Just read an article in the Sunday Times by Andrew Sullivan who's been living there and he says the same, it's behind a paywall so I can't link to or post it all but here's an excerpt: http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/comment/columns/andrewsullivan/article1341057.ece
I was in NYC a couple of months ago, I spend a lot of time in London and I don't recognise either city from the ***** written above. If you want everywhere to be like Barnsley why not just stay in Barnsley FFS?