa or Orvieto or the Tuscan countryside or Tivoli or even Milan.

I'm betting that most people outside of Italy also can't tell where Verona or Orvieto or Tivoli are.

they might have heard of Verona though because of that pesky Brit from Nowhereshire who wrote that one play that one time.

If you don’t know what Verona is, you probably spent your entire existence under a rock. One would have to complete primary school to know that Tivoli or Capri exist. You are right, Orvieto may be only for the very learned.

The West Country instead it’s a rainy non-place that gets flooded every other day, with 0 historical or artistic relevance. And nobody even know it exists outside of the UK.

Having lived extensively in both the Cotswolds and Chianti, I can assure you: you are nuts.

OMG, a friend convinced my girlfriend to spend a weekend in the Cotswolds, allegedly the best place in England or whatever.

I’ve never been in a more isolated, yet overcrowded and noisy place in my entire existence. The quality of housing is abysmal as everywhere in the UK. A car was required to go to everywhere, queues everywhere, traffic everywhere, everything cost a fortune and it’s just like a random place in the Roman countryside but without the sun and the olive trees and good food. There was this weird dinosaur park/thing, “children love it!” they told me, that’s the best way of getting a mental breakdown.

I was reading through your comments and was thinking "This guy is definitely Italian" and well guess I was right. Typical attitude: Thinking Italy is this amazing place and that everything else is trash.

In fairness, if I were fortunate enough to live in Berlin, Italy I would hate everywhere else too.

Oh, no, I see what you are doing, but I mentioned Germany, France, Spain and Greece. I come from central Italy and that’s the part of the world I know best. I’m saying that the UK outside Inner London doesn’t look European, but it’s a gigantic periphery.

Here’s a list of random places I visited in Europe that would be the most beautiful place in the UK if teleported there: - Berlin - Paris - Krakow - Hamburg - Madrid - Barcelona - Palma - Aix-en-Provence - Avignon - Vienna - Random Greek island - Istanbul

List of places that would be the second most beautiful thing after Inner London: - Frankfurt - Cologne - Warsaw - Kassel

I can provide more if you need.

this reads like it was written by someone who has never stepped outside zone 2.

Not that there’s much to see outside of zone 2, but I’ve actually spent 3-4 years travelling across the UK and it was very very different from travelling across Europe, and not in a good way.

I’m laughing at the replies to your comments lol.

Didn’t you know that while all your statements might be subjectively correct, it’s only the Brits themselves allowed to moan about how much their country sucks, haha.

> I’m laughing at the replies to your comments lol.

I’m here to spread the truth that everybody knows, I’m here to teach them.

> Didn’t you know that while all your statements might be subjectively correct, it’s only the Brits themselves allowed to moan about how much their country sucks, haha.

The UK is many interesting things, but it’s certainly not a beautiful place, especially outside of London. I prefer Inner London to my home town, by not for the beauty, that would be a no-contest.

I understand that if somebody never actually visited Spain or Italy or France, they may have no idea of what a beautiful city is.

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