I lived in London for 22 years. I only intended to stay for three when I arrived, but then things happened and my departure wax delayed.
I am, however, glad I left. I do not regret my London years. But London is, it's quite fair to say, unlike anywhere else, and you only really know that when you have both experienced it and seen it from outside.
What's the relevance of this? It is to be found in the fact that London is failing us, badly.
London really does not understand some very basic things. Like food. It's shrink wrapped in London's view. In a few minutes when I will be walking, windblown and wet through a field with my dog, it will be the winter wheat and it's state of progress, or not (some is under water right now).
Despite that reality I will witness just down the lane flooding for much of London is the Thames Barrier. That's naive, and it's a small world view, but both are facts of life in London. Its disconnect from reality does not always deliver a big picture perspective; it allows denial of the truth as life goes on in a bubble.
And it permits a belief in technical solutions, like austerity, that will impact 'someone else', of whom there seem to be plenty around in London, none of whom you know. London communities are small and socially insular. That's true to some degree everywhere, of course, but less so.
And this matters. I wrote yesterday about the choice Scotland faces. It's clear that London does not know why Scotland might want to leave. That's as clear as London having little clue that austerity when applied to the environment - with many more cuts to come yet - results in flooding of large areas, a problem that can only get worse.
London is the problem of small scale thinking writ large; of the power of self interest ignoring the issue of community. Of the capital ignoring the nation. Of theory offering no alternative to practice.
I am not saying the country has all the answers. But London does not seem to know there is other experience on offer. And right now the consequence of that is the creation of new political demands and momentums that London can't apparently even begin to comprehend.
The outcome of all this is far from clear, but it's time the rest of the country was given the attention by London it deserves.
PS Six mallard were on the flooded winter wheat - a perfect breakfast environment for them and a pleasant diversion for me.
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I think, when the flood waters have dropped, the flooding will be seen as a deliberate policy of the environment agency rather than austerity. I would remind you that developing wetlands is EU policy, and the EU has a rather heavy hand in the flooding as well.
Or, you can read it in Booker:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/10625663/Flooding-Somerset-Levels-disaster-is-being-driven-by-EU-policy.html
That is, if the media are allowed/can be bothered to report it.
That the agency lacks control and/or oversight is very well known. Locally, spending several hundred thousand to renovate two flood-control sluices, and taking over six months to do it. And that is not the only minor problem.
An agency that rents a car for every other employee has obvious problems.
JohnM
Christopher Booker is a fully paid up member of the tin foil hat brigade, climate change denier just one of the many bizarre hobby horses he rides.
Dredging is not the long term answer, indeed it exacerbates the problems extreme flooding creates, Monbiot explains why in the link below
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/30/dredging-rivers-floods-somerset-levels-david-cameron-farmers
In addition to the measures Monbiot describes (reforestation of uplands and paying farmers to let the water flood on to their land until the danger passes), action on climate change is the central core of the argument – something that Booker denies is happening, as apparently the flooding is all an EU conspiracy instead.
Its a game of absurd bingo this about who is to blame for the floods, UKIPers claim its gay marriage, the tin foil hat wing of the neoliberals claim its an EU conspiracy – we just need IDS, Gove & Cameron now for the full house blaming it on benefit scroungers.
Richard, having worked in London but living in the countryside, the role of London compared to the remainder of the UK is an issue close to my heart. What would be your thoughts about a tax initiative being launched incentivizing companies to set up business outside of London and the South East. For instance, if you establish a business in Newcastle hiring 20 local staff your corporation tax rates will be reduced to 10% for year 1. Obviously this is an example policy and there could be many variants/alternatives. I appreciate this could potentially be open to exploitation but, if it got people employed and paying tax under PAYE could this be a cost worth bearing?
Tax simply does not work for this purpose: abuse always follows, or as recent NIC experiments show, nothing happens
Regional policy has to be about grants
The question of renting cars doesn’t surprise me much, when many employees work on their own, covering very large, sometimes remote areas of countryside and often need to drive down farm tracks and across fields. I wouldn’t be using my own car on that type of work.
Or maybe even the mail….
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2554940/Agency-flooding-puts-greater-water-parsnips-voles-local-people.html
There is a long tradition in London of regarding the provinces as parochial; I’ve always said that London is the most parochial city in the country.
Richard – I have to say that I both agree, and disagree with you. I disagree, because, 9 years after we downsized from London, my wife and I still miss London’s offer – being able to attend Gresham College or my Inn’s (Lincoln’s) lectures, or the exhibitions and theatre, even though Norwich, to where we moved, is almost a richly endowed in these facilities as London. And our daughter, who moved here last May, would fully agree with you, having come really to hate London’s casual cruelty (but she WAS working for Barclay’s at Canary Wharf!) And for both of us, there was the fact that we’d lived nearly half our lives – 30 years – in the same Electoral Ward of the London Borough of Barnet, Hale Ward, that I represented on the Council for 4 years – a real wrench.
However, we did leave behind a crippling mortgage, and have now had 9 mortgage-free years, set free from the “dead hand” of that system, so I have a strong basis for agreement with you, even without your observations about how we are closer to “reality” here than the London “villagers” – not the inhabitants of the real London villages, like Mill Hill, were we lived, or Wood Green, or Southall, but the London “villagers” JohnM refers to in his post about the Environment Agency – the ones suffering from the “Let them eat cake” blindness, that prevents them form empathising with real local needs, or even understanding their existence.
It seems to me that this is yet one more result of the enervation and hollowing out of the political system since the Thatcher/Reagan coup d’etat: the attack on anyone outside the small charmed circle of the new Baronage, the 1%, directed first at the real working class (miners here in the UK, Air Traffic Controllers in Reagan’s USA, who were hauled of to prison in chains a matter of weeks after he became President), but later at anyone who opposes their evidence-free neo-liberal ideology, (including, of course the old GLC, which even some Tories wished to see retained) means the the term “London” has now shrunk effectively to two “villages”, the “Westminster village” (perhaps including Westminster Council), and the “City of London village”, from which all “workers” (and I use Tony Benn’s definition here = anyone who does NOT own the means of production, so including even the self-employed and SME’s) have been excluded and banished.
We no longer have in Government the real “movers and shakers” – REAL businessmen, REAL academics, REAL Trade Unionists, REAL entrepreneurs – of the calibre of Ernie Bevin, or Gerald Nabarro – only incestuous “villagers” who can only say “let them eat cake”, when faced with people crying for help.
Andrew
I agree: I could not capture all that nuance early this morning!
Richard
The ATCs in the US were Federal Employees bound by very specific employment laws and regulations. The SCOTUS upheld the right of ANY President to take action to end the strike and then take appropriate action against the strikers.
As to the issue of coup d’état – both Thatcher and Regan were elected – RR for two terms, MT for three.
Respectfully, that would suggest both enjoyed enough public support to get enough votes to win – however distasteful you find the results, that is the way the respective systems work.
@ Allan
Of COURSE Reagan and Thatcher won power legitimately – RR X 2 and MT X 3 (Alas!) – under the systems they ran under (though turnouts in both countries have steadily dropped since 1979).
No, the coup d’etat to which I refer was much subtler – the creation of numerous “think tanks”, the capture of academia, the crowding out (and deliberate suppression) of dissent, the packing of the media and the public forum with one-sided narratives set to depict all other narratives as aberrant – this was the true coup d’etat.
And as for the ATC, I don’t give a damn if the SCOTUS said and President had the right to imprison men fighting for their livelihoods, what Reagan did was abhorrent, and besides, the SCOTUS is peole by some seriously wacky, Right-wing fruitcakes, one of whom decided that the “right of the people tp bear arms” meant they could bear anything portable, including “a rocket-launcher or rocket-propelled grenade”!!!!! Excuse me if I don’t pay much heed or honour to that certifiable body!
Well said
Hitler was elected – he then gradually removed democracy. It seems to me that this is now well under way by this government – the gaging law just passed, the loss of legal aid to the majority of “small” people so they cannot complain, the passing of section 118 in the Health & Social Care Bill preventing public consultation and allowing closure of any hospital/ removal of services, the recent passing of the law to allow the Home Secretary to remove citizenship with no system of judical oversight, attacks on the BBC if there is any programme that has a view different from the government’s, the endless use of false statistics by this government, etc etc etc.
During Thatchers years barely 34 percent of the electorate voted for her -democracy?
Hold on Richard! There are millions of people living in London. The “London” that gets everything wrong and hurts everybody else are a few thousand in City Boardrooms and in Westminster. Even most of the civil servants working in London wouldn’t want to wreck people’s lives the neoliberal way. Don’t blame the people who live in Newham or Ilford or Croydon or Catford.
I presumed to some degree that London was a metaphor
But let’s also be clear; that’s not entirely true. London does have an attitude e.g. in the media, that is very apparent to those outside it
Sorry Richard, I certainly should have included the national media among the guilty parties.
However we are not being oppressed by cockneys.
Afraid you wrong. Very wrong.
Go to any pub or bar in London and mention you’re from the North and just listen to the prejudiced drivel and self-serving crap they come out with. London is rife with what amounts to eliminationist rhetoric when it comes to the rest of the country.
Having recently moved to London, I’m amazed how insular the people here are when it comes to thinking about the rest of the country. I think it’s certainly true that politicians are in thrall to the city, and the statistics about the amount of infrastructure investment the city gets compared to other parts of the country are an outrage.
Personally I’m beginning to think something radical needs to be done, like moving the entire government to somewhere like Liverpool.
If only. Instead, when massive building work is required on the Houses of Parliament, they are refusing to even move out to alternative offices in London- inspite of the fact that undertaking work whilst parliament continues to “function” (not that it is really functioning for the majority of the population), will increase the costs significantly. No efficiency savings required for this government, just endless profligate waste while the rest of us have to suffer the consequences of massive cuts to budgets.
Alternatively, move the city to somewhere else. Like the north sea!
“Hitler was elected — he then gradually removed democracy. It seems to me that this is now well under way by this government — the gagging law just passed, the loss of legal aid to the majority of “small” people so they cannot complain, the passing of section 118 in the Health & Social Care Bill preventing public consultation and allowing closure of any hospital/ removal of services, … the endless use of false statistics by this government, etc etc etc.”
Correct. So much for ‘the mother of all Parliaments’. I’d like independence from this government just as much as anybody in Scotland. The backdoor privatisation of the NHS and attacks on the ability of anybody other than Big Business to lobby Parliament prove that, under this government, democracy is a joke.
England is the “Mother of Parliaments”, not the wayward child at Westminster
Quite right John, that is how the phrase was originally meant, however it is often assumed to mean the Westminster Parliament. Unfortunately, England is most certainly not in charge of Westminster, it is in charge of us, and, in the form of this government, in the hands of a bunch of arrogant, dishonest, buck passing, vindictive, underhand, out of touch, over privileged and unreasonable right wing idiots.
¨ like moving the entire government to somewhere like Liverpool¨
What has Liverpool done to deserve that?
Further to Simon’s comment,
“During Thatchers years barely 34 percent of the electorate voted for her -democracy?”
in the light of her 3 Election victories,
and AliB’s comment “Hitler was elected — he then gradually removed democracy”
it’s worth observing that Goering said, after the Nazi’s “victory” in the 1933 Election (when the Nazi vote actually dropped!)
“If we’d had the Westminster system, we’d have wone every seat.”
I’ve been a long-time supporter of PR, and it was Blair’s pusillanimous casting aside of the Jenkins Report on reforming our broken electoral system that led me to resign from the Labour Party.
There’s little doubt that THIS Coalition would never have seen the light of day under Jenkins, while PR can produce majorities (SNP in Scotland) while also preserving minority representation (Tories in Scotland).
A Jenkins system of AV+ would surely resulted in more Green Party MP’s, and perhaps a Red-Green Coalition, perhaps as early as 2005 (when Blair got 35% of votes cast = about 25% of possible total – some democracy!!! Which, of course, is why Blair dumped the Jenkins Report.)
If Ed M wants to champion REAL localism (which WAS a reality in the 19th century – consider only Joe Chamberlain and Birmingham) PR and REAL local Government with REAL local RESOURCES and REAL democratic accountability under a PR system is a much better way than a bogus “repackaged choice agenda”.
Andrew, always a pleasure to read your comments, which reveal an experience of politics and the world greater than mine, and certainly greater than the riff raff in this current government. Your comment above shows just how we’ve got into the situation we’re now in. It’s as much a result of the weakness and dishonesty of so called progressive politicians like Blair and Clegg as the policies of right wing idealogues in the Conservative party.
Its not an exaggeration to say that Blair and Clegg, and their fellow travellers in New Labour and the Lib Dems, have betrayed millions of people who wasted their time (self included in the case of the Lib Dems) voting for them. Had Blair introduced PR in his first term when he had an enormous majority things could be very different.
And had Clegg and crew not jumped aboard the austerity bandwagon we wouldn’t see the destruction of the public sector, growing inequality and wholesale sell off of national assets for a bargain basement price. Still, there is some consolation to be had in the current situation, where we are seeing the effect of huge cuts in the Environment Agency’s budget, and cries for help from all those voters in Tory and Lib Dem constituencies.
Am I being unfair? Am I being smug in that where I live I’m unlikely to flooded out or even much inconvenienced? Am I taking pleasure in other’s misfortune? You bet! Good heavens, I’m turning into a Tory!
I share your pleasure in Andrew’s comments
Yours are also appreciated
A complete change in democracy is the only way forward. Everything else is just decoration on a dead horse.
I suggest a change to direct democracy instead of representative democracy.
If they want to spend more, they have to ask.
Funnily enough, the referendum lock on council tax rises is the same thing.