Category Archives: Politics

A Stateless Nation

01/11/2012 By in Politics Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

On growing up in the nationalist heartlands of the North East of Scotland and with parents of Anglo-Irish descent, I am a first generation Scot. Always sensitive to any hint of anti-English sentiment, I remember my first impressions of nationalism and I considered it back then to be inherently nasty, bigoted and deeply parochial. Largely this was a result of a feral loathing of the English football team and the hysterical fear of the ‘auld enemy’ winning the World Cup. Laughable as this might sound to educated observers, especially anyone who knows anything about football, the populist cry was that ‘we would never hear the end of it’ and they are right. It would be absolutely unbearable but our European partners usually come to our aid whenever this is in danger of happening.

Football might seem frivolous to some but the social consequences of this nationalist hysteria led to me preferring the union. As a result and unaware of the grim economic conditions taking place outside of the affluent fields of Aberdeenshire, I felt very comfortable being simultaneously Scottish and British. While I always considered myself Scottish, I owed my existence to parents and as a son of economic migrants; I was a product of oil rather than the Mearns soil.

Although looking back my British identity crisis was an emotional form of solidarity with my parents. It co-existed with my Scottish identity, which back then was a geographical and localised phenomenon. T.C. Smout, the brilliant social historian, once stated that ‘what is unusual about Scotland is the widespread acceptance that national identity does not have to coincide with state identity’. He succinctly tapped into the political separation of powers of the 1707 Union settlement, where Scottish cultural and religious nationalism was allowed to flourish outside the sphere of the British state.

Shaped by the desire to secure a Hanoverian Protestant succession in the early eighteenth century, British identity has been formed around the crown, empire, industrialisation and the emotional solidarity of two World Wars. In the twenty-first century, the contemporary framework of British identity has shifted radically. With the British Empire now confined to the dust columns of history, the BBC, NHS, Royal Mail and celebrity television shows such as the X-Factor and Big Brother provide ‘Britons’ with a shared cultural identity.

On being entirely comfortable with being both Scottish and British, I can trace my slow conversion to independence from attending two of Scotland’s oldest universities. On first attending Kings College in Aberdeen, I took great pride in learning that until 1858 Aberdeen had two universities, the same number as the whole of England. Education always appeared to be a great Scottish virtue and with the devolved Scottish administration paying student’s tuition fees since 1999 it became clear that education in Scotland is a universal right and not something confined to the privileged few.

On transferring to Glasgow University and studying History, I slowly developed the opinion that Scotland had everything in place to be thriving independent nation but somehow shied away from taking full responsibility. A country blessed with huge natural resources, a brilliant university network, untapped green energy, a booming tourist industry and two of the greatest cities in Northern Europe only 40 minutes apart. Scotland has enormous potential to become a progressive and wealthy European state.

If Scotland were to vote for full independence in autumn 2014 then the British state will cease to exist but Britishness will not. Norwegians, Swedes, Finns and Danes are still Scandinavian despite living in politically autonomous states. The Scandinavian nations co-operate on matters of shared national interest such as security, immigration, energy and tourism. There will be no custom officials and razed wire fences in Berwick-upon-Tweed or Gretna Green if Scotland were to go their own way. And by retaining the Queen as the head of state, the SNP have offered an olive branch to unionists uncomfortable with the pace of radical constitutional change.

With his High Excellency Alex Salmond at the helm in Holyrood anything now feels possible. A truly outstanding political operator, the SNP has been blessed with the most gifted political communicator in the British Isles since Tony Blair. Commanding over an extremely disciplined and ‘on message’ party, Alex Salmond is gradually persuading the Scottish people there is nothing that cannot be achieved by ourselves. On turning full circle I now believe in independence. The wheels of progress have been slow but the destination now feels inevitable.

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Ready to Start

01/03/2012 By in Politics Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

With too many New Year resolutions to mention and certainly none of them worth publishing online. It feels strange to be optimistic about 2012. While exercising more, eating less crisps and spending less time on Facebook are noble aspirations in the good times. Anyone reading the news would be forgiven for feeling suicidal. With storm laden metaphors sweeping across Europe, unemployment rising and a lost generation confined to living in bedsits and flatshares until they are fifty. There appears to be precious little to be optimistic about in 2012.

High unemployment certainly hasn’t put people off from trying to find jobs in London. Outside the relative comfort zone of rented accommodation, the city’s youth hostels are crammed full of Spaniards looking for work in Prêt A Manger and Starbucks. Serving egg and cress sandwiches are certainly nobody’s idea of a career but it is a job. A perfectly acceptable one if the alternative is sleeping next to a Lego pirate ship underneath the watchful eye of Mum and Dad. Doing nothing is not an option, or at least it shouldn’t be. Not everyone is able to leave home in search of work but those who do should be admired for doing so.

Curiously enough when was the last time someone British served you in that mouthful of a sandwich shop? Not that it matters but somehow it does. For job prospects are bleak and the ’los indignados’ of Spain are leaving in their droves to find employment to serve Britons over-priced sandwiches. With young people’s prospects belittled or written off as part of a ‘lost generation’. Is there a genuine alternative to this pre-scripted misery? Staying at the root of problem is a not a good idea and with reports of 18, 795 people chasing 318 jobs in Hull, then anyone young enough to move elsewhere is well advised to do so.

Already a social revision of expectations is taking shape and the middle-class dream of a range rover, dog, three kids and a wholesome marriage is not going to be an option for everyone. Well it won’t be unless there are better job opportunities and with growing economies in Brazil, Russia, India and China, then learning a new language in 2012 certainly won’t do anyone any harm. If well-educated Spanish graduates are prepared to move to Britain to serve coffees and sandwiches then perhaps it is time to look further afield ourselves?

Vince Cable recently acknowledged in an online chat with Gransnet that the “days of job security, cheap housing and guaranteed private pensions are over, but hard working enterprising young people will succeed”. Unwittingly he captured the innovative spirit of the Spanish emigrating to Britain to find work and learn the world’s global language at the same time. As a result the UK workplace is more competitive than ever before and when trilingual European graduates come in search of menial jobs then everyone has to get their act together.

Getting ahead in life has always been a struggle. And there has to be far greater innovation and courage in finding work that is stimulating and meaningful. Whether it’s freelancing online, starting a new business on eBay, learning a new language or moving overseas for the job you can’t find at home. Meekly accepting a miserable hand from a parochial negative government is not an option. Centre-left parties have failed to provide a credible alternative to the austerity cuts sweeping across Europe. Somebody has to provide a new vision for the future and with technology providing new opportunities at the touch of a button, why can’t it be you?

Down and Out in Occupy London

11/12/2011 By in Politics Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Dark, brooding and incongruously ugly, the Occupy London’s Tent City offers an apocalyptic vision of a post-recession Britain. A nightmarish vision of austerity, middle-class slum or a utopian commune, it really depends on your point of view. Marxist cuckoos in the Anglican’s nest, the anti-capitalist protesters have turned the public piazza outside St Paul’s Cathedral into a new found democracy. Organised by a hash tag and riddled with contradictions, the Occupy protesters are a malleable bunch. Predominately under the age of thirty, if not younger, the hardcore militants protesting at St Paul’s are invariably white educated liberals or students as they are more commonly known.

Campaigning against banker bonuses, corporate greed and the grotesque spectacle of UK business executives giving themselves a 50% increase in their salaries. Something had to be done. Identifying what is wrong with modern capitalism but thus far offering no concrete solutions, Occupy London has a lot in common with social-democratic politicians like Barack Obama and Ed Miliband. Awaiting genuine leadership, a big bang moment has yet to strike a chime with the protesters at St Paul’s.

With up to 150 tents living cheek by jowl on frozen concrete, the protesters come from different social and economic backgrounds but slumming it is a real leveller. Speaking about his experience mingling with tramps, George Orwell wrote in The Road to Wigan Pier, “Once you’re in that world and seemingly of it, it hardly matters what you have been in the past. It is a sort of world-within-world where everyone is equal, a small squalid democracy – perhaps the nearest thing to a democracy that exists in England.”

Although unlike the lowly tramps in Orwell’s essay, the anti-capitalist protesters occupying St Paul’s are bound by idealism not poverty. Coming from good homes and largely well-educated, the Occupy camp will have enjoyed wealth, comfort and opportunities for most of their young lives. It is the fear of these privileges being taken away from them that propels them to the streets. Those worst affected by capitalism, the grizzly anonymous men loitering in street corners drinking cider, are nowhere to be seen. Instead a bizarre congregation of misfits preside over a spectacle of awareness against a system that continues to feed them.

As the global economic crisis of 2008 has already shown, ordinary people have become helpless components in a computerised market system, which we are seemingly powerless to challenge or change. And nothing will change as a result of this protest camp. To pretend otherwise is to miss the point entirely. Occupy London is merely a piss stain on the carpet of the establishment. A metaphorical protest that is more likely to be dismantled by dropping temperatures than police bailiffs. However, it offers a fascinating insight into the collective values of middle-class idealism. Those whose essential needs have been satisfied and yet dream of changing the world order for the greater good of society.

With police thermal images showing 90% of tents at St Paul’s are unoccupied in the early hours, the protesters have been accused of hypocrisy and self-indulgence. Returning home to warm bedrooms, eating gourmet sandwiches from a nearby Marks and Spencers and tweeting solidarity on luxury smartphones, there are benefits to capitalism that not even the most militant-protester would want to lose. This fractious community are representative of an increasingly divided country, angry at injustice and corporate greed, but still more likely to pay homage to Steve Jobs than Karl Marx. Unnerving as it might be to suggest, the otherwise noble idealism of the protesters regularly falls short at the first touch of reality. All the while the genuinely impoverished and historical victims of the market system are nowhere to be seen.

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In these plagued streets

08/10/2011 By in Politics Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

Much has been made about the social alienation felt by the London rioters this week. Confused, bewildered and completely unable to relate to haiku of despair on their television screens; the middle-classes have been scrambling for reasons behind the violence. Overcrowding, poverty and unemployment are to blame say the left. But rioting is about power and there are deeply complex reasons for why these incidents have taken place. As police sirens and helicopters pierce through from my South Hackney window, it’s important to remember that social alienation is not the reserve of ‘feral rats’ smashing up apartment stores.

Nearly everyday I buy my groceries at the nearby Co-op across the road, and while it’s a bit expensive and the food isn’t very good, I usually can’t be bothered walking anywhere else. I’ve been going to the same shop for over two years and everyday I meet the same dead-eyed man behind the till who never fails to blank me. Now if I were scanning pints of milk, biscuits and ham slices for eight hours a day, I suppose I wouldn’t be too enthusiastic about greeting the next customer either. It’s just that after two long years, I had hoped the sad lonely man would have recognised me by now. Alas this is modern day London and community relations are forever a transient affair.

Living in a transaction based society, I could have easily been using one of those bleeping machines at the Co-op such was the human void. At the nearby Tesco store, which have spread across the country like a virus, I experience the same robotic gestures and beeping devices on a regular basis. With nobody holding any allegiances to anyone and affluence the only barometer of success, I find myself an isolated consumer on a residential council estate. Foreign flatmates share my living space and outside the post-war estate is full of anonymous strangers who only know themselves.

Inner cities are harsh, unforgiving environments where the architecture is brutal and greenery is a luxury confined to the affluent suburbs. Everyday I say good morning to the little black lady cleaning the stairwell and she is my only community friend. Next door is a Spanish speaking family but I don’t know their names or what they do, and this is despite being their neighbour for over two years. All I do know is that they have the world’s most irritating dog and I can’t imagine what her shrill barking does for community relations. Apart from that I could die tomorrow and nobody on the estate would even notice. Living in a metropolis where nobody seems to care or know each other, it creates a social void where respect is very much a currency in decline.

However, there is one family on the estate that everybody recognises but not in a good way. Sitting on their concrete patio with the door wide open, the family are a Channel 5 documentary in waiting. In fact they represent a grotesque parody of Britain’s ‘Sick Society’. The kids are always topless and sit outdoors next to a flea ridden mattress, with streams of rubbish spilling out from the hallway onto the pavement. Sipping tins of cider and low price lager all day long, the fat family provide a comic spectacle to an otherwise faceless community.

Outside their kitchen window, they have a carved wooden emblem stating ‘Hello, Welcome and Piss Off’ as a greeting to strangers. Presumably this is to ward off evil spirits. Sadly it tells you all you ever needed to know about this family. Such charming manners don’t usually encourage people to ask about their well being. One can only wonder if their kids took part in the rioting this week. On the surface they suffer from all the swamp conditions of a sick society – poverty, boredom, unemployment and a perennial lack of space. But judging by the size of them rioting would probably seem like far too much work. Violence has now spread to other English cities with similar social conditions. Meanwhile across the road at the Co-op, the sad lonely man remains dead-eyed and aloof, swiping hummus, Galaxy chocolate and copies of The Guardian to familiar looking strangers.

Nobody Expects the Spanish Revolution

06/20/2011 By in Politics Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

As Madrid is more of a national capital than an international one like London or Paris, the British press have perhaps not given Spain’s “los indignados” the attention they deserve. Over 60, 000 Spanish youths held spontaneous protests in Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia in May 2011, rebelling against the socialist government’s austerity measures. A decade of unemployment and emigration beckons for tens of thousands of Spanish graduates. Youth unemployment among 16 to 29-year-olds is estimated to be around 45 per cent. Upturned in the Puerta de Sol are stolen crates, graffiti slogans and multiple plastic tents full of sticky protesters eating tinned food in brutally hot temperatures. Indignant in their defiance, the “los indignados” are demanding new jobs, public investment and changes to the government’s austerity plans but their wishes have fallen on deaf ears. Spain like so many other debt-ridden European nations has elected a centre-right government into power.

Madrid’s tent city should perhaps serve as a reminder that political dissent has not always been tolerated in Europe. For this red scar of rebellion may be gathering momentum in 2011 but situated in a former hospital is a heart stopping reminder of Spain’s fascist past. Forming an integral part of the holy trinity of Madrid’s historic art museums, the Museo Reina Sofía is renowned throughout the world for hosting Picasso’s Guernica. Awe inspiring and superbly displayed, this icon of twentieth-century European art is one of the few universal masterpieces that commands a religious silence from all visitors. Displayed on the second floor, the art crowds flock to Guernica all year round and cross-legged school children listen attentively to the horrific origins of the painting. Picasso painted it as a response to the Luftwaffe bombing of Guernica for the Spanish Pavilion at the Paris International Exhibition in 1937.

As a universal symbol against the fight against fascism, Guernica is a brutal reminder that under General Franco Spain was a military dictatorship until the late 1970s. On forming a one party state, the Falange, political censorship was vigorously enforced under Franco. Trade unions were banned. Catalan, Basque and Galician languages were severely censured and political opponents were mercilessly executed. The majority of Britons will be unable to comprehend the level of repression suffered in Spain during this period. Most people in the UK understandably take the liberal fruits of universal suffrage and freedom of speech for granted.

Britain is one of the oldest and most stable democracies in the modern world, and has enjoyed peaceful growth from 1945 until the present day. Guernica is a potent reminder that Britain has enjoyed its most comfortable, safe and prosperous period in its living history. The global recession of 2008 has triggered violent rioting in Greece and led to tens of thousands of protesters kicking spokes in the hub of Madrid’s wheel.

Britain’s anti-cut march in London attracted over 200, 000 people but it feels strangely weak and deeply uninspiring compared to the demonstrations in Madrid. The protest was quickly forgotten after a day’s headlines. And it will be most likely remembered for the self-aggrandising violence of a hundred upper-middle class anarchists. Spain feels different. Although history will judge how effective the Spanish revolution will be in what is going to be a very difficult decade for Europe. A generational time bomb is slowly ticking because of this economic crisis. Unemployment and living costs continue to rise across the continent. But if history is to offer any guide, and hard as this is to admit, sometimes you have to travel across your own borders to realise how lucky Britain really is.

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Angel’s Delights

06/01/2011 By in Politics Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

Anyone walking along the Regent’s Canal in search of a hungry fix is advised to diverge from the towpath towards Angel’s Delights. Curiously anonymous on the web, the Dalston cafe has no internet presence and is tucked away on the unremarkable Dunston Road. Situated inside a gritty seventies warehouse that has been kindly acquired by Noble House Properties, Angel’s Delights is not going to be a Hackney cult for much longer. The Jamaican jerk cafe is a stone’s throw away from the East London line, and this white arc of progress has only further gentrified a once shady and undeniably violent area.

Since they serve Jamaican dishes inside a premise the size of a toilet with a pavement cafe sheltered by a black canopy and a stolen tyre. No one should expect to pay for their jerk chicken and beans using a chip and pin device. Cash is the only currency down by the canal and unlike the gentrified Towpath Cafe; Angel’s home cooking is just as expensive but served in a less pretentious fashion. Admittedly the squeezed bottles of lemonade are a bit dear at two pounds per head and while their jerk chicken is lusciously tasty – some dishes may leave you coughing up bones.

Situated upstairs is a hippie squat located inside a former sowing factory and this provides the jerk cafe with a colourful selection of customers. More regular punters will be familiar with a beautiful Serbian model and her punk-lite Ken Doll boyfriend, who like to dance with the Jamaican owner in-between orders. On the nearby towpath the bubbling current of East London’s changing population is forever rising to the surface – angry cyclists, sporty female joggers, junkies, estate teenagers with fishing rods and skinny blonde twins carrying bags of cider from Tesco. Many of them stop by to ponder their next Jamaican take away or spot of lunch by the water. Time is not on their side. The bulldozers are due to arrive in August and will soon be constructing ‘beautifully designed 1, 2 and 3 bedroom apartments with the finest contemporary specification’.

With economic progress comes homogeneous flats and the canal is changing shape at a terrifying pace. Relics of the industrial past with smashed windows and graffiti, which have since been reclaimed by the arts crowd, possess a feral quality like the birds on the water. During the breeding season, coots defend their territories by screaming, flapping their wings and pecking at intruders. Coots may well soon be only thing wild and adventurous left on the canal, as luxury properties continue to rise from the ruins of the past and wipe Angel’s Delights off the map.

Angel’s Delights
Dunston Road,
London,
E8 4EA

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The Binge Society

04/05/2011 By in Politics Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

As the Scottish Government commit to plans for minimum pricing to tackle Scotland’s historic alcohol abuse problems. Glaswegian artist Kathyrn Rodger has explored the social mores of Scotland’s binge-drinking culture in her forthcoming Let Yourself Go exhibition, which focuses upon youthful hedonism and the need to escape. By evocatively capturing the feverish sensation of drunkenness, the Edinburgh College of Art student has cast a powerful lens upon the emotional and psychological effects of alcohol.

Letting off steam in a miserable climate is perfectly understandable and for two millenniums there has been a direct correlation between a lack of sunlight and excessive alcohol consumption. Although no one is really sure why this wet green island first developed a taste for booze. Bad weather is probably a good place to start and from the outset there have been two drinking cultures. Sunless nations such as Britain and Ireland adopted the Germanic model, where beverages based on grain were drunk away from the dining table. In the south Mediterranean they embraced the Roman model and offered children diluted wine at mealtimes instead.

Given the unique blend of dreary weather and social repression, the northern isles of Europe were almost destined to become the drunk men of Europe. Although many people will be surprised to learn that in 1970, the average Briton drank less than a third as much as the French or the Italians. But being unable to moderate her love of alcohol and the subsequent deregulation of previously strict temperance laws, Britain has now become the drinking capital of the world.

Spirits that once cost the equivalent of £45 in today’s market are now being sold in benevolent supermarket chains for little as £8.33 per bottle. As the liberalisation of the UK’s drinking laws continued throughout 1970s, the drinking rates in Britain have continued to soar and alcohol is 62% more affordable than in 1980. With super strength lagers and ciders available for the price of a chocolate bar, Britons are now able to ‘pre-load’ before ploughing fields in trashy night clubs such as the Shanghai Club in Edinburgh. Although you can’t blame the weather for all of the stab huts and fight clubs on the high street. As there is something psychologically wrong with a population that needs to get absolutely wasted before they start dancing.

Victim surveys show that roughly four in ten assaults now involve drinkers, and more than half of these incidents take place on a Friday and Saturday night. Anyone wading through a valley of chips, gravy and kebabs after a night out will relate to the horror of getting a late night bus home. Unable to make eye contact with your fellow drunken reprobates, the chances of leaving the bus with anything less than a violent hangover is very slim indeed.

Scotland’s top law officer Elish Angiolini has already predicted that the country is facing an alcoholic “apocalypse” from soaring drinking sales. And with the breweries continuing to be given a free reign over the UK drinking laws, the majority of British cities have failed to provide a sociable alternative to getting drunk. Deprived of sunlight and warmth for the majority of the year, it is perhaps understandable that citizens of this island let themselves go in the easiest manner available to them.

Britons will clearly continue to knock back supermarket booze unless prohibited to do otherwise. Although nothing has ever satisfactorily explained the extraordinarily high levels of violence associated with alcohol abuse in this country. Unpredictable weather patterns and seasonal affective disorder all seem to combine to make people more depressed in the north. And where better to illustrate our dysfunctional relationship with drinking than the Granite City. Situated in one of the most northernmost regions in Europe, it is a remote area but no different than any other British town when it comes to alcohol.

Aberdeen on a typical Saturday night usually involves ambulances, riot police and a marauding pack of savages tyrannising the city centre. Aggressive thugs will viciously chase one another across the street, stuff chips down their throats and whenever you approach their chicks, they will swoop and try to kill you…and that’s just the gulls. Drink up or face the consequences.

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Squatting is Free

02/27/2011 By in Politics Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Squatting is hot property in London after the Really Free School set up class in Guy Ritchie’s six million pound townhouse in Fitzroy Square. The Free School’s aims are somewhat unclear but their primary cause is to expose the marketisation of higher education. The squatters have organised a full programme of lectures, seminars, classes and film screenings to provide what they consider to be an alternative to formal education. Although from reading their online manifesto, I suspect their chief propagandist did not attend many English Literature tutorials with sentences such as “Freeskool iz not a zoo. We have unicorns to fly and kingdoms to destroy”.

But regardless of their lofty aspirations, the Free School’s subsequent eviction from Fitzroy Square to a nearby 200 year old pub in Rathbone Street. The education rebels have provoked a national debate about the virtue of squatting in a country with 870,000 empty buildings. In a lively discussion on Comment is Free, one Guardian reader expressed the view that “squats provide an alternative setup outside the mainstream where people are not bound by dull things like paying the rent, financial planning, justification and subordination”.

While nobody wants to pay rent or be subject to financial constraints, squatting does evoke the cuckoo conundrum as handsomely illustrated in this episode of BBC Springwatch. The nest of a reed warbler is taken over by a cuckoo chick and commands the warblers to feed him until he reaches a truly monstrous size. As a stunned observer of this ritual begging routine, I do wonder how evolution has allowed these lazy upstarts carte blanche to live rent free in a fiercely competitive and unfair world.

And while squatters can live a bohemian lifestyle in abandoned properties without paying any rent. The majority of ordinary citizens pay high rates and taxes for public services most squatters take for granted. Fairness is at the moral heart of the squatting debate and left-wing journalist Laurie Penny eloquently argues in their favour.

It is manifestly in the interests of those who own and hold all this disused property, including the millionaires who make up the Cabinet, to misrepresent Britain’s 15,000 squatters and occupiers as in the words of the Times — a “dangerous scourge”. Otherwise the hundreds of thousands of people paying 90% of their salary for poky rooms hours from their places of work might start getting ideas.

With affordable housing in short supply and millions of young people confined to paying huge portions of their wages for rented boxes in the sky. Britain’s housing crisis is likely to continue and squatters often divide local communities when they take up residence in nearby abandoned buildings. As when a group of anti-materialist hippies began squatting in an abandoned Walkabout pub in Islington last spring they eventually overcame suspicion and became a welcome addition to the local community.

In stark contrast this Australian documentary from 1983 about punk squatters in North London provoked a less welcoming response from residents. Squatters are always likely to divide opinion and as long as law abiding citizens passively acquiesce in a society that tolerates obscene bank bonuses and tax avoidance from multi-national corporations. Then it doesn’t matter whether squatters are middle class students rebelling against their “oppressive” parents, anarchist punks or free education activists taking over luxury buildings. If wealthy property owners are careless enough to leave houses vacant for years and do nothing about it, then it is hardly surprising if cuckoo’s fly in and expect to be taken care of by the wealthy.

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My last bite

02/17/2011 By in Politics Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

As food prices continue to rise and my salary unable to keep up with the rate of inflation, I faced a grim economic decision and made cuts to my lunch budget. While I have no intention of starving this year, I can no longer justify spending excess of £5 a day in cafes, bars and delicatessens. At lunch time I now have to unwrap wholemeal sandwiches from a recycled Tesco bag and savour the grim banality of an economic recession. With my taste buds regressing back to the 1980s, I became nostalgic for the culinary delights of the credit boom when it was acceptable to spend well beyond your means.

Lunches can brighten up even the most mediocre day at work. At the strike of noon, I consider lunch time in Fitzrovia to be a truly glorious affair and not just because I am not working. Fitzrovia is arguably one of the best places in London to enjoy a mid-day feast. With almost every world cuisine available, I would regularly satisfy my carnal desires at the Goodge Place Food Market. Despite my modest salary, I have always strongly believed that beautiful food should not be restricted to advertising executives queuing up for crispy garlic prawns, chicken burritos or Lebanese falafel from Hoxton Beach.

On becoming accustomed to enjoying a grand luncheon everyday, I would attend trendy cafes and rotate my meals depending on whether I fancied Japanese noodles, Pasta alla carbonara or a Vietnamese Bánh mì sandwich. Alternatively if I was running low on funds, I would resort to a taste of real life at Greggs and feel unhealthily Scottish for 48 hours. Such poor eating habits became the norm towards the end of last year when I began my efficiency drive. While saving is now an economic necessity, I sometimes feel disillusioned eating wholemeal sandwiches and occasionally slip back into decadent ways.

Food is one of life’s great pleasures and one of my favourite cafes in Fitzrovia is the charming Italia Uno, which serves rustic dishes and beautiful Italian sandwiches. Such is the popularity of the cafe you will regularly see immigration-style queues in anticipation of a cold slice of prosciutto. While undoubtedly popular with local residents, the cafe’s interior is fairly ordinary and embraces the traditional Italian fare of cooking, football shirts and Berlusconi inspired bad television.

Customers should wait until after 2pm for the peak lunch crowds to disperse before entering this family run outlet. Almost all of the regular clientele are from the Bel Paese and their sandwich menu is absolutely divine. The classic Piccante sandwich with extra sun-dried tomatoes is the undisputed favourite and while at £3.80 a sandwich it is very reasonably priced. Italian sandwiches are now confined to a distant memory as my lunches are forcibly digested in front of a keyboard. Unable to turn back the clock, I continue to walk past the advertising executives eating Lebanese falafel and can only marvel at what unrestricted wealth can buy in this age of austerity.

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Up in the Air

02/13/2011 By in Politics Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

On writing from a rented box in the sky, I find myself staring out towards a concrete forest of tower blocks, cranes and scaffolding. With the average price of a room in London costing up to £150 a week, I like many others have found myself lured by the promise of cheaper rents in the east. Having spent my first six months in the capital living in genteel Chiswick, I felt bound by the invisible hand when I moved to East London. Unless you have a professional job or enjoy the luxury of being subsidised by your family, the cost of housing in the capital is increasingly unaffordable. Where the majority of people now have to enter the Gumtree lottery and throw a huge portion of their income on mediocre accommodation.

After tiring of coming up for air in West London, I decided to abandon suburbia and make a radical lifestyle change in late 2007. On moving to Whitechapel in search of affordable housing, I can recall my first evening exploring the Victorian side streets and becoming acquainted with inner city life.

Whitechapel is physically unattractive and only really comes into life in black light, where it becomes a true urban menace with sirens, graffiti and encroaching cranes. There are skinhead cockney geezers sitting on broken bar stools and outside you will discover complete freaks walking past you like an abandoned crisp packet. When I refer to ‘freaks’ I don’t mean alternative middle-class people in ‘controversial’ attire.These freaks are complete fucking weirdos, who grunt aggressive noises and there was one in particular that made me want to court an instant metallic death just to avoid making eye-contact.

Whitechapel is an extremely vibrant place and ugliness is always like to have a seductive tonic. After making eyes with the Katie Holmes barmaid the other night I almost dropped my glass in shock. It only lasted a few seconds but it just goes to show how rewarding life can be when you unearth a flower in the dustbin.

Undeniably raw, angry and glittering underneath the Gerkin, I found myself estranged in this new world order. Like those before me, I came in search of affordable accommodation and while initially I felt out of place in Whitechapel. Economic chains do ultimately bind us all and like the Bengali men selling fruit and vegetables in plastic tents, I came across another demographic earning a living on the floor.

Whitechapel regularly hosts walking tours for middle class tourists wanting to discover more about Jack the Ripper’s murder spree in the late 19th century. Although why a misogynistic killer has now become a form of street entertainment for middle class tourists is a fascinating one. At the end of this century will Rothbury become a tourist attraction for huddled groups wanting to discover more about a sadistic Huck Finn with a sawn off shotgun?

As the Gerkin continues to shine in face of violent cuts in public spending, I find the housing situation in London virtually unbearable. With modern advancements in technology, I feel very frustrated that employees must continue to live within commuting distance of the workplace. If people could work at home on the internet like so much of our social and daily lives. Then no longer would people have to pay ridiculously high rents for rooms in squalid locations.

While you may still find yourself paying £150 a week for a double room it would no longer have to be confined to Central London. Rents in places such as Whitechapel would be able to drop down and greater diversity would be spread across the regions. If only this practice were in place now I could be writing high up in sky overlooking the Mediterranean. Something only mercenary landlords and tube station muggers could take issue with.

Pictures by kind permission of Louis Berk from his book “Walk to Work: from the City to Whitechapel”.

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