I just loved this. As a 67 year old exile in France, but former member of the Metropolitan elite I am sick to the back teeth of my former neighbors in London, telling me how I wouldn’t recognize London and how there are just too many foreigners. Or alternatively, banging on about how young people today have no manners bla bla bla. I shall be emailing them your glorious article.
I have a badly thought through theory about kindnesses being partly about whether we are open to seeing them. I feel it more particularly now, using a wheelchair. Yes, London is faster, so seems more impolite (I remember being struck by the lack of words in a Greggs transaction c.2003, compared to Liverpool where I lived at the time - found it really interesting). But I was also struck by (c.2016 when my mobility was plummeting and I was struggling on a London buses and tubes with a big bag and wobbling using a stick) how the businesslike kindness of people helping me - with a seat, or bag wrangling. No chat, no smiling, just help. Oddly, if we are taking anecdote as data, it was predominantly young black women.
Yes indeed. Sick to death of the advice on policy from Fraser Nelson, Melanie Phillips, Juliet Samuel, Robert Colvile etc. This mess is your Conservative mess guys
I immediately thought of a text I used to teach students as part of a module on the Metropolis. It‘s by George Simmel, ´The Metropolis and Mental Life‘. Coming from a small town in Germany he found London destabilising, the people insulated from each other, disengaged. The book was written in 1903. Thus on one level the experience of the big city for those unused to it hasńt changed. However, the conditions of life now in the UK are so debilitating that I wonder what the future holds for so many. Some of us keep hoping for a poll taxˋ moment. I fear that people are so demoralised that they have lost the impetus to react, or act! Picketty warns that social violence follows the enduring conditions that working people are being oppressed by. But wonders how that might occur. Yesterday was Bastille Day here in France. Sadly reports suggest the French people are increasingly resigned to social conditions that Macron has created for his citizens since 2017.
I lived in London in the 70s and found it quite a lonely place, having moved from a village in Dorset but, on a couple of occasions when I needed help, it came from total strangers. London is a great city, and although I’m now retired and living by the sea in West Sussex, I miss the place.
I suspect Timothy might catch relatively more opprobrium if he spent equal time wandering around Erdington (or, as a fairer comparison, DIgbeth Bus Station).
He might then come to appreciate Londoners' high tolerance of outstandingly condescending planks.
When you read the tweet it's very obvious to me that his wife very obviously did something rude first.
My guess is they pushed in front of someone who was waiting ahead of them and he's either ignored it to promote his narrative or even more likely they were so self absorbed they didn't even realise.
A rude person barges their way on ahead. An indignant person who has just been queue jumped barges past while tells rude people to have some manners or whatever it was.
One of the things I've really learned since I started confronting rude behaviour like talking in the quiet carriage/cinema/playing music out loud on a train etc is that the vast majority of the time rude people in public are just self absorbed and have no real conception other people are around them and they just need to have their bubble burst and they apologise and look embarrassed.
Big cities create greater opportunities for rudeness. But also for kindness and random connections of good nature.
As for change, no where stays the same, my parents village is now a small town, with incomers regarded with some suspicion; just as my parents were when they first moved there.
The problem with fustian Conservatives, unlike those magnificent Victorian ones, is that they always think they are worthy of conservation while those who succeed them are not.
I just loved this. As a 67 year old exile in France, but former member of the Metropolitan elite I am sick to the back teeth of my former neighbors in London, telling me how I wouldn’t recognize London and how there are just too many foreigners. Or alternatively, banging on about how young people today have no manners bla bla bla. I shall be emailing them your glorious article.
Great piece Jonn. I think there will be many more opportunities of the type Mr T has provided you with in the months leading up to next May.
I have a badly thought through theory about kindnesses being partly about whether we are open to seeing them. I feel it more particularly now, using a wheelchair. Yes, London is faster, so seems more impolite (I remember being struck by the lack of words in a Greggs transaction c.2003, compared to Liverpool where I lived at the time - found it really interesting). But I was also struck by (c.2016 when my mobility was plummeting and I was struggling on a London buses and tubes with a big bag and wobbling using a stick) how the businesslike kindness of people helping me - with a seat, or bag wrangling. No chat, no smiling, just help. Oddly, if we are taking anecdote as data, it was predominantly young black women.
Yes indeed. Sick to death of the advice on policy from Fraser Nelson, Melanie Phillips, Juliet Samuel, Robert Colvile etc. This mess is your Conservative mess guys
Couldn't agree more, though you don't mention James Forsyth – he makes the others you cite look both interesting *and* sane...
Oh I agree. Forsyth is a good example of ‘the party in the media’ to use a Tim Bale term. Harry Cole is another
I have met both. The worst, truly.
The perpetrator probably recognised Timothy. We’d all be tempted tbh.
Great article!
I immediately thought of a text I used to teach students as part of a module on the Metropolis. It‘s by George Simmel, ´The Metropolis and Mental Life‘. Coming from a small town in Germany he found London destabilising, the people insulated from each other, disengaged. The book was written in 1903. Thus on one level the experience of the big city for those unused to it hasńt changed. However, the conditions of life now in the UK are so debilitating that I wonder what the future holds for so many. Some of us keep hoping for a poll taxˋ moment. I fear that people are so demoralised that they have lost the impetus to react, or act! Picketty warns that social violence follows the enduring conditions that working people are being oppressed by. But wonders how that might occur. Yesterday was Bastille Day here in France. Sadly reports suggest the French people are increasingly resigned to social conditions that Macron has created for his citizens since 2017.
I lived in London in the 70s and found it quite a lonely place, having moved from a village in Dorset but, on a couple of occasions when I needed help, it came from total strangers. London is a great city, and although I’m now retired and living by the sea in West Sussex, I miss the place.
I suspect Timothy might catch relatively more opprobrium if he spent equal time wandering around Erdington (or, as a fairer comparison, DIgbeth Bus Station).
He might then come to appreciate Londoners' high tolerance of outstandingly condescending planks.
When you read the tweet it's very obvious to me that his wife very obviously did something rude first.
My guess is they pushed in front of someone who was waiting ahead of them and he's either ignored it to promote his narrative or even more likely they were so self absorbed they didn't even realise.
A rude person barges their way on ahead. An indignant person who has just been queue jumped barges past while tells rude people to have some manners or whatever it was.
One of the things I've really learned since I started confronting rude behaviour like talking in the quiet carriage/cinema/playing music out loud on a train etc is that the vast majority of the time rude people in public are just self absorbed and have no real conception other people are around them and they just need to have their bubble burst and they apologise and look embarrassed.
London is what you make of it. Rude people attract rudeness.
Spot on, Jonn.
Big cities create greater opportunities for rudeness. But also for kindness and random connections of good nature.
As for change, no where stays the same, my parents village is now a small town, with incomers regarded with some suspicion; just as my parents were when they first moved there.
The problem with fustian Conservatives, unlike those magnificent Victorian ones, is that they always think they are worthy of conservation while those who succeed them are not.
Excellent piece, unsurprisingly!
Jonn, do you know about the Hydrogen Bomb vs Coughing Baby meme?
Good one, John.