London - the beating heart of our great nation

zagubov

A._Badger wrote: »

The option is there if it appeals. My suspicion is that bad news from Scandinavia rarely reaches our media. They prefer the fantasy version of a socialist paradise.

And of course the same is true of Toastie, who could quit his trolling for Marx (I wonder who pays his salary while he's posting this tripe?) and go to Cuba.

Sweden managed to have a ruling social democratic party who got voted in 11 times and held power for 30 years, In general these countries live within their means, limit their foreign adventures, treat their people straight and insist on total honest transparency to the poiint that they publish everybody's tax statments

It's not just Scandinavia, but to differing extents Benelux, Germany, the Alpine countires.

The Brits apparently played a major role in setting up the economic system in occupied post-war Germany. It spread work and wealth very widely. Pity we forgot to establish it in our own country, like the eejits we are.:(

We're waaaaay too smug in this country about how well-run we are. There's hardly a party leader who can remember when mastercard was caled Access let alone BBC1 was just called BBC.

GeorgeHowell

Generali wrote: »

It's interesting: all those places in the south are prosperous and are run by Tories while the North isn't and is run by Labour. I generalize but that's pretty close to how things work.

Is Socialism caused by poor people or does Socialism cause poor people?

Socialism dupes poorer people into believing that it will improve their lot. Thirteen years of New Labour has certainly put paid to that notion.

And before anyone says, "Ah, but New Labour wasn't proper socialism", I will say okay then let's look at the stellar records of improving the quality of life in the Soviet Union and Maoist China, which took it all much further.

And if anyone still thinks that "proper", beneficial socialism/communism/Marxism can exist then please read (or re-read) George Orwell's Animal Farm.

GeorgeHowell

ruggedtoast wrote: »

As Zagubov said, you could look to Europe, or to this actual country in the past. Inequality is now higher in the UK than at any time since the war.

You don't have to be a raging socialist to see that the distribution of wealth is out of whack.

Going back to the premise of the article, we are all told that the rich are flooding to London because its such an incredible place to live. But then we are all warned that if we dare to ask them to pay their fair share they will all leave because they are only here because they get to dodge their taxes.

Well, which is it?

This depends of course of how inequality is defined and measured. We probably have proportionately more super and mega rich than many other countries and if they are compared with those at the bottom then the inequality will appear vast. But if more meaningful comparisons are made which downplay the small extremes at both ends then no country achieves this socialist utopia of fair shares for all. Comparison with the end of WWII is also pretty meaningless because the overall standard of living has gone up so much that almost everyone at the lower end will be have a vastly higher standard of living than their counterparts did then.

It's all about this relative definition of poverty which is so beloved of the left. Because socialism is founded largely on envy, resent, and grievance it matters more to them how everyone stands relative to each other than does the absolute standard of living and quality of life that everyone experiences. A typical conservative wants to be better off; a typical socialist is almost as happy to see someone better off than him/her become worse off.

Generali

ruggedtoast wrote: »

Thats an interesting point, but werent most of them doing alright until Thatcherism?

If you think that taking vast subsidies from taxpayers and making it illegal to compete with state owned monopolies is 'doing alright' then yes they were.

Unfortunately that approach to economics was sending the country bust so the Labour Government introduced monetarist policies after the IMF were called in in 1976.

If anything, Lady Thatcher followed the economic policies introduced by Labour/Lib-Lab in the 70s. The only thing her party added was privatisation.

BigAunty

After 10 years of living in London in semi deprived, or deprived areas in east and south-east areas of the capital, I moved back to Scotland (I'm not Scottish but have spent more than half of my adult life there).

It was the usual thing of feeling that I had to work just to have most of my income disappear on accommodation and travel costs, plus tiresome nuisances like graffitti, crowded transport, evangelical churches, endless poundshops and chicken shops, dirty shops, and general run down demeanor.

This is a permanent move as realistically I'll never be able to enjoy the same standard of living back in London unless my salary quadruples or more. I won't want to trade my huge period house in a quiet low crime spot just 2 miles from the city centre in Scotland for a tiny flat in a noisy high crime area in London.

It takes me 20 minutes to get to the city center, I often get a seat, it costs me a tenner a week and there's no way I could ever stand the long inefficient London cattle commute. If the trains or buses go down where I live now, I can walk to work....

The last place I lived in south-east London always had an intimidating vibe, lots of social tension, groups of youths hanging around, shop-keepers kept on their toes by continual thefts and hardly any visible policing. Soft drugs were openly smoked, there seemed to be loads of arguments in the streets, youths would do that glaring, feet up on seats, silly slouchy walk. I was verbally abused by complete strangers and came close to being assaulted after a lady deliberately bumped into me rather than let me pass.

The area I live now in a large city in Scotland just seems to have more visibly relaxed happier people, friendly shop assistants and just the lovely feeling of walking around in a generally tidier, cleaner, better kept environment. None of that daft gangster posing by the local kids, either.

Realistically, this is because the type of budget that forces me to live in scruffy areas of London allows me to live in the affluent areas of this city - this city has some of the most bleakest parts of the UK and Europe in it but I don't have to live in or near them.

There's lots I love about London - Borough market, the southbank river walk, museums and so on, but nothing I can't get here. I'd only live in London again if I could live in Zone 1 and that's not going to happen. If I had to live in London again, I would rather live in a tiny studio in the centre of town than have a more spacious place further out.

StevieJ

GeorgeHowell wrote: »

And before anyone says, "Ah, but New Labour wasn't proper socialism", I will say okay then let's look at the stellar records of improving the quality of life in the Soviet Union and Maoist China, which took it all much further.

And if anyone still thinks that "proper", beneficial socialism/communism/Marxism can exist then please read (or re-read) George Orwell's Animal Farm.

Economically, Communism did improve Russia, they moved from a backward 3rd world country to an economic powerhouse in less than twenty years. Unfortunately as you say freedoms were trampled on and destroyed, having said that, there are many millions of Russians who are poorer since the fall of the old regime and hanker for the old ways.

Generali

StevieJ wrote: »

Economically, Communism did improve Russia, they moved from a backward 3rd world country to an economic powerhouse in less than twenty years. Unfortunately as you say freedoms were trampled on and destroyed, having said that, there are many millions of Russians who are poorer since the fall of the old regime and hanker for the old ways.

TBH, Russia is a very poor example of anything economic or political except perhaps how to treat your people if you want unthreatened power through fear.

The Tsarist system was the last and worst aspect of a quasi-feudalistic system in any major European country that I am aware of and it was wholly right that it was destroyed. The Soviet system that replaced it managed to be even worse when measured by suffering, an immense achievement IMHO.

A._Badger

zagubov wrote: »

Sweden managed to have a ruling social democratic party who got voted in 11 times and held power for 30 years, In general these countries live within their means, limit their foreign adventures, treat their people straight and insist on total honest transparency to the poiint that they publish everybody's tax statments

It's not just Scandinavia, but to differing extents Benelux, Germany, the Alpine countires.

The Brits apparently played a major role in setting up the economic system in occupied post-war Germany. It spread work and wealth very widely. Pity we forgot to establish it in our own country, like the eejits we are.:(

We're waaaaay too smug in this country about how well-run we are. There's hardly a party leader who can remember when mastercard was caled Access let alone BBC1 was just called BBC.

You seem to be conflating two things here - the joys of life in the North and our juvenile politicians.

On the first, that is a sanitized version of life in Northern Europe, which overlooks extremely serious tensions and social problems which are not often reported here. I don't want to open the can of works labelled 'immigration' but anyone with experience of Northern Europe will know what I'm alluding to..And that is just one issue - there are also manifest problems of drugs and poverty, just as we have here.

Then there is the question of how much are the politics father to the temperament of Northern Europe and how much is a Northern European temperament, father to the politics?

I would suggest that most of Scandinavia would behave the same, whoever was in power (unless extremism was imposed from without). Germany, of course, er.. not so much...

As for the point you make about our third rate politicians in the UK, we have so many tributaries spewing into that particular river that its hard to finger the biggest sources of poison. An obsession with youth is certainly one. Blair and Cameron were both too young and ignorant to have been put in charge of the proverbial whelk stall.

Then there is the Oxbridge PPE easy route to a safe seat, domination of Labour by the sclerotic unions and of the Tories by plutocrats, the hegemonic propaganda role of the BBC in broadcast news and current affairs programming - yes, we certainly have a lot of problems.with our political class.

Then again, looking across the Channel, are we worse off than our "partners" when they come up with pantomime acts like Strauss-Kahn, van Rompuy, Hollande, Berlusconi, Barosso and the rest? Or the USA when the best it can manage are mediocrities like Bush and Obama?

That's no excuse for complacency but it might be a reason not to go overboard with our self-loathing.

A._Badger

StevieJ wrote: »

Economically, Communism did improve Russia, they moved from a backward 3rd world country to an economic powerhouse in less than twenty years. Unfortunately as you say freedoms were trampled on and destroyed, having said that, there are many millions of Russians who are poorer since the fall of the old regime and hanker for the old ways.

And there is a troubling number of Germans, both young and old, who wouldn't be too fussed if the National Socialists were back in power, either, so that is a pretty banal argument.

As the General suggests, Lenin and hist gang of murderous thugs came to power at a time when industrialisation and scientific progress were starting to spread across the world. A better comparison would be with countries like France, Germany or the USA, not with how things had been under a feudal absolute monarchy.

BigAunty

I have to say that when I stayed in an apartment in central Paris, I was blown away by how gorgeous it is.

But also, how very polarised it is racially - on public transport heading back to the airport, it was very clear that some areas were basically majority ethnic minority/immigrants whereas the centre zone was almost wholly white. And it had a very high street homelessness, street drinking population compared to central London.

I expect that it's similar to London on the racial front, perhaps. too, on the homeless front - after all, generally white British residents are now in the minority and there are plenty of rough sleepers - but to me, Paris somehow seemed very much more racially polarised and had so many vagrants in every metro and on many streets. One of my french friends said it was an explicit policy of a parisien Mayor to banish immigrants from living in the city centre.