Londoners are sick of viral videos telling lies about their city
londoncentric.media
londoncentric.media
Trump and Musk are constantly targeting London and Khan on social media, but sure, it's the Russians driving this.
Just a matter of time before you start hearing this again. They already tried this once using the Steele dossier.
Fact: Michael Flynn talked with the Russian ambassador.
Fact: Flynn lied about the content of his call. Not to journalists, but to FBI agents.
Fact: Trump dismissed Comey to stop the investigations around Flynn. He said it openly, on camera.
Fact: Trump pardoned Flynn.
Fact: Trump is pushing for the prosecution of Comey - a case so weak it has already been rejected before going to trial.
Fact: FBI agents have been demoted and punished for nothing else than working on the Russian dossier. Including respected career agents currently working on e.g. Iranian operations in the USA. Their only crime has been to be assigned to the Russian dossier, something they didn't choose.
You absolutely don't need the Steele dossier to see something's wrong - except to deflect from the obvious.
When I say it's apolitical I mean the con artists know exactly who to target, which is the right, because you can feed them anything and they'll keep coming back for more. It's far harder with the left, they'll say "this is all bullshit" and move on quickly, there's no money to be made there. There was a great interview a few years back with a California-based troll who said he targeted the right because that's where you got the responses: "We've tried to do similar things to liberals. It just never worked, it never takes off. You'll get debunked within the first two comments and then the whole thing just kind of fizzles out".
"Nothing personal, it's just business".
Don't get me wrong, I've no love for Putin, but framing the Trump project as Russian misses the huge amount of American money and effort behind him.
Is Musk a Russian agent? The Heritage Foundation? Fox? There's a huge, all-American infrastructure behind Trump 2.0.
I'm sure plenty of countries did their very best to get that guy in the Whitehouse, but I don't buy that Putin is the main character here.
Power and influence can be considered two different things.
As for holding sway over Trump: it's often generally anyone that can flatter his ego and/or put money in his pockets. (Or for his swaying himself: whatever will get the most headlines, the most people talking about him.)
Trump is not complicated:
When he parrots the same ideas down to the exact same words in the exact same order, what doubt is there?
Have it crossed your mind that they're just closer to truth than what Western propaganda spreads about Ukraine conflict and why it started and keep going?
It started because Putin wants the 'good old days' of the Soviet Union back, and he does not consider Ukrainians their own people, but just a bunch of folks that have forgotten they are really Russian/Soviet. The 'official' Rusian reason is/was because Ukraine was run by Nazis (never mind that Zelenskyy is Jewish).
And you, has it crossed your mind that Putin and his supporters are lying?
It doesn't matter if your enemy also wants to promote this. If you follow this line of thought, you have to support the government of China censoring the Tiananmen Square massacre. Because their enemies in the West have for decades been talking about it.
I agree that social problems should be exposed. One such social problem is widespread, entirely fabricated stories of crime and violence, accepted uncritically by people who don’t live in the supposedly affected areas, driving division and political discourse that lead to real-world harm.
There is an enormous amount of evidence that this propaganda, mainly spread through social media, is a product of a foreign government strategy to interfere in the internal politics of “enemy” nations. If this is true, it should be exposed and shut down.
That's not to say you'll do any good by hiding problems. It's just that exposing them isn't going to fix anything, either. You do have to fix your own problems, but you also need to get some breathing room by getting people to cease lying about it.
This amused me because living in LA/California, I get the same style unhinged comments completely disconnected from the reality of what is happening here. We certainly have our share of problems, but you'd think we're Somalia the way certain people talk. I had a friend from Arkansas visit last summer and it definitely reset his world view a bit.
I assume this is all just deflection. It is more politically convenient to talk about bad roads or the homeless problem in California, than to address that your state's schools are in the bottom 20% of the nation.
The episode is titled “London Has Fallen (E356)” and was released on Jan 26 of this year. Worth a listen.
Does seem like much ado about nothing.
Petty crime chips away at society by eroding trust, it needs to be punished Singapore style.
I've been in London for the better part of 30 years now and have had a mobile phone for most of that time. Until the last couple of years, I was out and about all the time, usually with my phone, and I've had someone attempt to snatch it precisely twice.
> Petty crime chips away at society by eroding trust
That I do agree with.
> it needs to be punished Singapore style
That I do not. What we do need is a proper accounting of all crimes at all levels of society - "the fish rots from the head down" after all. When people see people in power getting away with crimes, blatant lies, and other bad behaviours, they'll often follow because why not?
(cf Trump, Johnson, Putin, et al.)
For people who make their entire personalities about what their grandpa did in the War, they're sure seem hellbent on acting exactly like the people he did it to.
Not sure what can be done about any of this, beyond people _hopefully_ getting more sceptical about random crap they see on the internet (my vague feeling is that unquestioningly believing crap on the internet is primarily an older-person thing).
They will go to the shittiest, poorest slum where even other Indian won't go to, make a video titled something like "Oooh look at these disgusting Indians" and get hundreds of millions of views.
In effect, making fun of poor people for clicks.
Shit posting and lying works, and platforms encourage it (by sending views and money), so why wouldn't people do it?
The situation is even improving, UK homicide rates are at the lowest level in 50 years [1].
Not to mention that the USA has an entire category of gun crime which is a non-issue in the UK.
I swear to you, London is not an unsafe city.
It was eye opening to me just how deeply brainwashed these people are. This wasn't just him parsing news events, it was his world view being shaped with the opinion that these are awful, dangerous, unsafe places, ridden with crime and poverty.
Though if you happen to tell truths, or even just satire, against certain wealthy people, then you can expect the full fury of those hurt.
I was visiting last fall with the family, left the car in the NJ side when taking the ferry to the Statue. They took the train to the hotel and I went to retrieve the car, got a front stage view of a guy using a chain to beat up a security guard at a shopping mall.
Guy had been peeing on the vehicles, guard told him to stop. He took offense at this, got a length of chain and started kicking the door so the guard would tell him to stop. As soon as he came out guy started hitting him over the head with the chain.
Police took a good 15 to 20 minutes to respond, didn't seem interested in looking for the guy. The guard wasn't interested in pressing charges.
Guy was probably homeless and definitely needed mental health but he had the capacity to plan out and execute a violent attack that could have been deadly.
Love it, hate it, it's a different mindset to the US approach and ultimatelty falls back on judges using "reasonable behaviour" of common citizens on ominbuses as a yardstick.
Also from the comment section: "knife crime, knife crime, it's ain't about knives"
You're saving that banning/ demonizing locking folding knives when almost all crimes are committed with a common kitchen knife wasnt the solution?!? I'm shocked I tell you, shocked!
Look, no one's a fan of the village idiot juggling lit dynamite on a unicycle in the packed shopping mall, and it's no good for anyone if the bad apples* aren't given a route to better things to do so Roman Law countries tend to have any old excuse laws to give cause to have people questioned as to why they're doing whatever the heck it is that they're doing .. my grandmother pulled up kids all the time like that.
The upside of such things is actually problematic and questionable bahaviour can be shunted in one direction and chefs of any colour, langauge, borough address can walk on proud and free with their knife rolls.
The downside is the watchers and guardians can get a bit enthused and selective in their choices of collar, they can develop little clique's of weirdness and corruption, and the judgy types can get a bit overly judgy about all the wrong things.
The challenge for any community is dealing with all that and having better control over the system .. takes time and focus, 'taint easy.
You did rather miss the point of why, and the devil's less in having reason to address potentially violent individuals and groups, far more in the implementations, the biases, the judgements, the feedback on appeals, community support, rehabilitations, restitutions, and that dull stuff.
> the implementations, the biases, the judgements, the feedback on appeals, community support, rehabilitations, restitutions, and that dull stuff.
What the hell does that even mean? It sounds like an AI hallucination trying to justify giving everyone a participation trophy and straight top grades to go through school even if the individuals don't actually participate or grasp the material being tought.
Reason to stop and question - in itself, not an issue.
> the implementations, the biases, the judgements, the feedback on appeals
Where the problems pile up - the biases of peace keepers, expectations baked into sentencing, resistance to review, etc.
> trying to justify giving everyone a participation trophy
that'd be your hallucination
Maybe wind back the nonsense and strawmanning?
What's your country / state or county that has shaped your outlook on all this?
Again, what is the actual expected goal in terms of limiting access to knives at all? How does this pass any kind of sanity check?
If someone wants to kill someone else, even opportunistically, the removal of knives won't significantly reduce said crime... there are lots of opportunistic weapons that can be used to kill. You cannot child-proof the world. Even reducing the surface or pointy part of knives doesn't significantly reduce the effectiveness as a weapon.
Anyone with even a modest amount of combat training can articulate and demonstrate this.
> USA, Arizona...
> we have pretty liberal (in the classic sense/definition) laws regarding gun rights here.
> Again, what is the actual expected goal in terms of limiting access to knives at all?
> If someone wants to kill someone else, even opportunistically, the removal of knives won't significantly reduce said crime... there are lots of opportunistic weapons that can be used to kill.
Also observed in the real world, if safety belts are introduced, car accident M&M improve - fewer deaths, lesser injuries. If guns and knives are regulated, shootings and stabbings diminish in number - not eliminate, just reduced in number.
> Anyone with even a modest amount of combat training can articulate and demonstrate this.
* My neighbour, here in W.Australian wheat belt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7owwTz7Z0OE
* Kimberley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jejk-7I9Y6U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmKxmxk6Gas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r10UavOenec
Is it the same with knife crime?
There isn’t really any location. Its socioeconomic. It’s young black men 16-24 who disproportionately end up dying to knife crime.
Low trust in society, few opportunities to improve economic situation, higher prevalence of trauma and ptsd, higher probability of substance abuse, low opportunity cost for going to jail, fewer good role models, worse self esteem, worse education outcomes, worse physical health, higher likelihood of being involved in organized crime, higher likelihood of depending on parallel social structures for safety and protection, etc.
Each can be cause or effect in a self reinforcing network. Picking one single root cause isn't really possible.
For instance, I was caught between a knife fight on a train, because in one hood some of the culture is it's unacceptable to play another culture's music too loud. A Hispanic guy was playing hispanic music quite loud on the train, as soon as it entered a black neighborhood a black guy informed him it was "his hood" and asked him to stop, which then escalated to both pulling out knives.
I have now learned there are certain socio-economic enclaves where culture has dictated that I must not play my music too loud or I will be stabbed to death.
As long as you don't make activities outside of the law a non-negligible source of your income or run with the crowd that does you're fine, and not just for murder or whatever, theft and all sorts of the boring "area under the curve" crime is concentrated around these people too.
People don't usually bring trouble to themselves for no reason. Don't give them a reason.
And for non-homicide violent crime, you're probably more likely to get jumped on a side street near a bar district than you are in a "bad neighborhood" unless you do something yourself to incite violence.
Europe represents democracy and rule of law- something right wing fascists and Christian fundamentalists despise.
Make no mistake we are involved in an ideological war against the US.
You don't see cockney anything anywhere there anymore compared to (and as much as you see any transitional regional identify left in) other British cities.
Homicide is on the drop in London but that's not 100% because it's safer. A huge amount is focused on deaths rather than attacks so don't fool yourself that just because they didn't die that nothing happened.
> crime which is a non-issue in the UK.
Nope. Not even close to true. Yes we don't have school shooters. Yes we don't have people exacting "justice" with a loaded barrel. But we do have gun crime and guns are used a LOT as intimidation. I wish I didn't grow up in an area where I know that to be true.
Trying to pretend there's not a problem is wonderful. And in that case I can point you to some very reasonably priced areas which must be perfectly safe and have no social cohesion issues at all regardless of where you're from...
What is more of an issue is more antisocial crime such as street robbery or shoplifting. These crimes are much more likely to be snatch and grab, with no violence involved. They still have an impact on the victims but they're not making the city significantly more violent.
[1] https://www.london.gov.uk/london-records-fewest-homicides-ye...
None of the people I've known who moved out of London did so because of crime or safety. They almost invariably moved because they could pay for a tiny place in the city and commute for over an hour each way or they could pay the same for a larger place outside the city and commute the same length of time on the train.
Yes, jellied eels disappearing is because everyone has fled London due to crime. No other reason.
That’s more to do with cost of living. Rents and house prices are insane.
Scary social media videos about those foreign lands is just another tool to dissuade people from wanting to expand their experiences. If you research into some of this global industry, you'll see a lot of the influencers are spokes from central hubs of propaganda sources that shockingly are financed by the same people.
It also makes it easier to dehumanize people in-case of a conflict.
Almost every single large city subreddit needs to have some kinds of rules restricting crime posts, because people love to post every single act of crime that happens and it eventually takes over the sub. Then "alternative" subreddits are created and the cycle continues.
Scaring people has always been profitable, social media just lowers the bar. It's not just old people anymore.
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I almost fell into one of these traps. It was a guy walking around the dead San Francisco mall and talking about how it was DEVASTATED and SF was COLLAPSING. I had actually been there recently and yes, it was pretty empty. The Youtube algorithm seized on this and started showing me more videos.
Except one of the videos was on a street next to me. The video was just the one guy walking around two blocks that were empty, but looped over and over for 20+ minutes. So it was clearly nonsense.
I checked his channel again. It has paid subscriptions and a PayPal link. He gets minimum 50K views on every single video, with some hitting 800K. He makes two a month. That's an easy income.
there's a lot more tax evasion going on in oakcliff and other working class neighborhoods than in any of the wealthier areas. Every other person in oakcliff pays with 100s at the grocery store, almost all business is cash under the table.
Every time I did visit due to business or family trip, we were either mugged or pestered or cursed at.
Maybe visiting small villages is better but main cities are like “no-go” zones for civilized ppl.
You may not agree but I built this opinion on own experience and nothing will change it.
Frankly if that's not an example of Stockholm syndrome I don't know what is.
It's so far from the nicest city on the country. It's entirely held up by "drip down" wealth from the banks and tourism which to paraphrase Chinese airways "avoid certain areas".
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/apr/03/marks-spenc...
> I keep hearing crime is falling, especially in London - something none of us believe and very few people working in retail would see. In fact, we see the absolute opposite in our High Streets and in our stores, where our colleagues are on the receiving end of abuse and violence in their workplace every day.
> It is becoming more brazen, more organised and more aggressive.
> Across the UK, there were around 5.5 million incidents of shoplifting last year, and that excludes the vast number that go unreported. Every day, more than 1,600 retail workers face violence or abuse. This is not isolated. It is systemic and it is getting worse, not better.
One thing that brought it home to me was recently re-watching 28 Days Later. As the main character comes out of hospital and walks over a Zombie-apocalyse London Bridge, I thought "Wow. That looks nice." London in 2026 is worse that Zombie-apocalyse London from 2002.