Why we should welcome foreign migrants to London
James Kirkup has a post at the Telegraph simultaneously being accurate and trolling his own readers with the news that immigration is a net plus for the British economy.
Sample quote:
“…the OECD found that international migration is making a positive difference to Britain’s public finances. That is, the Government’s deficit is smaller than it would have been without the presence of immigrants in the UK.”
He has charts and so on, and is basically arguing with facts against the mindset which produces this:
I’d like to add a London specific graph into the mix.
This shows internal, UK movement in and out of London. If you grew up in, say, the North and moved to London for work in the last 10 years, you’re one of the “ins” on here. Likewise if you used to live in London but moved to a nice cottage on the South Downs to keep some bees, you’re one of the “outs”.
Source: london.gov.uk migration indicators June 2013 The numbers are based on people registering with new GPs, which shows when they are moving their lives somewhere else
What this neatly shows is that more people leave London for other parts of the UK each year than come in from those parts.
Then how can London grow? Partly because of all the people coming in from outside the UK.
Simplifying: economic migrants from inside the UK (like me), and economic migrants from outside the UK, both contribute to London’s growth. This makes it a better place to live.
14 Jun 2013
The Windsor Castle returns to Clapton; The Star by Hackney Downs rises
It’s been a great year for reclaimed pubs in the Hackney Central/Hackney Downs metropolitan area. First movers was the real ale and cidar specialist, The Cock, on Mare Street and the faux country, yet comfy, charm of the Clapton Hart at the Lower Clapton Road roundabout.
Today sees the formerly unloved Windsor Castle reopen at 135 Lower Clapton Road, operated by the chaps behind Birthdays. An easy stagger West is the Star by Hackney Downs, run by the same folk who run the Star by Bethnal Green. Locals may remember it as the Three Sisters and, although purists may resent the name change, Snipe says it’s worth the change.
03 May 2013
Resource: the best sites for data about London
This post is a way of gathering together links to the best and most useful sites and resources for data (“facts”, in old money) about London.
If the right question to be asking is “what is really going on out there?” then these sites have a lot of the answers.
18 Apr 2013
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SonofGroucho photoLondon politics isn’t just about the funny antics of a mop-topped fop, it’s cycling, buses, and the tube; it’s who runs the police; it’s what’s built where; it’s a hundred different decisions every day that affect Londoners made by an army of people that most of us would never recognise — until now.
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16 Apr 2013
For the first time in a decade, more Italians and Spaniards than Poles are coming to London to work
Here’s an interesting chart. In 2011/12, for the first time in a decade, fewer Poles than Italians or Spaniards registered to work in London.
What story does this tell? Clearly the number of Poles coming to London to work over the last decade has been significant. This cannot and should not be denied – although note that the chart above does not tell us anything about how many of the people who came have remained, and for how long.
But it also shows a tailing off of new Polish arrivals, and a recent increase in those coming from Italy and Spain. There were just over 17,000 from each country in 2011/12. A decade ago both figures were close to 4,000.
The same caveat, about whether and long these workers will stay, applies to the Spanish and Italian numbers as much it does to the Polish. But with Spain’s unemployment rate currently at 26%, and youth unemployment rate at a barely credible 56%, it’s not hard to draw some speculative conclusions about the forces behind these numbers.
There’s stuff to ponder about here for the thoughtful citizen. Like why some people seem more welcome than others.
The full data set including year by year, borough by borough, nationality by nationality breakdowns based on the number of people gaining National Insurance numbers and giving a London address, can be perused at the london.gov website.
08 Feb 2013
Analyse this: why is the idea of a cat cafe so popular with Londoners?
This week, as if 2013 had made a new year’s resolution of itself – the resolution being to be more about cats – came news of a proposed “cat cafe” at which Londoners would be able to buy tea, coffee and cakes, and to hire the services of a pliant mog.
This idea has proved wildly popular. At the time of writing, the cafe’s crowdfunding page has two and a half thousand Facebook Likes and has raised over £5000. Commenters there seem genuinely excited, moved even, by the notion of drinking in a cafe of cats.
Why is this? How can we explain the strength, and the depth, of this collective response? Here are some theories.
1. It’s an extension of the “generation rent” thing
It is, on reflection, entirely understandable that a generation of humans who are compelled to rent their homes by the month and their cars by the hour should think it natural to rent their pets as well. For one thing, as renters, many cannot keep a cat of their own. For another, ownership itself is an increasingly old-fashioned conceit. This is the baby boomers’ cultural bequest to their children: that permanence be for the old, the wealthy, and the dead. Our lives are but sequential experiences, to be paid for by the hour. The cat experience is just another to add to the bucket list.
2. The monetising of cats is the logical end point of our hyper-consumerist society
Renting a cat for pleasure is, when you think about it, a deeply shocking act. A cat cafe is just one well-constructed pussy joke away from being a cat brothel. The cats there being pimped out will cease to be cats. They will become commodities, and their objectification is an inevitable result. The fluffy ones and the purrers will be feted and loved; the scratchers and the scrawners sidelined and shunned. In a world where everything can be bought and sold, rented and loaned, why should cats escape the stroke of the market’s invisible hand?
3. People don’t love the idea of the cat cafe. They love the idea of the idea of the cat cafe
The cafe’s crowdfunding page has 2.5k Facebook Likes, and about 200 funders, who have chipped in anything from £5 for a pat to £130 for a year’s membership. 200 donors is a good number, but set against the thousands of Likes the story has gathered across the sites where it has been aired, one thing is very clear. People may like the idea of a cat cafe, but they like the idea of the idea of a cat cafe a whole lot more. Publically Liking a story about a cat cafe is a way of showing that you are the sort of person who likes the idea of a cat cafe. The popularity of the proposed cafe comes not from the cafe itself, which few of the Likers will ever visit, but in the opportunity it gives them to signal and affirm their preferences to their friends. It is, in that sense, primarily a virtual success.
4. The internet is a feline medium, and this a feline age
The final triumph of cats over dogs is now upon us. The power which the ancient Egyptians recognised in the cats’ sly eyes and prowling movements was supplanted in time by canine usefulness. For three thousand years dogs were just more use to us than cats: dogs guarded the homes of the weak, caught food for the hungry, and comforted the bereft. Cats caught the occasional rat. An unequal contribution. But now we have no need of assistance from the hounds. Now the dogs’ loyalty is boring. What we need is to be surprised and entertained. And so the numinous felines reassert themselves. They have conquered our internet, and are now at the gates of our city itself. There will never be a dog cafe, because the performance of the dogs would be a certain bet. People will pay for a cat cafe precisely because the cats might withold their delights. And the cats know it.
5. Cats are just really cool
Well they are.
04 Jan 2013
If you want to talk meaningfully about London life, the hipsters have to die
“On-trend Generation Ys will love the sprawling loft apartment refurbs, while Archway market is a hub for hipsters at the weekend, with a mix of fashion and organic food.”
There are many things wrong with this sentence from an Evening Standard piece touting London’s up and coming neighbourhoods.
But I want to train my fire on only one part of the monster.
For here is as a good an opportunity as any to demand that we kill the hipster as a character in any genuine conversation about Londoners, where they live and what they do.
People need to understand this: there is no such group of people as “hipsters”. Not really.
The word doesn’t describe living, breathing people. It describes an idea of people. Everyone thinks they know who hipsters are. Everyone can point one out in a lol tumblr meme. But it’s a meme without meaning, because the hipsters don’t exist.
Ask someone you know to name a specific hipster of their acquaintance, to physically tell you the first and last name of an actual real hipster, and they will struggle.
Ask them if they themselves might be a hipster, and they’ll deny it outright.
Hipsters are always other people; strangers abstracted. When they appear as the subject of a sentence, the real world departs.
So when someone you know starts talking about “hipsters”, remember that they’re talking about fictional characters. And paper-thin characters at that.
If you want to say something funny, cutting or dismissive about people who you think look really cool/like complete twats, then hipster is still as good a word as any.
If you want to say something insightful about the actually existing world, then the hipsters have to die.
19 Dec 2012
Chart: The number of people getting so drunk in London they need an ambulance is increasing
The Standard’s best writer (Brian Sewell, naturally, excepted) is Richard Godwin. He has a note in his column this week suggesting that younger people are binge drinking (you may prefer the term “getting absolutely wankered”) less.
“The disturbing scenes in London’s theme bars this Christmas party season might suggest otherwise but binge drinking looks to be in long-term decline. Out of a group of 16- to 24-year-old women surveyed by the Department of Health in 2010, 17 per cent confessed to drinking more than six units on their heaviest drinking day, compared with 27 per cent five years before.”
But a glance at the above graph shows that the number of people getting absolutely wankered in London, as measured by the number of people so wankered an ambulance is called to sort them out, is rising.
The data is available via the GLA’s London Dashboard. Here’s a breakdown:
“The highest number of binge drinkers seen by the London Ambulance Service since December 2009 (when the data was first collected) was 3,012 in August 2012. The number of cases in the most recent quarter (Aug-Oct) was 18% higher than the same quarter last year.”
In London, the number of people getting absolutely wankered is not falling. It’s increasing. I’ve yet to see a compelling explanation of why.
14 Dec 2012
"The mundane illuminated". We grab a minute with Melissa Dunne, artistic director of Papercut Theatre
I want people who see my work to see something mundane and everyday illuminated in a way they hadn’t thought possible.
I was drawn to theatre because it is a very enabling art form. Also because it is very truthful, there’s no special effects to hide behind – especially in fringe theatre.
The best thing about my job is watching a germ of an idea grow and watching talented artists collaborating to make it happen.
The work that inspires me is anything by Katie Mitchell. Also Lars Von Trier though I wouldn’t want to have a cup of tea with him.
The best advice I ever got was that you’re never entitled to anything. That was said by Declan Donellan which made me very humble.
The best advice I can give is if you have a good idea trust it.
The thing I love most about theatre in London is how people are more willing to help emerging artists than you’d think. People are sometimes limited by lack of funding or ambition but I can’t really blame them for that.
What I really want to do next is make my short film.
See also:
Gavin grabs a minute with artist Roger Kite at his new exhibition in Bethnal Green.
28 Nov 2012
Previewing the next decade in London housing: the landlords are winning
Here’s Property Wire’s breakdown of this (PDF) report forecasting no improvement in London’s housing situation over the next decade.
“The UK government forecasts a rise in household numbers in London of between 34,000 and 38,000 annually up to 2028, however, based on development levels over the last 10 years, an optimistic estimate of the number of homes which will actually be delivered each year is 21,000”
The report was commissioned by Cluttons, a property consultant. Bear in mind they’ve got a reason for doing that.
But this government chart quoted in the report is useful. Fewer new homes for the private market are being built than was the case four or five years ago. Building of new social homes remains at a steady, low level.
In other words, demand is predicted to outstrip supply. And we know what that means.
Conclusion: the landlords are winning.
See also:
Walthamstow dog track to become new flats
The call goes out for lower rents in London. Chance of that happening, slim
Some extremely disheartening facts about housing in London
08 Nov 2012
Snipe Highlights
Some popular articles from past years
- The five spookiest abandoned London hospitals
- Only 16 commuters touch in to Emirates Air Line, figures reveal
- The best church names in London, and where they come from
- An interview with Desiree Akhavan
- Punk brewery just as sexist and homophobic as the industry they rail against
- Silencing the Brick Lane curry touts could be fatal for the city's self-esteem
- Diary of the shy Londoner
- London has chosen its mayor, but why can’t it choose its own media?
- Margaret Thatcher statue rejected by public
- Nice Interactive timeline lets you follow Londoners' historic fight against racism
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