All Stories

London is just another country, it's life Jim but

Tom Winnifrith
Monday 2 May 2016

Every time I go to London, a City where I lived for almost twenty years, I am struck by the fact that it is populated by aliens, by folks who do not live or think like the normal human beings across the rest of Britain or even England. London is another country.

I open the capital's local paper the Evening Standard. Years ago I worked for this publication which even then viewed itself as more of a national than a regional paper, for eve 20 years ago London was already becoming a separate land. I read star columnist Anne McElvoy whining about how discussions about the EU referendum are ruining the London dinner party. I kid you not.

Apparently not only are Londoners so dull that all they can yack on about is the bloody referendum but also it really is a pressing issue, worthy of a lead column, that the dinner party is in danger. Jeepers. Put it on the front page. Sod ISIS, global warming (lack of), Trump, the deficit, the debt timebomb or the EU's woes, the pressing issue for Londoners is the threat to the dinner party.

I read on to see full pages devoted to Tory posh boy Mayoral candidate Zac Goldsmith out canvassing with his Mrs Alice Rothschild and the airhead sister of Boris Johnson. Talk about the 1% sticking together but apparently Londoners seem to like this sort of thing. But most Londoners do not live in that world.

A cabbie tells me that to make ends meet he also does pest control. He tells me of a trip last week to kill cockroaches in an apartment block in less than fashionable and far from central Palmers Green. For £850 a month I could rent a tiny cramped bedsit with cockroaches and where the loo is so bust that I have to nip to the local pub to deal with that sort of thing. So many Londoners work all hours to just survive, paying daft rents to live in a shit hole. many of them do two jobs just to make ends meet.
Yet they carry on so determined are they to live in the great City. Perhaps it is the dream that one day they might have Boris Johnson's sister knocking on their door asking them to vote for her multi-millionaire pal. Perhaps they hope one day that they may also regard the decline of the dinner party as a pressing concern.

On Thursday across the UK Labour will get an electoral drubbing. In London it will do well indeed. It is another sign that the folks there just don't think like the rest of us. In fact there is mounting evidence that folks in London are just completely incapable of rational thought.

As Mr Spock did not actually say: "it's life Jim but not as we know it."

If you enjoyed reading this article from Tom Winnifrith, why not help us cover our running costs with a donation?
About Tom Winnifrith
Bio
Tom Winnifrith is the editor of TomWinnifrith.com. When he is not harvesting olives in Greece, he is (planning to) raise goats in Wales.
Twitter
@TomWinnifrith
Email
[email protected]
Recently Featured on ShareProphets
Sign up for my weekly newsletter








Required Reading

Recent Comments


I also read