please empty your brain below
I hope the recent rent rise is not unduly prejudicing your budget, DG? Come to the provinces! It is lovely! (Although commuting in to town is hardly cheap...)
What is sadly missing is any feasible plan for a merger of the two organisations. The last time when London was visibly unified was during the Blitz. No "common enemy" (to take the role of the Nazis) is currently on the horizon. (Probably just as well because such a "common enemy" would be even worse than the alienation disease it is supposed to cure).
I'm in danger of disappearing into my own parentheses...
Myself as a pensioner now, but one who purchased property in London back in the 1960's when a house was £7000-£14000 I guess I am one of the lucky older ones and might be in your London Above group, but lower part as I do not drink coffee in the mornings or ride in taxis and rarely buy theatre tickets. I was also born in London. However despite keeping my home in London I have in recent years been spending some of my time away from the capital.
Why? well I find that even though I have a Freedom Pass I use it less now as the tubes and buses are always crowded. The air in London tends to be polluted. The pavements dirty and congested, as are the roads. Parks are not always well maintained. As for cultural life most tickets are too expensive. Museums often crowded and having seen their exhibits many times over many years you are less inclined to visit.
So I spend some time away, but not in Stevenage or Hastings as you mention but further afield.
I have been trying living some time in Torrevieja where I have a cheap apartment. Here there is clean air, sea breezes,warm weather and sunshine-35c yesterday. A modern theatre, a modern 2000 seat concert hall-tickets about 6 euros. Multi-plex cinema. Lots of clean parks with fountains and seats, an Olympic size 50m indoor municipal swimming pool, good sports grounds, even play cricket at weekends. Golf courses. If you want it there is a shopping Mall on the outside of town that is comparable to Westfield (Zena Boulevard). Plenty of restaurants and bars serving all types of food at reasonable prices. A couple of free small museums. Bus fare is €1,40 or free to older people if they get a pass from the town hall. Taxi fare minimum is €3.50c. So a good quality of life at much less expense than London. Good public health service. For pensioners with a regular income life can be fine out here. No good if you need to work.
However I shall be back in my home town London, on Sunday for the summer or longer as my Torrieveja living is still only a try out. I am not tired of London I love the capital, I dislike the winter weather, the air pollution and overcrowding. No doubt I will eventually end my days in the city I was born in, and Torrieveja experience will be a small episode in a lifetime.
As for dg, a London worker, with rent and bills to pay, who knows, as your blog has been mentioned recently in the national press and you are a prolific and good writer, maybe you will get offered a lucrative position in some publishing job. Then you too might join London Above.
I hope that the new Mayor for London will be able to make the city a cleaner place, and somewhere for people from all income groups, getting some affordable houses built, with cheaper public transport so there is no longer a London above and a London Below.
That has emptied my brain enough for today!
Until this is understood, the division will continue to widen, as money is the only dividing tool these days.
We drove down The Bishops Avenue, N2, last night. I hadn't been in that part of London for maybe 30 years and couldn't believe my eyes. £10M for a 3-bed flat anyone?
What grieves me is that so many London Above members spend spend spend, live well above their means, and when their membership is terminated, don't have any back up resources.
Anyone who can afford to buy take-away coffees and lunches every day is in a position to save 10% of what they earn (do the sums). *If* they so choose. It's a case of priorities.
Thanks.
Andrew
And today - well London Above run the country after last week.
Thanks DG, every day.
Pam
The recent eCON downturn (regardless who you blame) has had the effect of making a more divided "society". One only has to look at certain television programmes or read certain newspapers to see that if it not already clear. The single person in a bedsit or struggling family in "social housing" though perhaps working on a zero-hour contract or ad-hoc temp work will look out of their window (because in some places it that close) an see that there is another world...a world such as DG mentions.
They say the grass is always greener on the other side...an it may not be easy keeping it green, but for many they we not get even the smallest chance of "giving it a go". They may get deluded by the "it could be you" lotto dream but that in truth will make them poorer as week after week they spent a few quid on a ticket to nowhere. There are those say that only thru work can one lift oneself out of poverty...which one says being poor is bad and two is somewhat misleading as many poor people already have a job (sometimes 2 or even 3).
Most of the people who read this blog probably fall somewhere in the middle of the "below-above"...they may like to be in the "above" and hope they never fall into the "below". While that remains the case, those in the "above" have a huge "cushion" between themselves and those in the "below". It is this "cushion" that I reckon keeps "things in check"...but it comes at a cost. The increase in mental health issues, depression and suicides; of which little is mentioned in the media, unless happens to be someone "famous", is one sign that things are not well in society. The constant pressure to do well, feel good etc is taking a heavy toll on many who in reality are just about "keeping it together".
We really need to have a different outlook on how we all live and forge a more caring, equal & progressive society.
We all deserve to find out own proletariat paradise....
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