I was most certainly on my phone regularly with no issues. I saw almost everyone on their mobiles too. I walked from my place in Kensington to Imperial College in South Kensington, and took nightly walks around Kensington & Chelsea. I regularly took the tube's supposed high crime Piccadilly line daily, getting off at Embankment or Leicester Square and walking about without any concerns. Yes, I was in Westminister and even in Lambeth without issues, but then I did not hang around the sketchy bars, pubs and clubs found in Westminister (and Camden). Nor was I curb crawling in the docklands. I rode the Central and District line without problems. None of the London I saw resembled the doom and gloom that is presented on social media. I am not denying there are some bad areas, but I didn't see a city falling apart or chaos and anarchy in the streets. When I was a kid, we had a flat off Grosvenor Square, and I couldn't go out at night because the area was dangerous; Muggings were rampant, political protests a regular disruption and the air pollution choking. The city is very different than the decaying mess of my youth. London is a beautifu,l culturally wealthy and vibrant great city. Not this trip. As I wrote, there may be problems in other cities. I have no desire to visit places like Manchester or Liverpool. I don't work from there. My point is that the UK is not falling apart. It has problems, but it is still a wonderful place. The tens of thousands of tourists I saw everyday prove that. The doom and gloom campaign is tiresome. The icing on my cake was the beautiful weather. It was warm without the suffocating humidity of Thailand.
