When you leave this country for a few days, you get the distinct impression that we are stuck in a time warp. We aren’t moving on. This is the feeling I got over the weekend in London.
On the eve of the Royal Wedding, the British capital captures the very essence of modernity or globalisation and all the forces that will shape the next decade.
You get the impression that the place is moving forward, looking to the future with all the chaos of a thriving megalopolis.
And yet on the surface it appears so traditional. Well over two centuries after the French guillotined their king and queen, the Brits are unified this week with street parties and flag waving in an orgy of royalist schmaltz. But it works. Kate Middleton, the exceptionally pretty bride, is everywhere — from huge billboards to the little pictures of her in the back of taxis driven by skinhead cabbies tattooed with the flag of St George. Her face beams out of every magazine pullout. Kate — the darling of middle England — is the new Diana; which wouldn’t be so bad if only she wasn’t marrying Diana’s son.
But you know Britain is changing when you have Prince Charles’ son, future King of England, high-fiving English rapper Dizzie Rascal — son of a Ghanaian single-mother. Can you imagine his father doing that?
Hyde Park is the garden of Babel, hundreds of nationalities hanging out, cheek by jowl on a scorching Easter Sunday. Tiny Hassidic Jewish boys who look as if they have stepped out of 16th century rural Poland, play side by side with equally tiny Arab girls in 12th century Yemeni chic — covered up with the full headscarf. Here they hardly notice each other. In the Middle East they’re killing each other. Context is everything.
Down the road, in the Science Museum — a cathedral celebrating collective human ingenuity — the aisles are jammed with all sorts. There is the typical Northern English machine nerd, in socks and sandals clutching his flask while he marvels at the original Stephenson’s Rocket. It can be easy to forget that there was a time when England made everything. Beside him, an industrious Indian family is taking notes, under the watchful eye of their Sari-wearing, henna-haired granny. And a few feet away, three Chinese children, head to toe in Hollister’s Southern Californian uniform, are marvelling at a replica of Apollo 11.
Outside, the streets are full, the place is teeming with life and you get the sense of full-on urban dynamism as millions of migrants embark on the great human struggle of familial self-improvement.
This is why cities exist. These places are the real theatres of dreams, where thousands of people try to escape the confines of their origins and build a new life. Some succeed extravagantly. For example, London is home to 32 billionaires according to Forbes, and more than half of these are not Londoners. On the other hand, as anyone who has witnessed Irish down and outs in a damp Finsbury Park Tube Station knows, the city can be unforgiving and hostile.
Yet the point remains that the city absorbs all sorts and has been home to millions of Irish people over the years. For example, around six million Britons have an Irish grandfather or grandmother (approximately 10pc of the UK population). The majority of these people live in the Greater London area as well as the traditional Irish cities of Manchester, Liverpool and around the industrial heartland of the West Midlands.
Today, 900,000 ethnic Irish people live in London (12pc of the city’s population). That means close to one million people who were actually born in Ireland live in London. Survey data puts the number of Londoners claiming some Irish blood as much higher. And, of course, the figure for Irish people living in London is rising and rising. Of the 1,000 people a week leaving our country, you can be sure the majority head to London. On the Tube in and around west London, Irish accents are common again. So it was in the 1950s and 1980s, and now again London welcomes the Irish, embraces us and gives many thousands of us a chance.
But this is the nature of cities and this is why cities are the essence of economics. Cities connect people, inspire people, allow people to share ideas and put those ideas to work. This has been the case throughout history. Cities host ideas, become decadent, reinvent themselves and can’t be controlled for long periods. This is why the great Italian merchant cities spawned great art; it is why various purest Jewish sects fled Roman Jerusalem for the desert to escape the decadence of the city, with its moneychangers, fraudsters and prostitutes. It is why punk rock exploded out of London in the late 1970s and Hip Hop out of New York a few years later. Cities are all about pushing the boundaries and the human desire for self-expression among the chaos of millions trying to live their lives and just get on with things.
London, as one of Europe’s finest mega-cities, is a fantastic example of the power of cities where the best brains, the most curious people and the finest human capital converge. Modern politicians understand the importance of cities. Over the past 20 years the authorities have invested enormously in London and it shows. It was a city on the decline 30 years ago with Brixton in flames and racial tensions simmering; today it feels rejuvenated.
Smaller cities like Dublin can learn from London. In fact, Europe’s small cities are in competition with each other not just for tourism but for people and investment. If we create an environment for the best people to come to work here, they will come. To do this we must invest and continue to spend on things that appear ephemeral like culture and the arts. These are not the pursuits of the elite. Look at what happened to Bilbao when it invested in the Guggenheim. The entire brand of the city changed and tourism took off, more than paying back the initial investment. A good arts festival can work wonders for a city — just look at Edinburgh fringe. So too can a one-off sporting event, for example the upcoming UEFA Cup Final at Aviva Stadium. The same goes for the visits of the queen and Obama — these are showcase events, which we should use to rebrand the country.
In short, we must invest in fun. I know this sounds strange in a recession but it is true. The thriving European cities of the future won’t be places of production; they will be places of consumption. Once you throw people together, they will be creative, if you encourage it. We should aim to have more people living between the canals in a city where the open public spaces are lived in and owned by all. This will be the beginning of our regeneration.
While Dublin will never be a London, it will be the dynamo for the next chapter of the Irish economic story. The more open and welcoming it is to all sorts, the better place it will be.
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Isome dont agree with the notion that we should play lapdog to British royal parasices or play lap dog to Obama the cheer leader of Wallstreet. Both are fraudsters here to frund their colonial expeditions and ambitions. Both cheerlead countries which have murdered millions of ordinary people in their pillage around the world. Both are diplomats for two countries which have murdered well over 100 thousand innocent people in Iraq and afghanistan in their Blood for Oil slather.
A few spelling corrections, redone
I somehow don’t agree with the notion that we should play lapdog to British royal parasites or play lap dog to Obama the cheer leader of Wallstreet. Both are fraudsters here to front their colonial expeditions and ambitions. Both cheerlead countries which have murdered millions of ordinary people in their pillage around the world. Both are diplomats for two countries which have murdered well over 100 thousand innocent people in Iraq and afghanistan in their Blood for Oil slather.
David, You ignored the elephant in the London room. Expensive property. And its expensive property in need of a lot of modernising. And while you’re slogging away trying to stay afloat in the ratrace while living in substandard accomodation, there are plenty of people living around you benefitting from welfare cheques paying their rent. Then there’s hotels, expensive hotels because you won’t find a cheap one in London. How much did you pay a night David? London is a glorified ponzi scheme, sucking in people at the bottom from all over the world to prevent the people in the middle… Read more »
Sure aren’t we all having fun in this circus?
Not moving on? Invest in fun? Oh David, David, David! Do you actually read any of your articles? This is not like recovering from the ’80’s – This is different – Fundamentally different! In the last great recession people did not have these serious levels of debt. Furthermore our fiscal controls allowed us to regulate our interest/exchange rates appropriate to our own economic requirements. But in the future these rates will be correct only by coincidence? The rates we will have to live with are those suitable only to the big economies in Europe. Is that really sustainable? Something fundamental… Read more »
I agree with you David – the arts are something that flourishes here in Ireland, despite the poor finance. Ireland has always been associated with music and poetry, and as country, this identity should be developed to its full potential. For years in the UK they didn’t invest in their film industry when they should have, which was a crying shame as they could have become a global alternative center to Hollywood… And that’s what Ireland could become, if the investment is placed in that area. It would be magnificent to celebrate the artistic creativity of Ireland, rather than the… Read more »
I so envy the English. They get to live in London and have a Royal family. Why cant we have a royal family too. Just a little one.
Im convinced David had a few drinks in him when he wrote this article. You cant sell the British Roylas to the Irish after Oliver Cromwell-Drogheda eight hendred years of British occupation & exploitation, evictions and the Famine.
I’m with David 100%. London is dirty, outrageously expensive(that said you can get a room in a flatshare in Canning town for £300) and I love it I’m lucky that the skills I have are even more in demand during a recession that before so cost has fortunately not been an issue. In addition to schools, health etc a Government has to make their city worth living in to attract interesting,smart,innovative, entrepreneurish types. Relaxing licensing laws to allow little hole in wall bars. Build things people want to come see. I could come home tomorrow and likely get a job… Read more »
Why do we Irish always have to look to others to gain a perspective on what we should be doing. The British are more broke than the Irish. But there is one major difference between the British and the Irish. We are door mats and the British are boots well used to stomping about. The Irish politicians are a bunch of useless fools with no back bone. The Irish made one serious mistake in the election and that was voting in a manner that did not expunge FF completely sending a very clear message to the EU and voting like… Read more »
“the Brits are unified this week”
Not really, many of us are sick of the whole thing, if I did’t have to work Saturday, I would leave the country for the weekend.
So it was in the 1950s and 1980s, and now again London welcomes the Irish, embraces us and gives many thousands of us a chance. …rubbing eyes, reading it again… Personally, I give a flying fuck about media celebrated elitist weddings or visitations of the worlds VIP’s cheering to a bunch of flag waving idiots. As soon as a picture or headline on this or simlar BS appears….ZAP!… off ya go…. The same like with these utterly penetrant church bells that are inevitably broadcasted before every evenings RTE’s 6.1 spin doctor show. The church bells video clips showing what a… Read more »
Good evening sorry if i cause offence but there is a lot of meandering waffle in the comments.
Speak a lot to my pals in UK from different social backgrounds. They say the economic news is now a small part of their lives. It has become our lives.
David: As you describe so eloquently, London is the Fun capital of the world. For those who complain about it being expensive, you get what you pay for. If you do a bit of research, after you have paid for your accommodation, you can enjoy the buzz of the place for a very reasonable outlay. I am surprised at the anti-brit resentment expressed in some of the comments above. London welcomes all nations and is tolerant of all national eccentricities, so long as they don’t scare the horses. If its detractors have any respect for civilisation, they should come to… Read more »
Pinch
I had to pinch myself reading this article because all the time I thought I must have been reading one of Michael Palins travel adventures.I am still numb that this was an economic story.
Has familiarity bred contempt in me or am I just ‘thinking’ .
Just saw a programme on RTE about an investment banker Geraint Anderson who worked in the City in London. God, what a loathsome, nasty, unscrupulous, corrupt bunch of men. What a revolting world they live in.
David, were you really part of that?
London has always had a veneer which looked much better than the underlying reality. I reckon that London’s future, and indeed Britain’s are over-rated in the article. Of course, I do not expect the Irish media to ever state this. In fact I expect them to conveniently ignore it. Afterall we are reliant on the UK economy for trade, and any hard look at the sisution might damage consumer confidence. Beneath the show, the underlying set of national accounts for GB Plc might be as bad as anything we got here. Bear in mind the fact that there are a… Read more »
Deutsche Bank reported 2nd best Quarter Result…. IN THE ENTIRE HISTORY of the Bank. From January to March they made 2.1 Billion Euro Profit.
Yeah fun is good, too often the Irish have misassociated the term with booze or visiting the boozer. Perhaps ‘how to have good fun’ should be made part of the curriculum in Irish schools. Fun means different things for different people, for example, last week I caught Beckett in The Focus, ‘birth was the death of him’…mmm; ideally it should be found in large part in your job. Crap tv, architecture, culture, poverty, injustice take the fun out of life. How’s about a tv series with Dermot Gavin visiting Irish towns, setting their history, stories, genealogical and otherwise, tidy towns,… Read more »
Morning all, There is a bit of confusion over the article. The observations were not supposed to say London is fantastic and without fault, nor that the Brit Royal Wedding is something we should care about, but to say that cities matter and in Dublin, we have a city capable of a lot more than possibly it has achieved. Openness and tolerance foster creativity. For example, the State could do worse than turning the Central Bank building on Dame Street into free office space for startups. This is the sort of thinking I mean. Having spent nearly a decade in… Read more »
Of course London is booming – they produce paper obligations that we all accept for some reason and even when the paper they produce has a net negative return the periphery will pony up.
Its a great deal this finance business.
Maybe the South Mall should attract some Venetian bankers – just for the crack like.
Dublin is a poor man’s Liverpool ( without a premiership team). More people out of work in the 26 counties than Scotland , Wales and NI COMBINED.Who will finance a united Ireland ?
Archimedes sur La Pom
The weight of the Sunshine is directly related to the weight of the displaced contributions to this blogg today.
I actually reckon it would be smarter to think about the German vesion of what a city should be and not the British version. Or think about the Canadian way of thinking about this. One capital for politics, one for port business/transport, one for finance, one for technology, one for oil, etc.. I mean one city, one industry, and competing on a world class basis. It produces far better regional development, less congestion, a better cost base, and far more clarity with regard to what the objectives are of policy in a city. And it gets everybody in the city… Read more »
The resentment demonstrated by the Irish towards Britain intigues me, as in many areas of Irish society, we do our utmost to replicate them! West Brit accents, policy models, double barrell surnames, RTE using typically BBC studio set and introductory music… There is some amount of trash written about the forth-coming visit of the Queen. If we want to act like children and play silly-buggers, that’s fine; but let their be no doubt, that childishness will be noted. Harping on about injustices in the past will get us nowhere. Just look at the never ending misery in the middle east,… Read more »
Best city for me in terms of design, modernity and livability is Barcelona. Gaudi architecture, decent metro and public transport, olympic village etc etc. You can live on the 4 th floor, kids go to school on the ground floor, shops only a couple of blocks away for a nice walk, or in your own block. And this is in Spain! But the reality of London? You cannot live in it unless you are rich. It is a shopping center and a centre for bureacracy and banks. It is kept alive by the banking industry and by the attitude of… Read more »
London is just like other big cities , A dump Ever take the tube into the city from Heathrow going through Osterley ,South ealing, Chiswick Park , and you will see the ” beauty ” of London. Ever drive through it and get stuck in a traffic jam at 12 o clock at night , Use the central line in the underground during the summer and get the smell and the heat ? Go around a lot of telephone boxes in certain areas and you cant see out the windows As for getting ripped off in every shop in the… Read more »
Well, I imagine very soon there will be article on the following – the nw ECB Head. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/germany-to-endorse-italys-draghi-as-ecb-head-wsj-2011-04-28 It is being assumed that Merkel will support one of Berlosconi’s thugs for the job. This clown was also in G-Sucks at one stage. They are the Mafia of international finance, if you need to know. Inside Germany, there must be massive misgivings about all of this. No doubt, the left leaning media will be particularly concerned, about Berlosconi and Sarkozy influencing matters before Merkel got an opinion. I think the reaction in the Netherlands will be even more interesing, given that… Read more »
David says “Smaller cities like Dublin can learn from London”. The best thing that Dublin could have done was learn from London’s mistakes, but instead it just repeated them. Dublin copied the same (lack of) urban planning that had turned most of South East England into a vast sprawling suburb of London. The greater Dublin area is now proportionaly even bigger (for a much smaller city) and stretches from Louth to Westmeath to Carlow and beyond. When the property market in Dublin started to heat up in the 1990’s, Dublin could have learnt from how the London prices had collapsed… Read more »
The last time that I lived in London, the rock n roll prime minister Tony Blair – who had been a singer in a rock band – was posing in front of the cameras playing a guitar and was inviting Oasis to Downing Street. I mean, hey, how cool is that! His predecessor John Major had given a speech about how London was seen as “the coolest city on the planet”, and Brit Poppers Blur were putting on a phoney cheeky cockney act. That’s all the proof you needed that the whole Cool Britannia image was a joke, and London… Read more »
While there are a lot of things that are negative about London, one good thing about it is the diversity of the people there. It’s not just the ethnic diversity, it’s also the wide range of people’s opinions and world views and the way that many people are not afraid of independent thought. I didn’t appreciate that until I moved back from England to Ireland, where there seemed to be a concensus amongst the Irish about a lot of things. The main examples of this were the belief that everyone had to own at least one home and the smugness… Read more »
The great thing about London is its positive attitude. It helped the city survive the Blitz, Canary Wharf and 7/11. This meant that the ripples from these terrible events were soon absorbed by People’s optimism and belief in individual freedom.
Cool Britannia dates from long before Major and Blair. Remember Abbey Road and Carnaby Street?
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, but FF sold Ireland’s birthright for a mess of pottage. —Who’s the souper now?
Did Quinn Insurance employ any actuaries or anybody who passed junior cert maths ? Incredible incompetence
The Brits have the population base to support their housing market, Ireland didn’t.
in the 90s and early 2000s dublin was one of the most happening cities in europe, it was open fun and in expensive, nightclubs were allowed to stay open later. It attracted the stag and hen parties in their droves. But rather than trying to accomodate this with extra policing and street cleaning at night as you see in other european cities, we restricted nightclub opening hours and refused to take on the publican cartel. The result is that dublin is avoided because it is too expensive and not much fun anymore
http://www.presseurop.eu/en/content/news-brief-cover/624921-portuguese-will-learn-live-imf
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2011/04/29/556491/eu-probing-cds-market-for-collusion-full-statement/
http://www.businessinsider.com/eurozone-inflation-april-2011-4?utm_source=twbutton&utm_medium=social&utm_term=&utm_content=&utm_campaign=moneygame
http://namawinelake.wordpress.com/2011/04/29/isn%E2%80%99t-it-time-the-ntma-started-buying-irish-bonds/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1381387/Banks-misleading-public-lending-warns-Vince-Cable.html
FYI Folks.
Resurgence
After today the renewal of the word ‘Royal’ will soon predominate in the business world :
Royal Baking Powder
Royal Black Pudding
Royal Cinema
Royal Odlums Flour
Royal Garda Forces
Royal Dublin Society
Royal Mail
Royal Bank of Ireland
Royal Musical Society
Chartered Irish Bank
Chartered Accountants
etc
France lost its monarchy and today it has two principle blue blooded families who vie for recognition :
House of Bourbon
House of Orleans
Other lessers are :
House of Bonapart
House of Evreux
Capetian Dynasty
In Ireland we have :
Guinness and Bass
@BnB, What you wrote makes absolute sense. I couldn’t agree with you more. “The best thing that Dublin could have done was learn from London’s mistakes, but instead it just repeated them”. We should know how not to do it. Instead Dublin wanted to be the same buzzing city as other European cities. Instead of developing their own identity Dublin wanted to become like other cities which had a much more dynamic and richer history and culture, architecture, etc. But I guess that’s how neighbours live beside each other. You have a big car, I’ll buy a bigger car as… Read more »
Royal Wedding: Aiens landing scenes of crowds saring at screens.
AIB: ca 20 machines are out of order and won’t be repaired… and counting….
The €12 bn own bond buyback by 4 banks; the guarantors; the risk…
http://www.sovereignindependent.com/?p=19191 sum up the Banker McWilliams
One change will fix everything in Ireland. Adapt this as the new Irish National Anthem:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlzrNKN3rZI
FOLLOW THE MONEY Samir Aita, economist and Chairman of Mafohum http://mondediplo.com/2011/04/06money ….Those Arab states that have erupted this year — and others that may follow — want freedom and democracy, but also to end the way their countries have been run for the financial benefit of rulers and their friends ….Government-dependent sources of revenue will have to be dismantled, as will monopolies, to release entrepreneurial energy. There will have to be states that guarantee public and social freedoms for all, so that workers have rights, and the states will have to be accountable, based on social consensus. It isn’t going… Read more »
What a load of oul blather and waffle! You end by saying ‘The more open and welcoming it is to all sorts, the better place it will be’. In case you have not noticed, we have absorbed 1/3 the size of our population and is our country ‘better’? 80,000 plus foreigners are being paid the dole plus other benefits. It was unsustainable from the word go.
Presidential Balls
Finally has the pants been put on led by the Irish Brigade ?
http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/0502/mcaleesem.html
How sweet will the Tulips smell ?
I wonder will the tens of thousands of Polish leave London now for Germany, now that the Germans have opened up their borders to the accession states. Some of them too may leave Ireland now that they can achieve good rates of pay in Germany. This means more downward pressure on Irish Rental Markets and Irish Property Prices, which is good news of course. It also means that Paddy who may be thinking of moving to Germany to find work will be at a major disadvantage now unless he speaks excellent German and has skills which are in demand there.… Read more »
Why are so many people on this noard are still focused on oliver cromwell, the famine, exploitation by the British. Of course they didnt help matters during the famine but we can hardly blame them for all our problems all these yrs on. If you look at who came off better from our Anglo- Irish relationship i think we can all agree it was ireland. The english language for starters, land law and a legal system and governmental structure bettered by none, envied by many. we still benefit with our close relationship with the brits and many of our sons&daughters… Read more »
I read President Mary McAleese told the EU that Reducing Irish Corporation Tax is nonsense. Does that mean she the only Irish political leader with “balls”?
Gold Dinar, Silver Dirham used everyday in Indonesia http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HNuyfMHjIQ