If you’re not tired of London, you’re tired of life - Rod Liddle
You pretend your city is a wonderful multicultural melting pot, rather than a slave state run entirely for your benefit
London, city of the damned. City of incendiary tower blocks, jihadi mentals trying to slit your throat, yokels from Somerset up for the day to enjoy a spot of ramming Muslims in a white van. City of Thornberry, Abbott and Corbyn. City of Boris. City of anti-Semitic marches to commemorate Al Quds. City of Isis flags and where, in most boroughs, white British people are a largely resentful minority. City of vacuous liberal platitudes — we all stand together, not in my name. Why would you live there? I would rather live in Gaza, just about. If you are not tired of London by now then you are surely tired of life. City of gender-study courses, LGBT action days and poor huddled masses, mainly foreigners, earning fu** all.
City of eateries run by greedy ponces selling you a bowl of cornflakes for five quid, city of middle-class wood-burning stoves and Chelsea tractors choking the entire population. City of the million quid garage, city of the £600-per-month one-room rathole for impecunious losers. City of people who think they’re entitled to everything. City of bankers. City of fury, of rage, of toddler tantrums and bellowed hatred. I never go there unless I can help it. And when I do, I always take a candle, some flowers and a teddy bear, so I’m ready for the next vigil, which is always just around the corner.
I also make sure I’ve got a few words of anodyne cant prepared for when Jon Snow — wearing one of his ties, a white poppy and maybe a tampon to show his solidarity with menstruating women — hoves into view asking his usual facile questions for Channel 4 News. ‘Well, Jon, I think it’s important at a time like this that we all stand together. It’s nothing to do with Islam. We need hope, not hate. Love, not war. Cheese, not chives. Anyway, it’s all Theresa May’s fault. Burning tower blocks, jihadi mentals, racist yokels.’
Which reminds me — yes, city of Channel 4 News, city of the BBC.
The surprising thing is that it did not happen before. What didn’t? Both. The burning tower block and the Cardiff-domiciled Somerset yokel with his wish, comprehensively unrealised, to expunge Muslims from the face of the earth. The population does not swallow the obvious canard that jihadi attacks are nothing to do with Islam — nor yet that it is a perverted form of Islam to which the jihadis adhere. If it is perverted, then it’s perverted across a rather large swath of the Islamic world, no?
And yet the actions of Darren Osborne were pretty much a singularity. The white population does not take out its misgivings, its resentments, on ‘ordinary’ Muslims. We have been uniquely tolerant and pacific. Our sense of injustice is perhaps ratcheted up a notch or two when the police quickly decide that the wretched Osborne’s attack was ‘terrorism’, when it takes them rather longer to reach this conclusion after the Muslims have been out with their knives and vans again, in attack after attack after attack. And when we’re told that this is clear evidence of horrible escalating right-wing violence and Islamophobia when it is nothing of the kind. When we’re told this by the same people who told us the jihadi attacks were nothing to do with Islam. That stuff, I think, rankles a bit with your average Brit — beyond London. Beyond the city of Lily Allen, the city of veri-similitude and hypocrisy.
And the tower block. Grenfell Tower. Done on the cheap, clad with an amalgam of kindling and Zip firelighters, sod the poor. The lefties are absolutely justified in both decrying the inequality that exists in our capital city and insisting that the authorities do not give a monkey’s about the poorest citizens. But to state, as Jeremy Corbyn did, that everyone should have a nice, safe space to live in London is so fabulously stupid as to be certifiable. The residents of that block were almost exclusively African and Asian immigrants, or the children of immigrants, brought into this country to do, at best, menial work for affluent whitey. If they had ‘somewhere nice to live’, you well-off Londoners would be paying at least triple the amount in hourly rates for your nannies, Uber drivers, cleaners, builders, road sweepers, lavatory attendants and so on. Maybe quadruple. And you are not prepared to do that, are you?
Further, if those rates of pay were applicable then white working-class British people would be queuing up for the jobs and the immigrants wouldn’t be here at all —because suddenly the need for them would have evaporated. So you Londoners who delight in the ‘diversity’ of your city and are proud to have Fatimah from Algeria minding your brats and Mohammed from Mogadishu driving you to work and Pawel from Białystok excavating your basement for a new kitchen — where do you think they live, these people? Fatimah lived in Grenfell Tower. Mohammed lives in the tower opposite, just about to go up in smoke. Pawel shares a room with seven other Polish men, living as the lowest navvies did in the 1850s.
And you are living in Dubai or Doha, the only difference being the colder climate and the fact that you pretend your city is a wonderful multicultural melting pot, rather than a slave state run entirely for your own benefit. Hell, at least the Emiratis and the Qataris are honest in their utter disdain for their Gastarbeiter. You dress it all up in the agreeable and becoming cloak of internationalism, as if we were doing these people a favour. City of magnificent delusions.
I can see why the right, then, is in favour of mass immigration. But I cannot for a second understand why the left goes along with it. As Marx said, it is the means by which the rich become richer. I used to like London. But what now is there to like?
London, city of the damned. City of incendiary tower blocks, jihadi mentals trying to slit your throat, yokels from Somerset up for the day to enjoy a spot of ramming Muslims in a white van. City of Thornberry, Abbott and Corbyn. City of Boris. City of anti-Semitic marches to commemorate Al Quds. City of Isis flags and where, in most boroughs, white British people are a largely resentful minority. City of vacuous liberal platitudes — we all stand together, not in my name. Why would you live there? I would rather live in Gaza, just about. If you are not tired of London by now then you are surely tired of life. City of gender-study courses, LGBT action days and poor huddled masses, mainly foreigners, earning fu** all.
City of eateries run by greedy ponces selling you a bowl of cornflakes for five quid, city of middle-class wood-burning stoves and Chelsea tractors choking the entire population. City of the million quid garage, city of the £600-per-month one-room rathole for impecunious losers. City of people who think they’re entitled to everything. City of bankers. City of fury, of rage, of toddler tantrums and bellowed hatred. I never go there unless I can help it. And when I do, I always take a candle, some flowers and a teddy bear, so I’m ready for the next vigil, which is always just around the corner.
I also make sure I’ve got a few words of anodyne cant prepared for when Jon Snow — wearing one of his ties, a white poppy and maybe a tampon to show his solidarity with menstruating women — hoves into view asking his usual facile questions for Channel 4 News. ‘Well, Jon, I think it’s important at a time like this that we all stand together. It’s nothing to do with Islam. We need hope, not hate. Love, not war. Cheese, not chives. Anyway, it’s all Theresa May’s fault. Burning tower blocks, jihadi mentals, racist yokels.’
Which reminds me — yes, city of Channel 4 News, city of the BBC.
The surprising thing is that it did not happen before. What didn’t? Both. The burning tower block and the Cardiff-domiciled Somerset yokel with his wish, comprehensively unrealised, to expunge Muslims from the face of the earth. The population does not swallow the obvious canard that jihadi attacks are nothing to do with Islam — nor yet that it is a perverted form of Islam to which the jihadis adhere. If it is perverted, then it’s perverted across a rather large swath of the Islamic world, no?
And yet the actions of Darren Osborne were pretty much a singularity. The white population does not take out its misgivings, its resentments, on ‘ordinary’ Muslims. We have been uniquely tolerant and pacific. Our sense of injustice is perhaps ratcheted up a notch or two when the police quickly decide that the wretched Osborne’s attack was ‘terrorism’, when it takes them rather longer to reach this conclusion after the Muslims have been out with their knives and vans again, in attack after attack after attack. And when we’re told that this is clear evidence of horrible escalating right-wing violence and Islamophobia when it is nothing of the kind. When we’re told this by the same people who told us the jihadi attacks were nothing to do with Islam. That stuff, I think, rankles a bit with your average Brit — beyond London. Beyond the city of Lily Allen, the city of veri-similitude and hypocrisy.
And the tower block. Grenfell Tower. Done on the cheap, clad with an amalgam of kindling and Zip firelighters, sod the poor. The lefties are absolutely justified in both decrying the inequality that exists in our capital city and insisting that the authorities do not give a monkey’s about the poorest citizens. But to state, as Jeremy Corbyn did, that everyone should have a nice, safe space to live in London is so fabulously stupid as to be certifiable. The residents of that block were almost exclusively African and Asian immigrants, or the children of immigrants, brought into this country to do, at best, menial work for affluent whitey. If they had ‘somewhere nice to live’, you well-off Londoners would be paying at least triple the amount in hourly rates for your nannies, Uber drivers, cleaners, builders, road sweepers, lavatory attendants and so on. Maybe quadruple. And you are not prepared to do that, are you?
Further, if those rates of pay were applicable then white working-class British people would be queuing up for the jobs and the immigrants wouldn’t be here at all —because suddenly the need for them would have evaporated. So you Londoners who delight in the ‘diversity’ of your city and are proud to have Fatimah from Algeria minding your brats and Mohammed from Mogadishu driving you to work and Pawel from Białystok excavating your basement for a new kitchen — where do you think they live, these people? Fatimah lived in Grenfell Tower. Mohammed lives in the tower opposite, just about to go up in smoke. Pawel shares a room with seven other Polish men, living as the lowest navvies did in the 1850s.
And you are living in Dubai or Doha, the only difference being the colder climate and the fact that you pretend your city is a wonderful multicultural melting pot, rather than a slave state run entirely for your own benefit. Hell, at least the Emiratis and the Qataris are honest in their utter disdain for their Gastarbeiter. You dress it all up in the agreeable and becoming cloak of internationalism, as if we were doing these people a favour. City of magnificent delusions.
I can see why the right, then, is in favour of mass immigration. But I cannot for a second understand why the left goes along with it. As Marx said, it is the means by which the rich become richer. I used to like London. But what now is there to like?
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I love London. I am not white however I would say I am well off and extremely privileged . I don't look down on muslims or immigrants, I like treating everyone the same but that's because I was exposed to diversity at a young age as a result of living in London. I'm not tired of London and I am also not tired of life.
I don't know what you want the people of London to do, many Londoners are struggling to get by let alone pay quadruple fees. The problem with Grenfell tower saw plenty of Kensington's citizens open their homes to the victims, it was a tragedy. However I agree that the council aren't being effective, the ruins still stand. They could do more that's true but they have a budget they didn't prepare for this and now the council are having to rehouse over two hundred people. All I say is don't blame Londoners, because we didn't do anything, we are trying to get by. If anything start a fundraiser and donate to Grenfell tower victims or less privileged victims.
As for muslims, the prejudice against them is large and the tensions have increased but not mainly in London but areas of the UK that aren't as open to immigration.
Do something about it. I see your passion and that's amazing, but pointing the finger on TSR won't get anything done.
I don't know what you want the people of London to do, many Londoners are struggling to get by let alone pay quadruple fees. The problem with Grenfell tower saw plenty of Kensington's citizens open their homes to the victims, it was a tragedy. However I agree that the council aren't being effective, the ruins still stand. They could do more that's true but they have a budget they didn't prepare for this and now the council are having to rehouse over two hundred people. All I say is don't blame Londoners, because we didn't do anything, we are trying to get by. If anything start a fundraiser and donate to Grenfell tower victims or less privileged victims.
As for muslims, the prejudice against them is large and the tensions have increased but not mainly in London but areas of the UK that aren't as open to immigration.
Do something about it. I see your passion and that's amazing, but pointing the finger on TSR won't get anything done.
London is just like any other major city of the world, immigrants are here to stay, stop whining about it. If you're not happy, move to a neighbouring town, I personally can't afford to live in London so I salute those who do. Until the government tackle the housing crisis, prices will keep on increasing and this is the fault of the government not the immigrants. I live in a white majority area and I have extremely long waiting times for the GP, which again is the fault of government underfunding not the immigrants. Stop finding an easily identifiable minority group to blame for all your problems.
i am tired of london, so does that mean i am not tired of life?
Original post by Eva.Gregoria
London is just like any other major city of the world, immigrants are here to stay, stop whining about it. If you're not happy, move to a neighbouring town, I personally can't afford to live in London so I salute those who do. Until the government tackle the housing crisis, prices will keep on increasing and this is the fault of the government not the immigrants. I live in a white majority area and I have extremely long waiting times for the GP, which again is the fault of government underfunding not the immigrants. Stop finding an easily identifiable minority group to blame for all your problems.
We wouldn't have this massive demand for more houses if immigration hadn't pushed the population to such unsustainble levels. The vast bulk of our population increase for the past several decades has been almost entirely caused by mass immigration. Now I will agree this isn't the fault of the immigrants themselves per se, but the fault of successive governments who have utterly failed to put any halt on immigration.
And you may well say "just build more houses". Where are we going to build them? This isn't America, Canada or Australia etc, we don't have vast tracts of unused land to just concrete over willy nilly. We have to build almost everything on farmland, which is treading into very dodgy territory as it ultimately reduces our ability to feed ourselves, forces us to be more and more dependent on imports which pushes food prices up and in turn increases the cost of living at almost every other point in society. We are already down to around just 60% self-sufficiency in staple food production. We used to be over 100% just a couple of decades ago.
(edited 6 years ago)
Original post by Wōden
We wouldn't have this massive demand for more houses if immigration hadn't pushed the population to such unsustainble levels. The vast bulk of our population increase for the past several decades has been almost entirely caused by mass immigration. Now I will agree this isn't the fault of the immigrants themselves per se, but the fault of successive governments who have utterly failed to put any halt on immigration.
And you may well say "just build more houses". Where are we going to build them? This isn't America, Canada or Australia etc, we don't have vast tracts of unused land to just concrete over willy nilly. We have to build almost everything on farmland, which is treading into very dodgy territory as it ultimately reduces our ability to feed ourselves, forces us to be more and more dependent on imports which pushes food prices up and in turn increases the cost of living at almost every other point in society. We are already down to around just 60% self-sufficiency in staple food production. We used to be over 100% just a couple of decades ago.
And you may well say "just build more houses". Where are we going to build them? This isn't America, Canada or Australia etc, we don't have vast tracts of unused land to just concrete over willy nilly. We have to build almost everything on farmland, which is treading into very dodgy territory as it ultimately reduces our ability to feed ourselves, forces us to be more and more dependent on imports which pushes food prices up and in turn increases the cost of living at almost every other point in society. We are already down to around just 60% self-sufficiency in staple food production. We used to be over 100% just a couple of decades ago.
The population of the world is increasing exponentially, we're going to have to find the space to build or learn to deal with it. Vast swathes of land may soon become uninhabitable due to flooding and climate change, and where are these people going to go? Just stay in the same place to die?
And if Britain didn't infiltrate a load of countries from centuries ago, maybe these countries wouldn't have any reason to feel the right to come here in vast numbers. You reap what you sow.
Very good post...although, not yours...
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/06/if-youre-not-tired-of-london-youre-tired-of-life/
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/06/if-youre-not-tired-of-london-youre-tired-of-life/
(edited 6 years ago)
Original post by Boredom101
I love London. I am not white however I would say I am well off and extremely privileged . I don't look down on muslims or immigrants, I like treating everyone the same but that's because I was exposed to diversity at a young age as a result of living in London. I'm not tired of London and I am also not tired of life.
I don't know what you want the people of London to do, many Londoners are struggling to get by let alone pay quadruple fees. The problem with Grenfell tower saw plenty of Kensington's citizens open their homes to the victims, it was a tragedy. However I agree that the council aren't being effective, the ruins still stand. They could do more that's true but they have a budget they didn't prepare for this and now the council are having to rehouse over two hundred people. All I say is don't blame Londoners, because we didn't do anything, we are trying to get by. If anything start a fundraiser and donate to Grenfell tower victims or less privileged victims.
As for muslims, the prejudice against them is large and the tensions have increased but not mainly in London but areas of the UK that aren't as open to immigration.
Do something about it. I see your passion and that's amazing, but pointing the finger on TSR won't get anything done.
I don't know what you want the people of London to do, many Londoners are struggling to get by let alone pay quadruple fees. The problem with Grenfell tower saw plenty of Kensington's citizens open their homes to the victims, it was a tragedy. However I agree that the council aren't being effective, the ruins still stand. They could do more that's true but they have a budget they didn't prepare for this and now the council are having to rehouse over two hundred people. All I say is don't blame Londoners, because we didn't do anything, we are trying to get by. If anything start a fundraiser and donate to Grenfell tower victims or less privileged victims.
As for muslims, the prejudice against them is large and the tensions have increased but not mainly in London but areas of the UK that aren't as open to immigration.
Do something about it. I see your passion and that's amazing, but pointing the finger on TSR won't get anything done.
It's hardly HIS passion...
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/06/if-youre-not-tired-of-london-youre-tired-of-life/
Original post by Boredom101
Do something about it. I see your passion and that's amazing, but pointing the finger on TSR won't get anything done.
Do something about it. I see your passion and that's amazing, but pointing the finger on TSR won't get anything done.
ermm OP did not write this.
Original post by Eva.Gregoria
Just stay in the same place to die?
Hopefully.
London is a beautiful and amazing city.
It's each to their own. I grew up in a small village of what I'd call small minded people and I was fortunate to move to London where I lived for a seven years (university and post university). I cannot remember a happier time.
In the last year I found myself reluctantly moving to Suffolk because I needed shift my priorities to make sure I get on the property ladder.
The people of Suffolk remind me of the people I knew in the little village I grew up in. They are small minded, mostly uneducated, they have nothing exciting going for them and somehow blame the immigrant for their misfortune.
I miss London dearly and had planned to move back there after getting on the property ladder. However, with brexit in motion I have decided to stay put and if anything I'm now planning a move abroad.
It's each to their own. I grew up in a small village of what I'd call small minded people and I was fortunate to move to London where I lived for a seven years (university and post university). I cannot remember a happier time.
In the last year I found myself reluctantly moving to Suffolk because I needed shift my priorities to make sure I get on the property ladder.
The people of Suffolk remind me of the people I knew in the little village I grew up in. They are small minded, mostly uneducated, they have nothing exciting going for them and somehow blame the immigrant for their misfortune.
I miss London dearly and had planned to move back there after getting on the property ladder. However, with brexit in motion I have decided to stay put and if anything I'm now planning a move abroad.
(edited 6 years ago)
Original post by Eva.Gregoria
And if Britain didn't infiltrate a load of countries from centuries ago, maybe these countries wouldn't have any reason to feel the right to come here in vast numbers. You reap what you sow.
Here we go...
Original post by r3035
But what now is there to like?
Says the man who lives in a million pound house in a Kentish hamlet.
Original post by Wōden
Here we go...
The truth hurts doesn't it? Actions have consequences. Stop meddling and you wouldn't have these problems.
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