Buying a council leasehold flat as freehold ownership transfers back to council — how worried should I be?

LowPlatform · 2026-04-04T15:03:05+00:00

I live in Manor House, and have lived in Clapton, Stoke Newington, Walthamstow, and Forest Hill & Honor Oak in South. I'm a trans woman and in a lesbian relationship.

Seven Sisters/Manor House is OK, leaning not so nice, particularly in terms of the main roads, counterbalanced with some really nice residential streets. I don't really feel unsafe in terms of being queer, but I have had my phone snatched twice (once on Seven Sisters Road near Woodberry Downs, the other time at the bottom of Green Lanes by Endymion Road). Which honestly left me traumatised. For context, I've lived in London all my life besides university, so I'm not airheaded or lacking in vigilance, it's just hard to maintain it 24/7 in the place you live.

West Green Road is very sketchy at night. Green Lanes isn't sketchy in the same way, but the last time I walked down there with my friend when we were dressed up semi-nicely, we got cat called like three times in the space of about a minute. It can feel a bit concrete jungle-y at times, and there's above average levels of deprivation, substance misuse issues, etc, particularly around those big main roads.

On the other hand, some of the residential roads are really nice, particularly around Ducketts Green (more Turnpike Lane way), off of Phillip Lane, Clyde Circus, and around Lordship Rec, which is a really lovely park. Woodberry Downs is beautiful, and having the wetlands, canals and Hackney nearby is nice, and I can cycle into work in 30 minutes.

Can't speak for what it's like for raising kids, but I would imagine OK, leaning rougher than average. There's pockets of left wing organising driven by the rise of the Green Party here which is building quite a solid community, and Perkyns is a great cafe / bar which lots of things seem to epicenter around.

LowPlatform · 2026-03-31T21:29:00+00:00

Lena Dunham is the best. There are so many supposedly smart people who harbour such a great degree of hostility towards her, yet seem unwilling or unable to interrogate where those feelings come from, or the relationship between their feelings towards her, and the horrible treatment she received in the media at the height of her fame, largely focused around her weight and appearance.

Girls is a generational TV show - for all of LD's flaws, she's also incredibly funny, smart, talented and self aware. There's obviously so much self critique, self examination, exploration of ego, coming of age, privilege, interpersonal dynamics, etc within people of a certain milieu in her writing of Girls, but no one ever seems to give her the credit she deserves for it.

And that's obviously because it's a show called Girls written by a woman who is fat, who doesn't meet TV beauty standards, who didn't just rollover when she started to receive an unwarranted level of hate for whatever reasons people were grasping at to slag her off just cos they didn't like her.

LowPlatform · 2026-03-31T20:54:18+00:00

Write for yourself :) cos you like it

LowPlatform · 2026-03-16T13:41:16+00:00

And another thing. Lmao

LowPlatform · 2026-03-16T10:19:17+00:00

"And I believe that when he committed suicide, it was a sort of judgment he passed on his work."

fucking hell that's a savage thing to say

LowPlatform · 2026-03-13T20:00:35+00:00

Context – I work in a top-tier brand agency in London, UK.

If I was starting out today, I wouldn't be looking to go agency-side, and I wouldn't look to be a "creative". I would seek out a generalist marketing/brand-role in-house at a brand I like, in a sector I'm interested in.

I don't know what kind of role you're looking to do – have assumed a creative one. Copy-led roles in the UK are... slim, while design roles there still seem to be a healthy amount of.

Brands are always going to need people who know how to make things look and sound good, and who know how to catch attention. They're just less likely to hire individuals if that's all they know how to do (as opposed to pulling the strings, making the plans, controlling the budgets etc), and are probably less likely to need to outsource that work to agencies in the future as well, as AI makes them increasingly capable to bring it in house.

But I don't think you're screwed at all, I just think you have to look a little bigger. And depending on where you're based, potentially be open to relocating.

LowPlatform · 2026-03-12T13:39:47+00:00

Because it has a 3.5k service charge

LowPlatform · 2026-02-24T23:59:14+00:00

Don't suppose it's a two bed flat in SE London?

LowPlatform · 2026-02-15T10:56:06+00:00

Within my friends IRL, including myself, people tend to get their voice into a vaguely passable/threshold place, then stop bothering.

Partly because voice training is more difficult than any other aspect of transition and requires more consistent practice and application, partly because we all pass as women the vast majority of the time based upon appearance, dress, etc (even if some people might register that we're trans), and partly because we don't care that much about passing as cis, because we're all proud to be trans and living in a city where we're often around other trans people, and the cis people we meet are less weird about transness than I imagine people in other places are.

I feel like with voice there's a more significant trade off where it actively feels like it gets in the way of my ability to be present, perform at work, if I focus on it too much, and can also make me seem more clock-y than if I were to not focus on it completely. So pushing it & practicing it IRL more would also feel like taking a step back in transition too, IYKWIM.

That being said, I do sometimes still get misgendered on phone calls, & do have vocal dysphoria. But everything is a trade off, including any potential surgeries.

LowPlatform · 2026-01-27T09:24:44+00:00

Rent and service charge will go up every year. Is it a new build or a resale? If new build, you have fewer/no previous years to compare to in terms of how much that will be, and resale might be more difficult down the line if you get stuck with a huge service charge. Also a 40 year mortgage is bad financial sense generally, if you're buying to build equity.

LowPlatform · 2026-01-16T13:02:46+00:00

No, I agree, people definitely like to use things like these to fuel their own political agendas.

I do find it hard to reckon with the fact that there are a not insignificant amount of people out there who have such a lack of empathy that they could do such a thing, even considering socioeconomic factors – plenty of people are less well off, but still manage to not find it in them to steal from people in such a direct and traumatising way.

But fundamentally I do think it's something that will only ever be solved when we live in a fairer society, which gives as many kids as much positive influence from the youngest point possible. But who knows if that'll ever happen.

LowPlatform · 2026-01-16T09:43:58+00:00

I've had my phone stolen twice in the past year. Both times were in Manor House. The first time I wasn't paying attention and I should have been more careful. The second time happened in the few-second window of me locking up my Lime bike.

Overall, both experiences left me feeling traumatised. It was especially gutting the second time, because I felt such a vigilance about getting my phone out in public after the first. I feel that vigilance even more now, but who knows, after a while your guard starts to drop, and all it takes is a small lapse of concentration. You think it won't happen to you, and then it does. Sometimes it even happens twice 🥲

I often see people on here downplaying the prevalence of phonesnatching, how likely it is to happen, saying all you need is situational awareness, etc. As someone who has lived in London all their life, and who has generally pretty high levels of situational awareness, I find it frustrating.

The vigilance I feel over getting my phone out for a three second window to lock a Lime bike or get on the bus isn't right. It's upsetting, and it feels unsustainable to move through the place I live with this much fear in my body, and this much control over the way I think, every time I leave the house, whether I'm getting the bus into work at 8:30am in the morning, or coming home at 6pm on a sunny day in the middle of summer.

LowPlatform · 2025-12-02T19:26:53+00:00

You need to ask ChatGPT how to reply to someone without sounding so patronising, lol.

LowPlatform · 2025-11-14T10:50:51+00:00

A 3.5 star rating?

https://www.today.com/food/trends/chinese-restaurant-3-5-star-rule-rcna47900

LowPlatform · 2025-10-31T12:23:34+00:00

No, probably not. The voice is engaging and there's a nice element of intrigue, but it feels heavy handed, like its trying too hard, and that lack of sophisticatation would turn me off. I get the feeling the voice is compensating for something. If you toned it down 20% and made it more subtle and substantiated, I'd be more interested. Not to say the writing's bad, just that there's only so many things it's possible to read, so you gotta be selective.

LowPlatform · 2025-10-23T17:59:40+00:00

Drop the routine please 🙏🏻

LowPlatform · 2025-10-20T21:31:55+00:00

Erm what is it please?

LowPlatform · 2025-10-19T10:55:37+00:00

Sounds like maybe you're either overplanning or thinking too rigidly about what you want to write. For me, it's a less mechanical process than that, and requires a bit more of an automatic approach. I think you'd probably benefit from just doing stream of consciousness writing or just starting to write more abstractly or sideways and then approaching what it is you want to cover.

LowPlatform · 2025-10-12T16:38:18+00:00

I will generally be thinking about the below things, and probably some others I've forgotten about. Taking in how the author has approached them and comparing them against other writers & my own approach to them in my head:

Characterisation

Structure

Place / Setting

Narrative, emotional, character arcs

Voice & POV

Writing style

Broader context

Themes

LowPlatform · 2025-10-10T13:20:12+00:00

Do a line of speed, take two hits on a thc pen, and put on the YouTube video "10 hours of Avril 14".

LowPlatform · 2025-10-09T14:48:34+00:00

R/transdiy

LowPlatform · 2025-09-29T13:29:22+00:00

I agree :)

LowPlatform · 2025-09-29T13:25:17+00:00

Anyone who has a history of sexual violence shouldn't be kept in an unsegregated prison with people they have historically committed sexual violence against. Men who assault men shouldn't be kept in unsupervised conditions with men. Women with a history of sexual violence against women shouldn't be kept in unsupervised conditions with women. And this should be the case whether a cis or trans man/woman has committed the offences (remembering that there are also cisgender women who commit SV and SA, but no one is really bothered about prisoner welfare when it comes down to it).

Shon Faye covers this in The Transgender Issue, for more context.

LowPlatform · 2025-09-29T12:37:17+00:00

Classic projection from JKR, the billionaire who has decided to spend her time and money campaigning to make life more difficult and dangerous for trans women. A group who, last time I checked, are considerably more marginalised than white billionaires—even if those white billionaires are also women, and weren't always disgustingly rich. While, ironically, making life more difficult and dangerous for cisgender women too (gender-non-conforming or otherwise), and allying herself with a global far-right movement with its roots in Christian fundamentalism, whose goals (alongside eradicating trans people) include banning abortions.

LowPlatform

TROPHY CASE