Friday, April 23, 2004

London's Boring, London's Boring...

Fetch the Engines, Fetch the Engines....

London has become irretrievably boring. It is now only a city of cleaned up architecture, interspersing tastefully the modern with the ancient. With regard to the human element it has lost all its vitality and vigour, but now sits efficiently with a shallow smile to take what it can from peoples all around the world.

The difference is shrinking between London and a tourist attraction such as Disneyland. At least Disneyland has characters that have survived seven decades. London's characters don't survive, they just get snuffed out.

Take Ken Livingstone for example. In the Eighties, everybody in London, all anarchic rebels, thought that Ken represented them. Ken was Margaret Thatcher's enemy - a wasteful, almost Communist Lefty. In the short-sighted logic of the Eighties, the young adopted the simple rule, "My enemy's enemy is my friend".

When the time came that London created the position of Mayor around 1999, the young rebels of yesteryear were disappointed with the lack of socialist values in Tony Blair. Everybody in London supported Ken Livingstone for Mayor, because Tony Blair was against it.

Ken was driven from Tony's labouring party, much against his wishes. He became Mayor, and has surprised everyone. Instead of bringing back some heart into London, he has somehow given it nothing but cold semiconductor memory.

So when you walk about in London today, you will have clean streets and nicish buildings to look at. But all the life is gone, and you might as well have imagined London's history by just looking at the Internet.

There is no more grittiness in London. Instead of the will-to-live in Eliza Doolittles, there is the aftermath of spin and political manipulation from the Henry Higgins. (Perhaps there are too many gay politicians, parliamentary assistants, political lobbyists, journalists and charity trustees, whom under a Blair government, have in the image of Peter Mandelson, striven to achieve respectability. Somehow they have achieved the alchemist's goal, that even a Bible-bashing fundamentalist could not achieve: they have succeeded in taking homosexuality out of being gay.)

Ken Livingstone supported the construction of the new office tower on the Spitalfields site, which is near Liverpool Street station and used to be a vibrant and exciting area. The office tower is now about 3 storeys high, and rises like a tombstone over a buried neighbourhood. That anyone would still build soulless large office towers, after the demise of the World Trade Centres, is very sad indeed. They might claim that it is perseverance in the face of terrorism, but it is in fact perseverance of the dehumanisation of mankind for the satisfaction of global corporate profit.

Ken's semiconductor change of heart is partly due to his age. When you reach middle-age, nobody wants you, and you fear losing your job lest you never get another one. It is that ageist in Britain, anyway. Thus Ken was desperate to be taken back into Tony's labour party, and had to grovel like a lone-wolf to get back into the pack.

Ageism will be the death of humanity.

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