I was going to mention this, for centuries England has been "overrun" by those peski foreigners, we've been invaded , we've done the invading, good old England as you call it, went out and invaded the entire smegging planet, heard of a little thing called the British Empire?
England, many hundreds of years before you were born, went out and became a world leader in trade, multiculturalism, and well, murder and slavery aswell.
We actively went out to see the world and make friends, and enemies, rather than putting up a 50ft wall around our coast, that is good old England, thats one of the many reasons why a tiny tiny tiny little island is quite so high up the food chain in terms of international super powers.
Had England, in its history, cut itself off like North Korea, England wouldn't be regarded as anything more than a fly to swat when considering a war, world domination, trade routes, etc, etc, etc.
Thats what irritates me about, honestly, obviously racist posts and people mentioning good old England, england has ALWAYS had foreigners roaming its capital streets, England for 500 years before anyone in this thread was born had foreigners speaking other languages in the streets, but somehow its now new because theres a few more or you've decided to suddenly notice it more.
You've lived in London for almost 20 years, and its suddenly a problem?
As a kid, in school in London in a largely white area we had indians, chinese, japanese, eastern european and african kids in most of my classes.
I do think people are much ruder, more confrontational, less considerate than 20 years ago, but thats in general, black, white, asian, young, old, everyone. PEOPLE talk loudly on their phones and it pee's me off, I don't care what language they are speaking in when being rude, its the rudeness that irks me.
As for hearing polish when out and about, I can only see it as a good thing, I pick up a little polish and then when I can afford a cleaner, cook, and general maid, communication will be easier