This weekend there is a festival of African culture in Trafalgar Square, the Taste of Spain festival in Regent Street and a long weekend series of shows in the Tate Gallery. All this is free. As are the parks and most museums (most native Londoners can't locate Tate Britain or even the National Gallery or the British Museum).

Buy a £12/month pass with a chain of cinemas and you can watch as many movies as you want.

Prefer DVDs? rent them on your library (where you can get books as well of course) for a nominal fee.

Like classical music? The PROMS start in July, you can get in to listen to world clas performers for a fiver.

If you like your food there are eateries with cuisines from all around the world and for all pockets. If you try to eat only around Trafalgar Square, well, of course it is going to be expensive, but a real Londoner does not do that of course, instead one heads a bit out of the main attraction areas (the Isle of Dogs instead of Canary Wharf, Blackheath instead of Greenwich, etc.) and you get value for money.

This is in the cheap side of things, you can of course pay £35 for a good seat at the theatre or £200 for a performance in the Royal Opera House, but nobody is obliging you to do so and there are many quality options for similar activities (there are Opera companies in London that will charge you £15 or £20 with perfectly proficient professional singers).

Yes, London is expensive, no question about it, housing is expensive and you get much smaller properties that you would get elsewhere for the same money, public services are sometimes stretched (but we don't have power cuts like in Barcelona, or water rationing like in the Mexico City, the worst it has got recently is to stop people watering their gardens, the pain) but they mostly work, and many people believe it is not adequate to raise children, which frankly is ludicrous.

The point is that you can find things that are economical or even free and they are always a tube ride away only, and that the city functions, but naturally there are hiccups.

As for crime, there are certainly tough areas, but more often than not violence is gang related, so unless you are a member of a gang the probability of you suffering random violence is pretty damn small (which is vouched by police and government statistics, but right wing tabloid media will never be swayed by a triffle such a bunch of facts).

London is for the cosmopolitan, open minded person that needs to feed with the excitement of a vibrant, dynamic city. Some people can handle it, some people can't (the same thing can be said about the countryside, I hated it with all my might, I could not handle it! So horses for courses) Many people love London, warts and all, because you get compensated for getting to know it better.