Can this be true?

Question

Old Sid, pub regular says rich people have houses in the West of towns and cities because the prevailing winds on Earth blow from West to East and they don't smell the poor people who are always in the East of town. Paris, London and New York are good examples he says. Is this the case? bets on it.

Answer 1

Ha ha ha! Good ol' Sid.

Answer 2

Gotta say, Manchester must buck the trend. Its a bit of a mish mash, but the the south is the traditionally more affluent area, and the northern side the relative poor quarters. I've heard people say that this is for similar reasons as to what you've suggested, differing only in so much that the more affluent people bought bigger houses in the southern areas because the smog from the cotton mill chimneys in the early to mid part of the 20th century polluted most of north manchester to such a point that day light wasnt visible even at the height of noon.

The west end of Manchester isnt even Manchester, they call it Salford instead, which is a City in its own right. And Salford is not affluent, its a dump.

Answer 3

I think the expression "West end" eminates from London, and it is partly to do with the wind, but also the flow of the Thames going west to east. As this was basically an open sewer, the "effluent" moved away from the rich end, to the poorer east end. It seems the rich did s**t on the poor, then.

Answer 4

Could be true, but more likely that it is the general smell of industry and the like, that would blow via the prevailing wind (dues to the rotation of the earth) rather than the poor people that would live close to those industries.

Answer 5

I lived in the west of Paris in an area which wasn't particularly posh but now alot of suburbs around big French towns are growing into expensive places for well-off people, pushing the less well-off further out of town.

Answer 6

Theory loses water when you start talking about people living on the East Coast. The rich people live in the east so that they can have water-front property. For example, in my area, all the rich folk live to the east -- closest to the ocean.

Answer 7

That could be it...the west end in Glasgow is also the nicer area. Considering the word "posh" comes from the way rich people used to travel (port out starboard home) in relation to the sun, sounds like the kind of thing they did.

Answer 8

In the case of New York, the east in of town is in the Atlantic ocean.

Answer 9

Sid has very clearly never been to the west end of Newcastle.

That being said they are Geordies and are famed for not being wired up right ,so perhaps he still has a point.

Answer 10

Where I live the closer to the west you live, the closer you are to the ocean and the properties are much more expensive. There is less smog and the temperatures are always more comfortable. What you say is very interesting.....

Answer 11

don't follow the argument why would the wind smell in one direction and not the other???? Much more likely that where dense populations gather with a mixture of heavy industry and industrial and general pollution, that's where the smell is!