Now, look, if what follows gets a bit sweary, you only have yourselves to blame.
Mrs Crox, who is a journalist who’s been working remotely for ages, is just about to lose her job – and is unlikely to find another, given that all the jobs worth applying for, both intellectually or financially, are in London, even though they could, and probably should, be performed equally well (or better) from anywhere with an internet connection.
There are probably many good, historical reasons why London is the hub, the place where things happen, blah blah blah, but history is history, and as the man said, you are only as good as your last record. From my perspective, in the Now, London is a great suppurating, cancerous stench, which, like a tumour, diverts all resources to itself and squanders them in witless, mindless, tumid heat, while sucking the life out of the increasingly corpse-like remains of the rest of the country. You might say that London gives back far more than it takes, but I would contest that. Like all tumours, it sucks mainly on itself. Yes, yes, yes, I know, it has many nice museums and galleries, but also far too many aberrations such as celebrities and London Fashion Week and people who do highly-paid nothing jobs as a way to furnish their inner emptiness. Honestly, who gives a flying fig except the metropolitan chatterati, who exist as parasites on what is already parasitic?
This tumour must be excised.
So don’t give me all that pretentious feculent arse-dribble about London being a vital, multicultural melting pot, essential to the health and wealth of the nation.
And, Dear Boris, whereas it is a fact universally acknowledged that posterity will view you as the greatest statesman of this or any other age, spare us the cant about London being the powerhouse of the economy and therefore we should all be grateful. I know you are only doing your job, but still.
Face the facts.
London is smelly, dirty, noisy, ridiculously expensive and unfriendly. When I lived in London, police sirens were the lullabies that sent us to sleep. When I lived in London, hospitals and GP surgeries looked like refugee camps. When I lived in London, that supposed great melting pot, I met more prejudice, more hate, more indiscriminate violence, more deficiency of basic human kindness and neighbourliness, more evidence of the ugly underbelly of humanity, than I have seen in Norfolk, even on a bad night in King’s Lynn. If too many rats are crammed together in a barrel, they will start biting chunks out of one another. London is a rip-off. London is cheap. London is vulgar. London is shallow. London is vile. London achieves what it does by bleeding the rest of the country – and at what cost, given the blackness of the ichorous filth it vomits over the rest of us? I am perforce drawn to London for work, and the contrast is yet more stark as I am forced to make the comparison daily. In London, the air is virtually unbreathable. It’s like trying to snort concrete that has been marinaded in re-heated vomit and human excrement of the kind that tells of a dodgy kebab the night before.
I might have kept my grumbling under the wire were it not for this piece by my friend Mr S. D. of Cromer, columnist with the Eastern Daily Press, who responds to a piece in the Sunday Times by restaurant critic A. A. Gill, in which the latter uses a visit to the Rose and Crown in Snettisham as an excuse for a typically lukewarm discharge of snide, effete, foppish insult directed at Norfolk. Mr Gill’s putrid, pustulent fecal tripe is mercifully behind a paywall, so I shall quote from Mr S. D.’s piece. “In case you missed exhibit A in the display case of snobbish, sneering London ‘journalism’”, says Mr S. D., “here are a few highlights:
“If Norfolk didn’t exist, we would have to make it up, and then regret it”
“[Norfolk is a] backward place to allocate dark lusts, incest and idiocy”
“The hernia on the end of England”
“A poverty-bitten place, keeping up its stained trousers with baler twine”.
“No doubt” (Mr S. D. continues)
he laughed to himself as he penned so many witty phrases, anticipating a flurry of air kisses from his acolytes. And I expect his waspish attacks on Norfolk will draw amusement and even adulation at the dinner parties of the chattering classes, where a tasteless titbit is far more digestible than the truth. After all, anywhere that is more than 10 minutes’ drive from the nearest Harvey Nicholls must be populated by primates who wave their fists at passing planes and drown women with warts.
So, not only do the metropolitan chatterati subsist on the table-scraps of the disgusting teratoma that is London, so seeking vainly to assuage a fragile, inner nullity that can never be filled, they see fit to damn anything else as inferior in all possible ways, no matter how degraded, misguided or untrue. But the joke, Mr Gill, is on you. You presumably say these things because you have no other option but to scavenge forever in that shit-pit you call London, which is – because of its pathology – the only place where people like you can exist, and – because of the same pathology – the reason why Mrs Crox can’t find a job in the clean, friendly, calm, measured, human and dignified atmosphere of Norfolk.
Oh I’m very sorry, Cromercrox , not you that I can tell him, but I hope that Mrs. Crox soon find a good job in Norfolk or other city near Cromer (Sigh).
Bravo sir.
Although, being a pustulant spewer of darkest ichor and a parasitic trader in human misery, myself, I love the place.
Then again, I also live 5000 miles from it…
I can’t past around the image of someone drowning a women with warts. “We can still see the top of her head – pass me another bucket of warts!”
But seriously, maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner, but I love London Toooooowwwwwn.
But actually seriously, science, too, clusters around the capitol, and this is something that most of us just learn to accept. Personally I don’t mind because I love living here. There is also a lot to be said for being in the same place as your colleagues; in my previous publishing stint, for example, it was sometimes difficult to work with the people we never saw. They are there on email, but sometimes it’s not a good substitute for the face-to-face interactions, especially those that occur informally, away from the conference calls and meetings.
I do know a lot of journalists who are entirely freelance and make a good living (ironically, most of them live in London). Is this a possibility for Mrs. C?
Give my best to Mrs Crox – I hope she can find an enlightened employer.
I’ve always found London too big (but then I was brought up in Scunthorpe, the real hernia on the end of England). Norfolk may be a bit backwards in places, but I do rather like its charm, and would be happy if I had to relocate there.
The landscape’s bloody boring, though.
Well, up here in Northernshire we are a mere 30 min drive in the Rolls – sorry, the Vauxhall – from the Harvey Nicks in the centre of Doomchester, sorry, Manchester… But we still share many of Henry’s feelings about the general smugness of London and Londonistas. And I say that as one born and raised in sunny Saarf Lahndon. There is nothing like watching the extreme London-centricity of London (and the things based there, like the media and politics) from t’ provinces to make one see the South-East in a new light.
It was all sort of crystallised for me some years back – maybe 2000? – when large parts of the North – especially Yorkshire – were under several feet of water. The flooding barely made the national media bulletins until there were report of the Thames possibly overflowing it’s banks at Teddington, or somewhere like that. Cue lady presenter on R4: “But…but… that’s nearly London!”.
Enough said.
But Srsly, when I lived in the environs of London I quite liked it… until I moved away, when I suddenly encountered breathable air, old-fashioned neighbourliness, tradesmen that didn’t rip you off, and found that a round of drinks in a pub didn’t mean a second mortgage. I have gone native to such an extent that coming back to London is a shock. I remember a year or so back walking along Oxford Street at night and being quite frightened by the intensity of it. The only way I could cope was by pretending I wasn’t in London but the suq in East Jerusalem: it was that foreign and strange. Mrs Crox rather likes London. Me? Give me a wide open landscape and a dog. I can live without other people, most of the time.
Good.
There is definitely an “acclimatizing” effect to living in cities, and a “de-acclimatizing” one to stopping living there. I find the centre of Manchester disturbingly manic/intense/full of pissed people in the evenings now. This is mainly because, since I moved to the ‘burbs and had kids, I rarely go into the city centre, and very rarely in the evening. There are a bunch of nice restaurants within 10 min walk of Casa Aust, and some tolerable pubs. So – sorted – who needs the trek into town, and then back again with all the inebriated students on the bus, or a twenty quid cab fare?
All we need in our ‘burb now is a decent coffee bar.
I love visiting London, but I’d hate to live there (she said, originally). The first few times I went, in my late teens, I found it terrifying (and so rude!), but now I find it exciting (but so rude!). I couldn’t deal with the crowds and the nasty air and the noise for long, though, and even if I’m only there for a few days I have to escape to a park for at least half a day to decompress. Oh, and I hate the tube – the most claustrophobic part of a very claustrophobic place.
I totally agree with Austin about the Londoncentricity of the British media – I grew up feeling sick to the back teeth of hearing/reading London-specific stories on the BBC and in the papers. (Mind you, when I moved to Scotland I realised that the Londoncentricity is part of a more general England-centric mindset, but I digress). I do hope Mrs Crox finds a new employer who can see past the Watford Gap…
@Aust @Cath: so true, the part about acclimatisation. My brother-in- law Mr A. C. of Cromer says you can spot recent immigrants to Norfolk by their impatience: they haven’t learned to switch down a gear to Norfolk pace. What they don’t realise is that in the end you get just the same things done, but without the stress.
I would comment but I’m still ploughing through the dictionary…
William Blake’s poem London might be appropriate here:
I wander thro’ each charter’d street,
Near where the charter’d Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every Man,
In every Infant’s cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forg’d manacles I hear.
How the Chimney-sweeper’s cry
Every black’ning Church appalls;
And the hapless Soldier’s sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls.
But most thro’ midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlot’s curse
Blasts the new born Infant’s tear,
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.
Rural Texas is a lot scarier than London, at least in my experience. Rural Oregon was scarier too. In fact when I’ve house-sat for people who live way out in the boondocks, even if they have protective dogs and attack cats and stompin’ horses to guard the property, it freaks me the feck out to stay overnight, and I usually retreat back to the city after one sleepless night.
‘mind-forg’d manacles’
Says it all, really.
Oh, I actually do have something to say to this too!
{jumps up and down}
Obviously I couldn’t have cared less about Londoncentricity when I lived in the UK, being a foreigner and all. Also because London is in fact not the centre of all science – see oceanography for example, for obvious reasons. For that, Southampton is “just fine”.
However, when I attended a meeting of the Linnean Society and – being the bright-eyed-and-bushy-tailed grad student I was – was
chatted upin the process of being recruited for the Society by one of the (rather old) fellows, his reaction when I said I was based in Southampton was rather peculiar. Full of… pity.(I know what Southampton is like, I really do. I lived there long enough. But I’m still fond of the place…)
Henry, I was beginning to wonder whether you’d been taking tea with Mr Salmond of EH99, or enjoying Fry’s fruity, frolicking Hippopotamus.
But I never really liked London until I had some time to actually walk around it. Before that, London meant a total lack of orientation, as I relied on the tube to whisk me stagnantly from one unpleasant stain to the next. After a good walk above ground around central areas, it seemed more approachable. This is all from the viewpoint of a visitor, I’m not sure if I can imagine actually living there. Especially now as I live in a town of around 3500 inhabitants.
Disclaimer – I live in London and love it.
I agree that the review you quote is nasty and small-minded, but I m not convinced that it entirely supports your conclusions about London. Yes, London is big and noisy and smelly and people can appear rude. But I rather think that some denizens of Little Nettisham might think the same about Norwich, and those who lived in the same peaceful Norfolk hamlet for all their long life may find Cromer impossibly busy and exhausting.
I remember my old gran many years ago. She lived in Eye in Suffolk – close to the Norfolk border. One day a big lorry rattled through the sleepy little town as we were walking along the street. She said “Oh! Eye gets more and more like London these days!”
Disclaimer – I live in London and love it.
I think Henry’s post is nasty and small-minded. But everybody is entitled to their own opinion. I wouldn’t live in Norfolk for all the toes in Wroxham.
I don’t know how many toes there are in Wroxham. So sue me, I’m a palaeontologist and therefore innumerate. ‘One’ is fine. ‘Two’ I can just about cope with. But faced with any number greater than that and I have to lie down in a darkened room.
I’ve calmed down a bit now. However, my point still stands – why, in the 21st Century, is it necessary for all decent jobs, even on teh interwebz, to be based in London? And if A. A. Gill ever showed his face in Cromer he’d be run out of town with live crabs (Carcinus edulis) attached to any and all protruberant parts of his anatomy.
Talking of Mike’s point about getting around cities, when i was a PhD student in London (which was great fun) I had enough time (….! – yes, I know, things were different then) to get around the place on the top deck of buses (accompanied by a London A to Z, how geek is that?) and even on a bike (!). Being able to work out /master some sense of layout and where you were going makes a big difference to one’s sense of the place, compared to having to dash about on the tube like a stressed mole. When I’m back in London now I do my best to arrange to be able to walk between the bits I need to visit.
Curiously, my mother, who grew up in London and lived there until her mid 30s, finds the tube so claustrophobic now that she won’t get on the deep lines at all.
I do think the reflexive London-centricity of many things in the UK that are largely London-based is a fact. One can see it very clearly in the way Universities are classified and discussed, and outside the Golden Triangle it is widely believed (though rarely said openly, for obvious reasons) that the research grant system is inherently London-centric too. It is also true, I would suggest, for science journalism and communication, since so many of the events where one can meet people face-to-face and “network” are London-based. I would love to go to more such things, but being three hours commute away, and not having HG’s Epic Fortitude, it just isn’t going to happen.
I used to life in The Golden Triangle. Ironically, it’s in Norfolk.
Even more ironically, it’s the part of Norwich where all the richer people moved who wanted to live in Norfolk and work in London. I allowed to stay there to add a bit of local colour.
These days Epic Fortitude isn’t enough. I have to have Epic Fiftitude.
But even when I did live in London, I tended not to go to networky events in the evenings – partly because I preferred to go home and hang out withe the missus and offspring, but also because, even in London, I lived an appreciable distance – over an hour by tube – from the City Centre.
This, I guess, will be true for most people for most people with families living in London – life is only affordable if you live quite a long way out.
In many ways, therefore, the networkiness of London is itself a struggle. A cousin of mine who had been a student in London said it was hard to hang out with friends, because some might be living in Hounslow, others in Ilford – twenty miles apart. When I was a student in Leeds, and later Cambridge, one’s friends were only a short walk away, and this applies in Cromer, too.
As a fellow mover from the South East to more fragrant parts, I have to agree mostly. However, the only thing I would say is that it is very handy being in London, to be able to drop into events at the RI or whatever. When I dabbled in IT journalism (and was still in the SE) I was always going to press events in London – it would have been a real pain from the wilds of Wiltshire.
But Brian, why do all these events have to be in London? Why can’t they be in – say – Birmingham, or Manchester, or – heavens – Swindon? Or Norwich? Or Southampton? Or Webcast? Or SecondLife? The reason is inertia and the fatuous belief of Londonistas that nothing outside the North Circular has a right to exist. I think it’s time the Londonistas got off their pampered indigent arses and went somewhere else for a change. Why should everyone else have to suffer inconvenience because of their prejudice? I for one am fed up of having to dance to tunes created by the likes of A. A. Gill.
The main reason they got us indolent journalists to go was offering free food/electronic goodies/unspeakable favours* etc – I’m not sure if Webcast or SecondLife would cut it. I take your point about alternative locations, though I would favour ones that are easily accessible from the rest of the country, which probably excludes Narch.
*Let’s not speak of them.
Henry, I think Londoners do travel elsewhere. The problem is often that it is easier to travel from Southampton or Ipswich to London, rather than Southampton to Ipswich, or Ipswich to Aberystwyth.
That’s because of London’s cancerous effects, Frank – because everything happens in London, transport is easier to and from London rather than between different places, and this sets up a positive feedback loop.
Mrs Crox tells me that she’s seen six (6) ads for well-paid jobs in London today alone. Anywhere else? None. I think this is a scandal.
It’s the same in Chile, everything is concentrated in Santiago, but the difference is that England is first world.
I think the recession demonstrates that we are all in the same world, together.
Right. “Todos unidos en el mundo… en la mierda”
@ Stephen: exactly.
So it is an advantage the we do not have a capital with a capital C in Germany.
For once Henry and the guardian seem on the same wavelength: http://m.guardian.co.uk/ms/p/gnm/op/soAUyEsXEFsz5iLRAfqL-dQ/view.m?id=15&gid=commentisfree/2011/mar/02/aa-gill-spittle-flecked-indignation-norfolk&cat=commentisfree
Is it the end of the world?
And there is also this:
http://www.learningwithoutfrontiers.com/blog/2011/3/2/im-a-celebrity-let-me-fix-education.html
Thanks to Alom Shaha for this link, and for highlighting this passage: ‘What we have is the emergence of the “Editorial Classes”. Predominantly based in London this chattering, self-reverential group are determining the popular agenda and rather than informing the public they seek to influence opinion…’
After such an outstanding outburst I’d pay to see an ex tempora slanging match between Henry and Boris Johnson, topic: “civis et civitas“. The Oxford English Dictionary could sponsor the event, and thesaurii should be made available at the door.
Nico – sorry this took ages to approve. I found it buried in a steaming heap of spam.
Thanks, I was wondering whether I had been banned from the production at the end of the pier