miga

> all prices and benefits down to the lowest common > denominator and we'll end up with thousands of > people with no holiday or benefits chasing the > same number of people. What holidays and benefits do black cab/minicab drivers get? I get the tax thing - but I think the Uber model is great.

Thread fall on blind ears. Many disgust.

Thanks Fox, those aren't for me I'm afraid.

rahrahrah Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > 'resisting Shoreditchification' > http://www.artefactmagazine.com/2016/03/01/peckham > -vision-and-the-saviour-of-copeland-park/ "have resulted in a breeding ground for the creative class" You see them humping on the benches at Franks, stuffing each other's orifices full of grilled giblets at Peckham Bazaar and suggestively stroking pool balls at Canavans...

Some programming books like K&R assume "classic" status. What books are you looking to get rid of Fox?

Hey Jolly L, take a chill pill re: Easy D.

Blah Blah Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > government's policies on migrants ARE an extreme > knee jerk reaction to the imagined support of > someone who would go much further if he ever got a > sniff of power (Farage). Which policies? If they are an extreme reaction, they're certainly not having much of an effect on the numbers.

DaveR Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > My comment is directed only towards the avowed > intention to 'fight...'til my last breath'. That's what I thought. It goes hand in hand with the earlier "as long as people need fighting for". While it's hyperbolic, I guess I don't have much of an issue with that kind of passion/noblesse oblige/pomp, because it usually comes from a good place.

DaveR Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > "....til my last breath if necessary" > > ....or until I get home (with a nice artisan loaf) > and sit in a comfy chair with a mug of tea, and > smugly congratulate myself on being able to be > utterly comfortable and morally pure, at the same > time. Idiot. Not sure I agree with this though, even though I know where you're coming from (I think). It's possible to "do good" while not suffering yourself. e.g. the tradition of arts and social benefactors who live very well themselves. I guess the wider point is not to be a caricature. Now there's a fight we could all do with fighting.

Blah Blah Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Godwin's Law is just a bit of fun. To assume > drawing an analogy with National Socialism > automatically renders a debate lost is stupid. > > My analogy was valid and relevant to the topic. No it wasn't - we haven't had a World War 15 years ago that we lost, followed by such a deep economic crisis we use money for wallpaper, and crippling reparation payments pushing us further under water. Anti-semitism is a minority passtime, not a general feeling these days. Human rights are enshrined in law, and even though the economy is in slow decline, if you work, you eat. Even if you don't work, you eat. But more than that, every time you compare a bigot to a Nazi, they will switch off, and label you a communist in their head, thereby totally missing the opportunity to make them consider an alternative view. Further, I think concerns around migration have a basis in reality, but they're not best addressed by comparing people's views to the dawn of Nazism. That's the humour of Godwin's law. People on the internet get apoplectic with rage, and then they thump down the big word. And then the discussion can go no further, because no one really wants to argue whether their views are analogous to Nazism, not even Nazis.

apbremer Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Turkey in within 5 years~80 million paupers can > come and live here on benefits. Madness. Comedy gold.

Does that post ding the Godwin bell on this thread?

Loz Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > LondonMix Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > ----- > > Expat has connotations of impermanence. > > Not that I've ever heard of. An expat is merely > someone who is not currently living in their home > country. That would cover those that are away on > a longish-term basis as well as those, like me, > who are permanent. I am an expat, an immigrant > and an emigrant. Clearly it means whatever people want it to mean. To me it conjures up images of yuppies in Singapore for two years on tidy, tax efficient packages. Which is why I'd never use it to describe myself - I'm dumb enough to pay all my tax in London. It seems a bit try hard, unless you're actually on a secondment somewhere exotic, tar me with that immigrant brush please.

Ok - yes, I think there's a well documented process that's been going on for several decades where people from inner London, generally working class, move to outer boroughs or Essex or Kent (or Australia or New Zealand etc.). I didn't comment on motivation. When people get sniffy about places like Croydon or Tottenham or North Kent, and talk about reduced gene pools, I see some historical resonance with being sniffy about slums. Someone further up even mentioned Hogarth. I'm just riffing, I could be way off.

DovertheRoad Wrote: > - Agree that the marginal but distinct demographic > differences between specific suburbs in London are > FASCINATING and have yet to be fully documented by > modern day anthropologists. Agree. There's Nairn, but that's heading up to 50 years old. Ben Judah, Tim Judah's son, has just written "This is London", which looks promising based on the excerpts I've read. There's the Will Self stuff, but that's a lot about him.

LondonMix, do you always use very loaded words and phrases your interlocutor didn't? "Forced social cleansing". Jesus wept.

Seabag Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Maybe in this metropolis and cultural smoothie > we've created, even looking a little way out of > 'the London bubble' has started to feel alien. > Maybe the classic North South divide is too > obvious. Even the Soth of the river thing is too > clunky. Maybe we're fragmenting even further into > South South divides I think there's more to it - I think it's a process where inner London progressively displaces the poorer Londoners outwards. There are equally rundown neighbourhoods north of the river.

I think the words are loaded with slightly different meanings.

I know it's not common usage, or not as common, but I always think of an expat as someone who's been sent to another country by their company. Even if you come from a first world country and do a professional job, if you applied for it on the "open job market", I'd say that's still being an economic immigrant. I'm probably fighting a losing battle.(See also people from first world countries with unfashionable governments claiming somewhat ironically they're "exiles").

I always thought that 50% number seemed so arbitrary. Meanwhile, in the "knowledge economy", the numbers of good quality technical graduates (engineers, computer scientists etc.) need to be supplemented from abroad.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/upper-classes-really-do-look-down-their-noses-at-the-rest-of-us-2254133.html There's a known correlation between wealth/class and height, especially pronounced in the past. If it's true that the inner London working classes moved out to the outer boroughs and Kent and Essex in the past couple of generations, there's the explanation. Of course the reasons behind the height difference are sad to contemplate. I try to be aware of my own impulse for the cultural cringe. I haven't always succeeded, especially when I was younger. I wonder if looking down your nose (metaphorically this time) at specific social groups is an innate human need or something we learn from our parents, peers and telly. In any case observing the difference is one thing, the conclusions we go to from there another, and being able to recognise when we act in ways that are just as unoriginal but from a different set of social mores another thing again.

Jeremy Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > miga Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > ----- > > Anyone younger than, say 40, would also be > aware > > of Croydon's importance to the last great > English > > musical subculture: dubstep. > > Is that the funny slowed-down computer game music, > that was vaguely popular for a few weeks? Wasn't > aware it came from Croydon. Is that a question?

Hang on, hang on, LondonMix was responding to uncleglen's generalisation about East Europeans living many to a room and sending child benefit back, and the previous thrust of the discussion about EU (but really, Eastern European) migrants undercutting the "native" workforce for cheap jobs.....and as is well known, the way to cut down a claimed rule is to show an example that disproves it. But I agree with you - there are good workers and bad in every ethnic group (obvs.). And indeed - most Eastern Europeans I know are ones I work with, where they do highly skilled, and highly paid, technical jobs.

When the chatterers show this level of derision towards a place, it's a surefire sign that it's next in line for a spot of re-evaluation by thinking young folk (not me, then). (I'm thinking of the popular imagination in times past of places like Hackney, Brixton and Peckham). Looking at my trusty copy of "Nairn's London", he passes his idiosyncratic comment on the flux, from "staid Victorian lumps" to "shoddy modern boxes" being built at the time, adding that a "magnificent new city" might be in the offing. I guess he was excited by the potential for change. And it might yet come, it might yet come. Anyone younger than, say 40, would also be aware of Croydon's importance to the last great English musical subculture: dubstep. And while this forum might not spare much of a thought for, you know, actual people who live places out of necessity while it shits on them from up on high and so forth, it might be also worth remembering that for the massive swathe of people under 30, Croydon presents a place where they might afford a place to buy and commute into their jobs in Central London. A prescient location given the contents of Peep Show, then.

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