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Okay,I think I am going to get bashed. Sorry folks who have retired to their holiday paradise land.
Our area is predominantly rural, with few large employers generating good incomes and thus pension pots are often low. But the big bonuses are beautiful scenery, beaches, no huge roads, friendly people and very little crime. Many of us are related, have long working relationships with each other, our children went to school together, we have kept local traditions going, supported countryside sports, football, rowing etc. In other words we have deep understanding and ties with each other and the land. We know the skeletons in our neighbours cupboards and that also bonds us.
But our lives have changed rapidly in recent years. There has always been a trickle of retirees. They have been welcomed and in their turn they have enriched our local community. Now virtually every time a house is sold it goes to an outsider. Often a cash buyer with a bigger pot of gold who can move quickly unlike the local person who cannot proceed with such speed.
Just like the icecaps our indigenous community is melting away because of the flood of retirees. Not only does it affect us as individuals, it affects our schools, sports clubs, our doctors surgery, our care of the elderly services etc.
Committees are often taken over by well meaning and well educated folk who have excessive time on their hands. Local knowledge is often not present anymore. Whenever a local entrepreneur wants to develop a business or a building project goes before planning there is a tremendous hue and cry. The new comers fight it with a vengeance. NIMBY. Social housing, so long as it isn’t next to the incomers.
Why do people retire to an area they have little connection with? Why do they in later years leave their friends and connections behind? Friends are quite different from acquaintances.
I agree completely with Bluebelle I am finding this thread very depressing.
Change can be difficult but it's necesarry, I welcome people from different backgrounds and cultures. Surely people coming in with new ideas, is a good thing. We can get very stale if we always do the same things in the same ways. Not everyone wants to spend their whole life in the place they were born.
Only read the first two pages so sorry if I'm repeating what anyone else has said.
Life is unfair! Why would any of us expect things to stay the same and never change? Homes are being sold all over the country and prices increasing in most areas. Someone is buying them and that includes young people, yes, even in London. There will always be people who cannot afford to buy or cannot afford to buy the property they want but that is the way it has always been. This feels like yet another baby boomer bashing to me. If people have worked hard and accumulated assets why shouldn't they live where they want to live? I have never moved somewhere where I have been made to feel like an outsider so I hope I don't ever go to where the OP lives, it sounds intolerant. Perhaps people are nice when speaking to the newbies but not so nice when speaking about them?
All places change over time. I have lived in more or less the same area for over 40 years. The town we moved to 40 years ago is almost unrecognisable now. It always was a thriving place but so many more people there, more traffic, more coffee shops. It’s not a coastal village, rural retreat nor London. Just another town which has changed overtime. Walking along the riverbank now I pass lots of people. I estimate one in 3 isn’t speaking English but that’s how things are now. I guess wherever you live times change. Population grows.
Chucky I dont know anyone of any other race who lives here who sticks No Trespass signs up at the end of their road ,its a particularly English thing . My Italian ,German,french,Slovanian,Croatian, Dutch friends dont do it .Its a thing that seems to be "english" Isn't it the way of ex pats on the Costas? Maybe we're just unlucky in the ones who do come ,they want to keep their rules while enjoying a different country
I'm very sympathetic towards Specs. They are real problems. For nearly forty years, I've lived in a rural part of the north of England. It has changed immensely over that time. Change is inevitable, but it is galling when new arrivals wax lyrical about how wonderful the place is, but fail to appreciate how it got to be that way. Newcomers start agitating for changes that undermine the very thing they claim to like. Some are even so hypocritical as to condemn people coming from other places only a year or two after they have arrived. Yes, it is good for talented newcomers to help to organise things, but it is sad if the accumulated wisdom from long time residents is lost. And divisions between affluent newcomers and poorly paid locals is not good for society.
I meant to say well said BlueBelle, best comment ?
Well said ?
I’m always irritated by those signs which say “Please drive carefully through OUR village “ it always sets me off on a rant!
Lollypolly I have many friends ...and a son in law who moved here from other parts of the UK .I really only have a problem with the ones who think they can move their rules and laws with them.The huge NO TRESPASS signs or Private road signs aren't what we're used to and I've even been threatened by one man and his big dog for walking on "his" land.We have the right to roam and no amount of signs will stop us.
There are of course some who moved so they can avail themselves of "free" uni places for their children,one or two who live beside my daughter who talk us down and say they'll move back as soon as their children have finished their education as its "so parochial" in Scotland and there are "no opportunities".Pisses me right off!!
Good enough to gain an education but not good enough to stay and use it here and help to build our country !!
I have one friend who came here about 7 years ago and she teaches Scottish history and is passionate about it..in fact the history is the whole reason she came here as she had written books about Wallace and The Bruce .I'm happy to welcome anyone who wants to live in what I consider the BEST country in not just the UK but the world ,but only if their reasons are the right ones and not selfish, taking without giving in return .
Wow. People like you really do exist. How sad.
I find it quite frustrating when a ‘poster’ doesn’t reveal where they live or at least give a clue - which country would be a start. And yes, I too think it is a selfish attitude and surely outdated to think you ‘own’ your village. The world is on loan to us all - treat all aspects well.
O well that's life, never mind lol (Laughing out loud) ;-)
In response to paddyann
“The main problem we have with English folk”!!! I am appalled at your bitterness against the English yet again! Not all of us North of the border think that it is “we and they” like you! Why is there such an issue with “English” settlers, but not the Irish, Welsh, Polish, Pakistani, Indian etc. “settlers” who also live with us in Scotland!
My mother was English and she met my father in Portsmouth, whilst both were in the forces during the war! You know, WW2, that all parts of the U.K. suffered during and took part in!! She was one of your “white settlers” when she married my father and moved back to Scotland with him.
People have a right to retire wherever they like! It might be frustrating that they buy the houses that locals would like to, but don’t have the money compared to these retirees! However, they can often bring their own enthusiasm and ideas which, if listened to and nurtured, can benefit the whole community!
Golden age, I totally get where you’re coming from. We live in a rural community, and every time we travel to the south east (quite often) I am so grateful not to be spending so much of every day in traffic jams, and the crowds everywhere you go can be daunting. On the other hand, everything you could possibly want or need is right on your door step, so it’s a trade off, I don’t mind my village having a mix of people, one side we have northerners, and the other side welsh! All you harassed Londoners are welcome as far as I’m concerned, but I must warn you, there’s not a lot to do!
Paddyann agree with you completely on this. I remember working for civil service in Glasgow in 1980's and jobs moved up from South of England. House prices were much higher in England and as a result it skewed the house prices in and around Glasgow. No one's fault just circumstances and there has been a steady influx ever since. Also the Highlands and Islands have significant numbers of what is termed 'incomers', and local people cannot afford to live there. I have been fortunate as I sold a small bungalow in England and bought a 4 bed house in Edinburgh and got my son on the housing ladder (he is 40) for the first time. I did have to do the 'London commute' which I hated and it was great to come back to Scotland.
One issue which no-one appears to have raised here, is why on earth older people choose to move to the country - especially to isolated rural areas and/or villages. I am flabbergasted when I see (in "Escape to the Country" and similar programmes), people well over 60, wanting a house/garden/land, often quite large and in the middle of nowhere. What on earth do they think is going to happen to them in the not-so-distant-future, especially when they can no longer drive, and/or one person is left living alone? I have an aged relative living in such a situation, in a village, with minimal access to support services. On a brighter note (for the young people who can't at present afford housing) in the next ten years or so I foresee a glut of properties on the market all over the UK, as the "oldies" die off in droves, and their homes are sold. Surely then the house prices will drop?
So in the Sunday times today a magazine about the 48 best places to move to and live in Britain.. be very afraid if you live in one of these places ?
Like so many unwelcoming villages yours suffers from the problems associated with incest. As so many of your villagers are "related", cousins marrying cousins means inward looking attitudes from all the inbreeding. The real pity is that the incomers are older people. What you need are a few young families to inject the area with a new gene pool. Maybe the older incomers will have a family network that may decide to move to the village and, over time, change the decline that has obviously been going n for some time. Use the same seed for too long and you get weak plants.
All I can say to 'you' over-privileged who've led your lives in close communities immune from the difficulties experienced by people who get on a tube every morning for thirty years of their lives or more, squashed like a sardine to go to work to make the economy thrive so as to then disperse the money made to the pleasant rural idyllic settlements 'out there' is don't be so bloody selfish - it makes my blood boil to hear of the 'them' intruding and hoping to enjoy some of the peace and quiet of an environment that others have had the good fortune to live in all their lives. I'm sure this post won't be popular, but to everyone one who things Londoners should stay where they are in their old age, I challenge you to a month living and working in London - you wouldn't last a week!
Yes, It's an interesting thread. I can see both sides of the story as we live two miles from our local village which is on a main route into Cambridge.
House prices have rocketed because of this but thanks to the 'incomers' we have kept our pub and shop and the school is thriving.
The downside is we're a meeting place for car sharers who drive in from neighbouring villages so for every car with maybe four passengers, there are three parked in the village streets and clogging up the pretty, cobbled square.
A friend of mine is struggling to sell her house because the quiet lane outside is now difficult to drive along as you have to weave in and out of cars parked on both sides. Her driveway is often blocked.
It's nigh on impossible to park outside the village shop if you want to pop in for a pint of milk, ditto the pub. At least the church escapes this nuisance because there are no commuters on a Sunday. The school, thank goodness, has double yellows.
A new large estate is nearing completion. The 'affordables' are down on the main road - horribly dangerous for small children whereas the posh expensive properties are further up the hill conveniently far enough away from pick up points so they won't be bothered with cars parked outside their properties.
I'm all for car sharing but for every plus there are minuses.
Can you imagine how some French people feel in Dordogneshire- where the incomers do not speak the local language, and get food vans delivering English food ordered on line from Tesco, and workers arriving with white goods, etc, in vans from UK- working under the radar...
It is just the way it is sorry but you cant dictate who lives where. People with long traditions in cities cant afford to buy either.
We live in London, bought our house 40 years ago - and no way could we live here now. It’s not just rural areas that are becoming difficult to find affordable housing in.
Rather than blaming individual people moving to an area for causing a housing shortage, why aren’t we all demanding that the government (if it could take its mind off Brexit for half an hour!) builds more truly affordable homes for rent and sale to local people? With strict criteria about not subletting or selling except back to the council.
And do let us know where you live, please! ?
This is happening in lots of areas. But times have changed. People have to move to areas for work that they would not necessarily choose to live in. By the time they retire they often don't have parents still alive and children may have moved, again for work. So they have lost connection with their birth areas and are free to choose where to retire, which they are entitled to do if they have worked hard all their lives. But I do understand the issue of locals struggling to find affordable housing.
People have always moved and no-one in particular 'owns' a particular part of the country.
I do think it's sad when people buy second homes in rural or seaside towns and villages and rarely use them, so that a coastal village may seem deserted for most of the year.
friendly people and very little crime
friendly with each other but suspicious of incomers?
are you saying that these outsiders are bringing a crime wave with them?
Friends are quite different from acquaintances.
It seems obvious that they will not be allowed to make friends in their new community 
paddyann - quite a few of my friends here are Scottish - they are lovely but they are the ones who left Scotland and have lived in several different places so perhaps they are more broadminded than some.
I expect that indigenous populations have felt the same over the centuries.
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