The kindest city in the UK has been revealed…and London is way down

Ben Kenyon

The good old days, eh.

You could leave your doors unlocked, there were friendly bobbies on every street corner and everyone was always having a grand old knees up.

Now it’s all Twitter spats, ASBO teens and boozy British lairiness on our streets – or that’s what the papers would have you believe.

But a new survey has found there are some real bastions of civility, neighbourliness and community spirit out there amidst the myriad fights and Facebook slagging matches.

If you’ve ever fought another bloke for the last seat on the Underground, you’ll not be surprised to learn that London came dead last out of 19 cities for kindness.

It was actually Bristol which came out on top. Co-op Food surveyed 4,000 Brits to see how kind they were and the West Country city came out smelling of roses.

Locals hailed the city as being compassionate, helpful and a place with great community spirit.

Belfast was number two in the survey which asked thousands of people in 19 cities how community-minded they were.

The Northern Irish capital, which was recently voted the best place to live in the UK, beat the Scottish oil city of Aberdeen into third.

Southampton didn’t fare to badly in fourth, closely followed by Cardiff in fifth position, based on the amount of ‘good deeds’ per city.

The good news from the survey was that we’re not savaging each other over the last pasty in the supermarket. In fact, despite working long hours, many people questioned did go out of their way to do good deeds for others.

Running after someone with something they’d dropped ranked highest in the survey closely followed by giving up a seat for a fellow passenger on the bus or train.

Coming to the rescue of a person who’s lost was a popular ‘good deed’ as was taking posts an a parcel for a neighbour.

Surprisingly 18-24-year-olds were found to be most likely to lend a hand to their fellow human – going shopping for someone in need or helping in the community.