Is London too rich to be interesting?
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It used to be so easy. You left university, came to London and got yourself a flatshare in one of the cheaper areas: Notting Hill, Maida Vale or Highgate. Living was cheap and if it took you a while to find out what you really wanted to do with your life you could drift about a bit and get by. Many of the slackers of the 1980s and 90s went on to become the capital’s most successful creatives and entrepreneurs, making London a city unrivalled for fashion, music and design. But now thanks to vast City bonuses and the influx of foreign billionaires, London house prices have soared beyond the reach of all but the seriously rich. And London is the worse for it. Parts of Notting Hill and Kensington have become ‘buy to leave’ ghost towns, the houses boarded up and showing no signs of life. Shoreditch and Hackney, not long ago the hip new outposts for musicians and artists, are now home to well-paid professionals. The squats, cheap cafés and markets have given way to Farrow and Ball interiors and coffee shop chains. All the paraphernalia that gave east London its edge a few years ago is starting to feel a bit stale. Spare us yet another pop up restaurant serving chorizo hash with pomegranate labneh run by a former banker with a beard in Dalston, or a ‘secret’ speakeasy selling prohibition cocktails somewhere near Euston station. Meanwhile the true bohemians are being squeezed further out to the margins, barely able to afford the tube fare from Zone 4 to get into town. Money is sucking the life out of London. That’s the argument of those who worry that London is becoming too rich to be interesting. But is there any evidence that the city is growing bland? Quite the reverse. On any evening almost wherever you go London’s streets are abuzz with life. People here crave a communal experience and the city provides it with its 600 parks, thousands of pubs and dynamic cultural scene. Theatres have been enjoying a massive boom – not just in the West End but on the fringe too. The fact is, London is a magnet. Talented people from elsewhere in the UK and all over the world want to live here, and that’s what’s pushing up house prices, not the small number of multimillionaires who in fact pump £2.3 billion every year into London’s economy. Yes, London is expensive but creative types will always find a way. They may not be able to afford to live in Hackney and they may be having to move further from the centre, but they are making unfashionable areas fashionable just by virtue of being there. They never want to be too far from where the money is because they need patronage. Where would the YBAs ever have got without Charles Saatchi? There’s a dynamic between wealth and creativity that keeps London exciting. If you prefer greater egalitarianism and more cycle lanes, there’s always Stockholm. Is London too rich to be interesting?
Comments
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Oh boy! Akala is just sublime. On the Notting Hill Carnival : it's become white people enjoying Afro-Caribbean culture without Afro-Caribbean people. I am paraphrasing but it is so true. London is interesting despite the homogenising and dumbing down effects of the easy money that sloshes into this great city. London is a city built on struggle and strife and its majority minorities have created its real flesh and blood reality. And I include the white working class in that grouping would that they but realised their common bond with the Bengalis and the Jamaicans.
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This is the dumbest motion I've ever seen iqsquared do in my life. Is london too rich to be interesting? How the fuck does one necessarily have any effect on the other?
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What's particularly worrying is 40% of London's night venues have closed = less places for people to meet = less chance for creating interesting communities.
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yer but Glastonbury has had no murders unlike nottinghill where they has been alot of violence- http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3763270/Boy-15-one-SIX-people-stabbed-Notting-Hill-Carnival.html
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How the imbecile racist Akala makes so many tv appearances just goes to show how downhill England is going.
What an oxymoron to find him on Intelligence Squared!
Sick of his ill informed rantings -
I'm not even watching this, but I can place a bet that Akala the Race-baiting Cuck managed to slip race into this somehow?
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Bigup Akala for mentioning Lucia (and for keeping it 100 in general)!!!
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i wish there was more diversity on the panel. it seemed like akala was the only one who kept bringing up the inequality of the people, the inequality of race... it kind of sucks to depend on him to be the spokesperson for the under represented. if london is so diverse, why is the panel majority white?
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i love these forums. they are so inspiring and it gives me hope we still have people like Akala who are young yet so intelligent about global affairs.
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Ugh,it's all subjective and how ones individual defines interesting.
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I absolutely love London... I've been living here over 3 years, and coming down regularly for over 10. Will I stay here another 3 years though? Probably not. Truth is it is getting more boring - longstanding clubs/bars are closing (Fabric is the just the latest casualty), once interesting areas are turning into dull pseudo-Chelseas (Peckham, Brixton etc.), endless new 'developments' of shopping malls and tiny flats no one can afford. Sure I could stay here - if I'm willing to spend 60% + of my income on rent for a tiny room in a crappy run-down house I share with 4 strangers for the rest of my life. Right now I'd say London's just over its peak and about to begin its descent- in 10-15 years time it'll be like Paris, great to visit and take photos of and see the Louvre, but boring as hell as an actual living, vibrant city.
City's change and that's part of what makes them exciting - but there's good and bad change. If Detroit changed in a negative way as its industries collapsed and it became too poor and run-down to keep people living there, then London will decline as it becomes too rich and therefore economically un-viable for a 'normal' (read: average-earning, working/middle class people - nurses, police officer, teachers, bus drivers etc.) to live and settle here permanently. Simple as. Politicians of both the left and the right have proven themselves unwilling or unable to tackle this issue and it looks like it'll therefore be determined by the market i.e. de facto social cleansing and city-wide homogenisation. It breaks make my heart, but hell, I've had my fun here and it's not my home town, so no biggie - I'll get over it and move on. I feel more sorry for people born and bred here who are basically being evicted out of their home town. -
legit almost fell asleep at the bald man's intro
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the journalist at 1:03:13 laid the smackdown.
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No lets throw some favals, and mega-slums. Make it look like Baghdad. It's on its way there already.
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London's not "too rich" to be interesting, the problem is it has been transformed into a safe, touristy place into a shitpit full of middle eastern/african garbage who instead of producing something for the country preffer to leech like vermin from the welfare all payed by the tax payers cut, it's a crime ridden dump with most of its areas not worth seeing anymore that is the main problem of London, the no go sharia areas.
London needs to be cut off from Britain and re-invaded with military shooting anything that looks like dog shit (arabs, niggers, gypsies etc) and throwing it into a dump truck, only then the city will be back into its glory, and that goes the same for all the UK and for all of Europe -
what is the bald guy on about?
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Simon Jenkins is tired. However, Akala wants his purity of culture. I have enormous sympathy with his desire, BUT you cannot have it both ways. Great to have diverse and distinct cultures, but then this does not promote integration. Question - can one have a cohesive society when multiple cultures are expressed? Answer is probably "no". Akala supports the individual identity of Islam, for this reason (and because blacks were and are deeply involved in Islam), but this community has not integrated, has kept distinct, has demanded its space to the detriment of the host culture. We all know, if we have half a brain that multiculturalism does not work. Although I like Akala and many of his ideas, he is now way behind the curve, not in front of it. We have moved on and he is still in the 70s with Marley.
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1:15:09
they mute the sound -
That old man has something against artist
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This man interviewing the panel is highly irritating, he keeps implying that "rich" and "interesting" are synonymous. This is incorrect. It's completely a matter of perception. In my view, a capitalist concrete jungle that spawns gentrification is UNINTERESTING! I would find much greater interest in a forest flourishing with nature and peace.
So is the Republic of Congo lacking in interest because it's not "rich"? The leaders seem to find the Congo so interesting that they steal the countries Colton minerals; yeas it's theft when you have slave labour. Have you ever questioned why we have the wealth and the third world countries with the minerals are kept poor?
Akala is a genius who always speaks pure knowledge. He actually destroyed the man asking the questions haha! I deeply respect him. The lady said some good replies too. It seemed like the artist was beating around the bush with his replies.
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