Tag Archives: strikes

What The Tube Map Looks Like During The Strikes

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Can’t get to the office? Can’t get anywhere at all and need to work? Chris Ward has visited coffee shops in London and worked out of each of them in his quest to get ‘out of office’.

Chris Ward is author of no.1 best selling book ‘Out of Office’ How To Live An Awesome Life Without An Office Job!

Chris Ward has visited every single one of these coffee shops, and believes it’s time for a re-think on how the working week is viewed.

Here is an excellent coffee-shop based London tube map

Tube Map

www.workwhereyoulike.com

What do you think?

Thatcherism: The Ideology that Broke Britain.

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margaretthatcher

The passing of Margaret Thatcher, who died on Monday aged 87, isn’t a time for rejoicing – even for those of us on the left, writes Tim Austin.  It’s a time for reflection and action.

While there can be an understandable feeling of jubilation in the communities that suffered horrendous poverty, persecution and unemployment as the result of the policies enacted by Maggie, I feel that celebrating her passing would do far more harm than good.

Quite beyond the crass tastelessness of finding joy the death of a frail old lady with Alzheimer’s (and I honestly believe that we should show compassion, even to our enemies), there is a danger of handing a moral “high ground” to those people who still see her as a saint.  It’d be a Thatcherite tabloid field day:  open season on the “loony left” and the “wet liberal mob”.

As someone who honestly detests the failed ideology of those currently holding the reins, it is not a backlash that I’d welcome – especially if we’re to get this country back on its feet.

So what should our response be?  Should we remain silent, contrite and “well behaved”?

Not quite.

For the right wing media are already playing a game that I find equally distasteful: the attempted deification of the “Iron Lady” and a shameless astro-turfing the social damage she did.  And I don’t think that this should stand.

David Cameron has already come out swinging, harping on about how Thatcher “Saved Britain”, a cry that has been welcomed as some kind of biblical truth by writers at the Daily Mail.

Now, while the country was certainly in a fairly poor state in 1979 and many of her policies (the privatisation of heavy industry and the winding down of the coal pits) were, with hindsight, inevitable, it was her callous disregard of the social consequences that will always stick in my mind.

A little careful planning, an injection of cash into areas set to be decimated, and a longer-term approach to the winding down of those industries, giving time for communities to adjust and survive, would’ve made all the difference.  But her ideology – the ruthless, black and white, survival of the fittest ideal – wouldn’t allow it.  The resultant devastation and social upheaval is still being felt today:  the underclass of benefits dependency, the ghettoised communities, one of Europe’s worst levels of social mobility and a general feeling of desperation in areas that were once hard-working and proud.

The people who live with Thatcher’s ruthless and callous legacy wouldn’t agree that she “Saved Britain” – she certainly didn’t save it for them.

And let’s not forget the further ideology that she introduced: Thatcherism – the creed of greed.

With the wholesale deregulation of the financial sector and the selling off of social housing stock, she created a credit bubble that taught the nation that it was their inalienable right to have whatever they wanted, without consequence.  And rather than recognising that this was unsustainable, as we’ve now painfully discovered, she spurred it on, lauding the rich and promoting an ideal that money, in of itself, was the new measure of wealth.  No longer would wealth be measured by happiness or community or self respect or the care you show to your fellow man – it’d be measured in greed.

After all “There’s no such thing as society”, right?

And even now, after being hit by 3 harsh recessions when boom crashed down into the inevitable bust, it is still this ideal that politicians continue to follow – growth comes from consumption, growth will make you happy, it is your duty to make yourself richer and anyone who tells you otherwise is probably a commie.  I see these sentiments daily in political sound-bites and the right wing media opinion-pieces.  Thatcherism is still very much alive and kicking.

And has it worked?  No.  We’ve now got some of the worst working wages in the developed world, as the more selfish among us follow through on the Thatcherite ideal – profit first, people second, make me rich and that’s all that matters.  We’ve seen the financial services gamble with pension funds and crush entire currencies, throwing tens of millions of honest working people into poverty. And worse, we’ve seen the victimisation of the poor in society as “scroungers” and “cheats”, because clearly they’re just not trying hard enough, are they?

We’ve become a far more cynical, more selfish, more divided and less compassionate nation than we were before the Thatcherite social experiment began.  If our society is “broken”, as the Tories delight in reminding us, it’s because Thatcherism broke it – and more Thatcherism sure ain’t going to fix it!

So maybe now isn’t the time to celebrate in Thatcher’s death but we cannot let her mistakes pass history by.

If you agree with me, make your voices heard.  Take this time to argue the case for a progressive alternative.  Remind everyone who holds Margaret Thatcher up as an icon, that her policies, rhetoric and ideology, while making them and their rich friends vast fortunes, have, ultimately, left this nation a much, much poorer place to live.

Just show a little class while you’re at it, eh?

Londoner’s Life 30 – by Phil Ryan

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London is filling up – it’s official. Day by day it’s a combination of the vaguely improving weather and the tourists. All I can say is I’m seriously trying to avoid Central London most weeks now. I’ll stay out on the periphery. The tubes are becoming pretty unpleasant as well as curiously unreliable. And by that I mean it’s like they’re going to mess Londoners around until the Olympic weeks and then they’ll go for a breakdown free period by throwing our money at the problems in bucket loads. There was a great article in the Evening Standard where some TFL lackey mused about the ‘possibility’ that some customers (we’re not customers we are passengers!) MAY HAVE BEEN overcharged. So now they say they will allow us to check our journeys online and see where we’ve been ripped off. I wonder how many people will be able to backtrack their weekly travels with pinpoint accuracy plus how do you prove you were overcharged? And try to imagine how this will work during the Olympic cattle train period. Hm.

But London is full of other activity right now as to give one example – the foodie season slides into view. You know those events with chefs and foreign food suppliers creating dishes no-one ever cooks at home but wishes they could. And if you ever needed edible proof of a financial divide in our London communities you’ll note the explosion in ‘boutique’ foodie shops that sell only olive oil or cheese happily trading in Kensington and Hampstead whereas Cricklewood and Dalston get a new Lidl. Various food festivals are scheduled for parks and exhibition centres giving a slight lie to the ‘recession’ theory. By that I mean there is of course those who are ‘recession’ free. I think these are the same people who seem to be able to afford the ever insanely spiralling housing costs. Is it me but never a week goes by now where I don’t see huge demolition sites popping up across London all carrying artists drawings of ‘a new selection of fine apartments’. They are cramming these places into every nook and cranny they can. And the average prices all start from £850,000. I noted at least four in town where the starting prices were £1.5 million! Huh? I guess London isn’t doing a badly as I thought. But where is this kind of money coming from? It must be from the same folk who buy wind dried Bolivian Llama cheese with pistachios and vintage pear brandy.

The food styles as ever usher in the latest fads – and the new ‘hookah’ shisha cafes seem to be fitfully springing up everywhere but I get the sense they just won’t last. The food is secondary to the sitting there blowing bubbles out of a table lamp as far as I can see. A new one opened up recently in my area (we already have one) and it just looks tacky and slightly seedy. All the cafés interior lights are red for some odd reason giving the customers the appearance of sitting in the recreation of a womb or a nuclear submarine during an emergency dive. There’s a huge flickering TV that no-one seems to be looking at. And the music is that curious thudding Arabic meets disco style that screams how trendy and cosmopolitan our patrons are. This ignores the fact that they are killing themselves with a highly carcogenic substance as they puff away like beagles on acid. But they are clearly trend setters. On the Edgware Road I understand it as it is officially part of the Gulf States up there. But in most other places it just looks vaguely out of place. And they all seem to have a temporary air. There is something vaguely inevitable about it. I give my new local one about three months. Style eh?

Finally the papers are full of it. It really is strike season in London with a vengeance. Almost every Transport group is faced with demands for more money from its staff (the Olympic effect) plus other obscure groups are now getting in on the act. My favourite group being the Traffic Wardens. These guys (who I personally can’t stand) are I understand badly paid as they gleefully extort money with official sanction from all London councils.

I know they are people and they are only following orders and I know they have targets to hit. BUT. No-one likes them and it’s not just a London thing. And it would be ironic if they went on strike. Because people still wouldn’t like them! Even though, we might get some relief from the extortionate parking charges that are now a staple of every London Borough. The sad fact however is that when the strike ends the Council will just charge motorists even more to make up their losses (see Camden Council the biggest bunch of hypocrites on the planet) Like many London Councils they have a ‘green agenda’. This involves ripping off motorists, lying about it, er that’s it. But hey ho that’s how the cookie crumbles nowadays. And no matter how ludicrous the charges get (I personally pay more for my residents parking permit than I do for my car tax!!!) We have no choice. No car means tons of inconvenience and a loss of personal freedom for thousands of us. But do Londoners get upset. Yes they do. Will it ever change? No.It’s a London thing.