I think "managed" decline gives Sadiq Khan too much credit. There's nothing managed about it. I've lived in London all my life, bar a few years as an undergrad at Oxford, and I do think it's got worse over time.
About twenty years ago, signs started going up in public spaces (GPs' surgeries, hospitals, shops, public transport) warning people not to engage in violent or abusive behaviour towards staff. They wouldn't put up signs if it wasn't a problem.
In the last ten years or so, there's been an explosion of fly-tipping with mattresses and furniture dumped in the streets and now we see the spread of barbershops and American candy stores that turn out to be fronts for money-laundering. People urinate in the street (admittedly not that often, but it shouldn't happen at all).
Worst of all is the Tube, which is always breaking down and now allows adverts for such things as male strippers (female strippers would presumably be "exploitative," but not male ones), the Campaign for Assisted Dying and the Scientologists! Idiots cover it in pro-Hamas stickers too. The Tube also has posters telling passengers to engage in vigilante action if someone is committing sexual harassment (no thank you, I don't want to be stabbed), although the posters also promise that the police will prosecute people who "stare sexually" at others -- given how low the prosecution rate is for actual rape, I can't see many successful prosecutions for staring.
This is, of course, without mentioning the regular Jew-hate carnivals (sorry, "pro-Palestine/pro-Iran protests") and my absolute bugbear, the constant announcements on the Tube (again) about bombs, which doesn't mention the words "bomb" or "suspicious package," but just talk about seeing "something that doesn't look right" (like a Salvador Dali painting?) and have a really annoying slogan ("See it, say it, sorted").
You could even plead you were trying to save the life of the self-aware baby you believed she was going to kill in the third trimester. Somehow I don't see that working though.
Re. London, I would call it a completely avoidable tragedy (if we had had competent governments who looked beyond the 5 year cycles)…I consider myself a ‘Londoner,’ because I first moved there in 1974, from Alsager, Stoke On Trent, when I was 3 because both my parents were journalists and it was clearly a better career move than Stoke in the 70s! and fast forward, I finally left in 2006, after having had my first child (as it happens, I then went on to have two more.) My further education (undergraduate and postgraduate) was all in London and so too was most of my work. I noticed dramatic changes (after Blair’s criminal new laws began to take hold in 1997) filtering through and being realised in my area by the early 2000s. Less and less English being spoken, where I felt even back then I was a foreigner in what I considered was my home city - (hence ‘White Flight’ headlines in some of the papers at the time.) The main two final straws (leaving aside the completely dysfunctional and near neglectful hospital birthing experience and care at St. George’s in Tooting) were my missing being one of the casualties of the July 7th bombings, due to (from memory) the pretty much central London route I took into work at the time when heavily pregnant. This, after having already narrowly missing the Harrods IRA bomb by, I kid you not, 10 minutes, going off in 1984? and having of course grown up with this constant looming threat in London. The second was when I finally had had my baby and found myself to be literally (and I don’t exaggerate here) the only ‘local’ who had grown up in my area and also only one of two mum’s who were English/British and spoke the native mother tongue. Funnily enough, the subject of London is very topical, because I happened to be there only yesterday for a fleeting visit with my middle 17 year old son, who as it happened had a job commitment and on our way back to the station at lunchtime, going through Regents St./Mayfair, a dramatic scene suddenly unfolded in front of our eyes as we heard from our Addison Lee lots of swearing and loud voices, just as we were approaching a pub (initially I thought it was a bar brawl breaking out.) It transpired to be two plain clothes police under cover cops pinning down a man, literally on the road in front of us. The Addison Lee driver remarked in a very matter of fact way that it was probably a watch thief as that is what was particularly rife in the area we were travelling through…the Addison Lee driver who was booked to take us to the work meeting when we arrived in London, also told us his particular journey as a life-long Londoner and said he and his wife had had enough of living in a city they had also become complete strangers in and were most likely going to take early retirement either in Bournemouth or Florida (to avoid the evil IHT tax) soon, aged 55.
I was born in London and spent most of my life in London, but I'm devastated by what's become of it. It has led to me writing my debut novel Struck - which will unfold as weekly signals on Substack. If you like dark psychological thrillers with cultural bite, this might be for you.
London attracts people from all over the world because it's a fantastic place to live & work. I'm born and bred here. It generates more money for the UK than any other part of the UK, and along with the SE, represents the largest part of the UK GDP by some distance. It is the only part of the UK that has a fiscal surplus. If it were a separate region, it would have a GDP per capital higher than Switzerland, Lichtenstein and Luxembourg (the highest in the EU).
Goodwin and is ilk are published in the Evening Standard, which is owned by a Russian migrant. The Daily Mail's owner has French nationality. You have an Irish accent. What is it about the migrants in London you really don't like? Or are they just the "wrong kind" of migrant based on your personal fears and prejudices?
To paraphrase the Brexiteer loons, if you don't like London, you're free to leave. Millions (literally) like it, which is why they come.
Thanks for an engaging podcast, I really appreciate it. Your London is probably not the same as most people's.
I lived in London from 1974 to 1982 in the East End and it was multicultural with a white majority and we all got on.
I returned just 10 years later to Barking and it already resembled Islamabad and more recently after Convid we visited our niece in Dagenham where the Burkhas and Niqabs were in their hundreds whilst it was a rare occurrence to spot a white face.
We won't be returning any time soon.
This country is lost until Reform gets to power in 2029 and everyone knows it.
A rabid Darwinist (not me) would say women are more likely to want increased abortion for other women because it means more power/breeding opportunities for their offspring. The same is true of killing off the elderly - More resources for their family and offspring.
But of course we're all intelligent, self-aware beings now and that couldn't possibly be the case.
I think "managed" decline gives Sadiq Khan too much credit. There's nothing managed about it. I've lived in London all my life, bar a few years as an undergrad at Oxford, and I do think it's got worse over time.
About twenty years ago, signs started going up in public spaces (GPs' surgeries, hospitals, shops, public transport) warning people not to engage in violent or abusive behaviour towards staff. They wouldn't put up signs if it wasn't a problem.
In the last ten years or so, there's been an explosion of fly-tipping with mattresses and furniture dumped in the streets and now we see the spread of barbershops and American candy stores that turn out to be fronts for money-laundering. People urinate in the street (admittedly not that often, but it shouldn't happen at all).
Worst of all is the Tube, which is always breaking down and now allows adverts for such things as male strippers (female strippers would presumably be "exploitative," but not male ones), the Campaign for Assisted Dying and the Scientologists! Idiots cover it in pro-Hamas stickers too. The Tube also has posters telling passengers to engage in vigilante action if someone is committing sexual harassment (no thank you, I don't want to be stabbed), although the posters also promise that the police will prosecute people who "stare sexually" at others -- given how low the prosecution rate is for actual rape, I can't see many successful prosecutions for staring.
This is, of course, without mentioning the regular Jew-hate carnivals (sorry, "pro-Palestine/pro-Iran protests") and my absolute bugbear, the constant announcements on the Tube (again) about bombs, which doesn't mention the words "bomb" or "suspicious package," but just talk about seeing "something that doesn't look right" (like a Salvador Dali painting?) and have a really annoying slogan ("See it, say it, sorted").
Thanks for this Daniel.
Must an FYI they don't mean "women in politics", they mean they want more feminists on politics.
It's astounding that killing a pregnant woman is two murders, but thry can have an abortion to birth.
It'd be a great defense story.
"I believed she was going to abort her child so you only sentence me for one death".
You could even plead you were trying to save the life of the self-aware baby you believed she was going to kill in the third trimester. Somehow I don't see that working though.
Re. London, I would call it a completely avoidable tragedy (if we had had competent governments who looked beyond the 5 year cycles)…I consider myself a ‘Londoner,’ because I first moved there in 1974, from Alsager, Stoke On Trent, when I was 3 because both my parents were journalists and it was clearly a better career move than Stoke in the 70s! and fast forward, I finally left in 2006, after having had my first child (as it happens, I then went on to have two more.) My further education (undergraduate and postgraduate) was all in London and so too was most of my work. I noticed dramatic changes (after Blair’s criminal new laws began to take hold in 1997) filtering through and being realised in my area by the early 2000s. Less and less English being spoken, where I felt even back then I was a foreigner in what I considered was my home city - (hence ‘White Flight’ headlines in some of the papers at the time.) The main two final straws (leaving aside the completely dysfunctional and near neglectful hospital birthing experience and care at St. George’s in Tooting) were my missing being one of the casualties of the July 7th bombings, due to (from memory) the pretty much central London route I took into work at the time when heavily pregnant. This, after having already narrowly missing the Harrods IRA bomb by, I kid you not, 10 minutes, going off in 1984? and having of course grown up with this constant looming threat in London. The second was when I finally had had my baby and found myself to be literally (and I don’t exaggerate here) the only ‘local’ who had grown up in my area and also only one of two mum’s who were English/British and spoke the native mother tongue. Funnily enough, the subject of London is very topical, because I happened to be there only yesterday for a fleeting visit with my middle 17 year old son, who as it happened had a job commitment and on our way back to the station at lunchtime, going through Regents St./Mayfair, a dramatic scene suddenly unfolded in front of our eyes as we heard from our Addison Lee lots of swearing and loud voices, just as we were approaching a pub (initially I thought it was a bar brawl breaking out.) It transpired to be two plain clothes police under cover cops pinning down a man, literally on the road in front of us. The Addison Lee driver remarked in a very matter of fact way that it was probably a watch thief as that is what was particularly rife in the area we were travelling through…the Addison Lee driver who was booked to take us to the work meeting when we arrived in London, also told us his particular journey as a life-long Londoner and said he and his wife had had enough of living in a city they had also become complete strangers in and were most likely going to take early retirement either in Bournemouth or Florida (to avoid the evil IHT tax) soon, aged 55.
I was born in London and spent most of my life in London, but I'm devastated by what's become of it. It has led to me writing my debut novel Struck - which will unfold as weekly signals on Substack. If you like dark psychological thrillers with cultural bite, this might be for you.
First signal here: https://substack.com/home/post/p-166880000
What are you so afraid of?
London attracts people from all over the world because it's a fantastic place to live & work. I'm born and bred here. It generates more money for the UK than any other part of the UK, and along with the SE, represents the largest part of the UK GDP by some distance. It is the only part of the UK that has a fiscal surplus. If it were a separate region, it would have a GDP per capital higher than Switzerland, Lichtenstein and Luxembourg (the highest in the EU).
Goodwin and is ilk are published in the Evening Standard, which is owned by a Russian migrant. The Daily Mail's owner has French nationality. You have an Irish accent. What is it about the migrants in London you really don't like? Or are they just the "wrong kind" of migrant based on your personal fears and prejudices?
To paraphrase the Brexiteer loons, if you don't like London, you're free to leave. Millions (literally) like it, which is why they come.
Britain is in a demographic crisis. Immigrants generally don’t get abortions. Does the government want to kill mostly English babies?
Patty Hearst
Laura,
Thanks for an engaging podcast, I really appreciate it. Your London is probably not the same as most people's.
I lived in London from 1974 to 1982 in the East End and it was multicultural with a white majority and we all got on.
I returned just 10 years later to Barking and it already resembled Islamabad and more recently after Convid we visited our niece in Dagenham where the Burkhas and Niqabs were in their hundreds whilst it was a rare occurrence to spot a white face.
We won't be returning any time soon.
This country is lost until Reform gets to power in 2029 and everyone knows it.
The inestimable Kathy got a mention from Mark Steyn today too.
I've found it.
Oh at Clubland Q and A, or in print. I'll send on.
A rabid Darwinist (not me) would say women are more likely to want increased abortion for other women because it means more power/breeding opportunities for their offspring. The same is true of killing off the elderly - More resources for their family and offspring.
But of course we're all intelligent, self-aware beings now and that couldn't possibly be the case.