London is Poland's 24th largest city

OK, there are all sorts of assertions made on here about Poles in the UK so I thought it may be helpful to post up some primary-source data. Some of this will prove counter-intuitive for those fond of stereotypes.

Demographics
Of the 579,121 Polish born citizens living in England and Wales at the time of the last census in 2011, some 158,300 were resident in London - making the UK's capital also Poland's 24th largest city, coming between Rzeszów (166k) and Ruda Śląska (145k). The top 10 London boroughs for Poles are:-

Ealing (21,507)
Haringey (10,865)
Brent (10,575)
Hounslow (10,355)
Barnet (8,614)
Waltham Forest (8,197)
Lambeth (6,934)
Merton (6,895)
Wandsworth (6,814)
Newham (6,142)

(Source: Office for National Statistics)

Economic Activity
A 2007 study carried out by the Institute for Public Policy Research gave the following for Polish-born citizens in the UK, with UK-born comparators:-

Employment Status -
............... Poles UK
Employed 85% 78%
Unemployed 4% 4%
inactive 11% 18%

Average age of leaving full time education
Poles UK
20.5 17.5

Average gross hourly pay
Poles UK
£7.30 £11.10

Average weekly hours worked
Poles UK
41.5 36.5

Average weekly tax & NI contributions
Poles UK
£94.40 £140.60

Proportion claiming income support
Poles UK
1% 4%

Proportion claiming sickness or disability benefits
Poles UK
<0.5% 6%

Proportion living in social (public) housing
Poles UK
8% 17%

Proportion resident before 2000 who own their own home outright (no mortgage)
Poles UK
46% 27%

... and finally Alcohol Consumption - litres of pure alcohol per person per annum (Source: World Health Organisation 2011)
Poles UK
13.25 13.37

Thanks for posting this, Radders. Interesting data.

Interesting.Thanks for that.

When you reach England, if you come to London, pass through it quickly, for I do not at all like that city. All sorts of men crowd together there from every country under the heavens. Each race brings its own vices and its own customs to the city. No-one lives in it without falling into some sort of crime. Every quarter of it abounds in grave obscenities. The greater a rascal a man is, the better a man he is accounted... Behold, I prophesy to you: whatever evil or malicious thing that can be found in any part of the world, you will find in that one city... You will meet with more braggarts there than in all France; the number of parasites is infinite. Actors, jesters, smooth-skinned lads, Moors, flatterers, pretty boys, effeminates, pederasts, singing and dancing girls, quacks, belly-dancers, sorceresses, extortioners, night-wanderers, magicians, mimes, beggars, buffoons: all this tribe fill all the houses.

Miasto to zupełnie mi się nie podoba. Mieszkają w nim ludzie najróżniejszego pokroju, którzy pochodzą ze wszelkich możliwych krajów, a każda rasa przynosi własne przywary i obyczaje. Nie można w tym mieście żyć nie splamiwszy się jakimś występkiem, niezliczeni bowiem są w mieście pasożyci: aktorzy, błaźni, zniewieściali młodzieńcy, ciemnoskórzy pochlebcy, efebii, pederaści, śpiewające i tańczące dziewczęta, czarownicy, ludzie trudniący się wyłudzaniem pieniędzy, lunatycy, magowie, aktorzy mimiczni, żebracy.

Chicago bills itself as the largest Polish city outside of Poland with approximately 1,100,000 people of Polish ethnicity in the Chicago metropolitan area

Actually it's the largest, probably more than Warsaw.

Well, technically that may be true only if you count Chicago's suburbs. More than half of all Poles live just outside of Chicago proper but within 30 miles of the city and that includes immigrants (and) not just first and second generation Poles.

Haha finally! These figures are not surprising to me at all, English enjoy!

Hi Adam,

I enjoyed reading that anecdote, if it was one? Sounds like something from the diary of a 17th Century Polish nobleman who visited London. Could you let us know where it came from please and who the author was? Cheers

Chronicle of the deeds of Richard I
Richard of Devizes

Interesting information and I'm intelligent enough to realise that most people (regardless of nationality) are decent, but you don't ask if London wants to be Poland's 24th largest city.

Who is London?
Jack?

Ok, the 'people of London' then. However you want to phrase it, I'm sure you know the point I was trying to make.

Sure I do the old "bloody foreigners" complex. I just wonder what is has to do with reality? I mean people of London are for the most part immigrants or born to immigrant parents, grandparents and so on. Then there are people who migrated to London from other parts of the country. So ingenious residents of London are in minority if they exist at all as London has been for centuries melting pot for people from all walks of life and gene-pool.

Also you are laboring here under misconception that the UK government and the UK elite somehow give a flying copulation what commoners and plebeians think. Sure they are fast enough when there is a need to apse them and to keep them in line and contend to some extend but in reality they don't really care. I mean who has been affected by the influx of foreigners and who gained ? You can answer that one yourself I'm sure.

Also, do you think that an average Pole (and one able to read English) would think twice about what some Anglik in some borough think about him/her commencing to work in the UK?For him/her the clear indication would be availability of work, whether or not that work is legal and that about it.

The only way to stop further influx of people form the EU would be voting the UKIP into power. Which I think unlikely.
There is out there are people like you harping on about foreigners and immigrants and this or that. In fact they are powerless and impotent and they know that.

Instead they chose to vent their frustration on this or other internet forum to no avail.
I mean if you want implement some changes you need to change your country policy. I would think that one would be obvious cause ******* on immigrants do not help and there are always a chance they will **** back.

By the way feel free to come back here any time to say the same but I would like to listen to something new for a change. :)

I wasn't saying that either, so just forget it !!

A long time ago and not true.

Indeed. It's Europe's only World City.

What about Berlin and Paris?

Very different places and on a smaller scale. In Berlin's case, very much smaller.

London (in terms of travel to work area) now pretty well reaches the south coast and the North Sea, and what were once leafy suburbs now feel like a city centre.

You can walk around streets in Central Berlin that feel peaceful and quiet. Fat chance of that in London.

Worth reading. If you count London as that which is within the M25 (the orbital road) it's still huge. I'd also include places much further afield as the Financial Times article does. They say 25 million which is in. my opinion. on the high side however it's certainly closer to a megacity then. any other on the continent.

ft.com/content/11c2abda-ef7b-37eb-9a83-df24c821d0c6

britainexplained.com/why-london-is-so-different-to-the-rest-of-britain/

numptynerd.net/london-the-capital-city-of-the-world.html

That doesn't sound.... good. Give me a big city where you can find peace and quite and leafy areas over a paved over hellscape of urban shade.

It's not.

There are oases of calm there if you know where to find them, however you never quite find peace.

I was there for a couple of weeks last month for work and found it very hard going. There again later this week for a couple of days and will be glad to get out.

It's still interesting however the good bits are outside Zone 1 now. I did hear quite a bit of Polish spoken though not in the centre. Most of the post=2004 migration are either in the provinces or are in London but can't afford to do much in Zone 1.

I'll be never be able to think of Richmond as anywhere but Surrey. To me London is the City and the 32 Boroughs and that's that! I hate the idea of the Home Counties being swallowed up and called London.

But I know it's an inevitable pattern of development. I mean back in the 1890s Kensington and Chelsea were villages. There were still vast orchards and fields in Kensington behind Kensington High Street. Mind you, it was a building site too at the time. An enormous amount of construction was going on then.

Did you ever read Mr Sponge's Sporting Tour by Robert Surtees. It was published around 1830 I think. Sponge goes down the Edgware Road to find a horse for going hunting. There's not much out there except stables.

All of these places subsumed into London. At least places like Hampstead and Chelsea retained their individual character to some degree. The feel of the original villages is still there to an extent.

I keep meaning to read Surtees but never have. I gather Jorrocks is still a prep school favourite.


Especially Hampstead which is lovely and was lovelier still in the 80s.

I spent a couple of weeks in July doing some stuff by Wembley Park. It felt like Dubai with all the 20 story buildings and crowds everywhere.


Northamptonshire County Council is now marketing the region as "NorthLondonshire" and there are even dozens of daily season ticket holders in Doncaster!

Perhaps the rise of home working will change things.

Mr Sponge is hilarious :) and very evocative. You can really feel yourself transported right back to the England of the early Victorian era. It's a long read though and the best way to enjoy it is in the winter (the season when most of it takes place), ideally when you have a few days off and can settle in comfortably and allow yourself the luxury of living in Surtees' world for a week.

The basic premise is that Sponge is of indeterminate but probably lower middle class background. He probably grew up in the countryside because he's a superb horseman but he can't afford to keep any decent hunters, nor does he have the funds or social connections to gain membership of a good Hunt. So he spends his life borrowing and hiring horses which he pretends are his own and trying to wheedle his way with varying degrees of success, into comfy bilets with good hunting attached.


And Jesus wept!

Still feels like a sh'thole filled with rats and overcrawded, there are some good places but once you leave hotel and take few sidesteps in any direction the air and feel change in rather unpleasnt way.

Of course you forget Moscow. According to other calculations, it's Moscow that's Europe's biggest city at roughly 20M (metro area). Before this FT article you shared, I had never seen 25M being quoted as London's size.

People often joke re: Russia's distorted economy - due to the insane centralization of wealth in Moscow. These people must not have heard of London. The 25M figure above is staggering, meaning almost every second person in the UK lives in London. How is the "levelling up" of Yorkshire, the Midlands, Wales, and other places going to happen if London continues to hoover up all the cream from the rest of the country?


You should come to NYC. London will feel like Singapore to you then.

Dude who would want to visit NYC? Flying over with a gun clutched in your hand and bullteproved vest would be nearest I would go to this hole. American cities are not longer in competion with anything they should be rebranded getthos.

don't be so harsh haha i'm sure jon will be harsher , all those beutifull buildings in london cbd and oxford and cambridge uni built off the backs of colonial slaves.. burn it all down!

I mean... it's still America's financial, cultural, and innovative capital. It has the best restaurants, the best museums, the best theatres. If Chicago is the capital of the Midwest, then in NYC it really feels like a global capital. No annoying guys from Indianapolis or Milwaukee, that earn $200K a year, and behave as if they own the world. In NYC you can meet anybody, and at the same it's remarkably classless. You could be sitting with a billionaire and never know it.

As a businessman, within walking distance of my office, I can find the best best lawyer and best accountant. I can go to a cafe downstairs and have a beer with my investor. Manhattan is built on convenience... This density of professionals and deal makers is probably only rivaled by London, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

Paris, Tokyo, Berlin are national ghettos.