By James Kirkham

If you spent your entire life scrolling through TikTok and reels or reading certain sections of the British press, you would be forgiven for thinking that stepping outside your front door in 2026 is an act of extreme bravery. The narrative being fed to us 24 hours a day, seven days a week is that Britain is broken, London is an unlikable war zone and the economic lights are about to go out for good.

It is a diet of manufactured outrage and politically motivated pessimism. But the problem is when you feed a nation a constant stream of doom, you don't just change their mood, you do change their economy too.

Anyone who actually walks the streets of our cities like I do every day of the week knows the digital horror story doesn’t match the physical reality.

Look around, you saw packed pubs throughout December, high streets that are reinventing themselves differently with coffee shop booms and restaurants opening. You see a multicultural London that still hums with an energy most global cities envy, yearn for, come to and the reality is vibrant; the digital reflection though is a grayscale........

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