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Good grief, which London do you live in? I've lived here for nine years, mostly in Brixton and Bermondsey. > Drug dealing and use Barely visible compared to
by nkoren 9y ago
Good grief, which London do you live in? I've lived here for nine years, mostly in Brixton and Bermondsey.
> Drug dealing and use
Barely visible compared to virtually every other city I've been to
> prostitues loitering
Haven't been a thing in London for a decade, from what people tell me. Certainly never seen it. Evidently that business has moved wholly online.
> homeless people begging
A fraction of what it is in any comparable American city -- but certainly on the rise in recent years due to Tory policies.
> women being catcalled and harassed
This is definitely an actual problem.
> groups of youths congregating
Good grief, how is this even a problem? They're citizens and that's their right. A city which helps young people to congregate is doing its job. More power to them, provided they behave well.
> littering
Yes, that's sometimes a problem. Not so much associated with youth, in my experience: yobs come in all ages.
> Many of these 'pseudo-public spaces' (think Granary
> Square, More London, Canary Wharf) are enormously popular
> with families and businesspeople precisely because they
> have security personnel who do a good job of tackling
> these things.
There's nothing that prevents public servants from doing the same -- except of course that they're underpaid and diminishing in number, thanks to austerity policies. The bargain which is making here is:
1. Reduce taxes / enforcement of taxes on large corporations
2. De-fund and generally decrease the quality of public service
3. Shift the burden of responsibility for providing said services onto said large corporations, who now provide a facsimile of the commons, minus inconvenient concepts like civil rights (right to assemble, speech, etc).
4. Use people's growing discontent with public services to argue for lower taxes. Go back to 1 and repeat.
This is then propped up by a "Broken Britain" narrative like your own, which is, forgive the bluntness, tabloid-fueled bullshit. Despite the the government's diligent efforts to undermine public services, London remains one of the cleanest and cities on the planet, and is certainly doing better than at any point in its history.
- PJDK 9y agoThe world isn't going to hell in a hand basket, but take a stroll past the McDonald's in Brixton of a weekend evening and you will find some drug dealers.
- gilleain 9y agoEvidently not the same parts of London that I see (for the past 40 or so years): > Drug dealing and use Literally every day. There's a man who sits on the next doorstep that I call 'Mr Subtle' as he is continuously 'reading' a newspaper. He has many friends who stop by for a quick chat. Then they smoke drugs that he has sold them. > homeless people begging Every day. Also stealing from Primark, sleeping in tents on the street, pretending to fall in front of traffic, pretending to read maps then asking for change, etc. Certainly different parts of London have different homeless populations, but Camden and central London are not great.
- joosters 9y agoWhat have these issues got to do with public/private spaces? The ownership of the land won't solve drug use, nor will it end homelessness. All that happens is the problem gets pushed elsewhere.
- gilleain 9y agoAgreed that we've drifted off-topic. Private spaces wont solve drug use or homelessness, but it could certainly affect it. It's harder to sleep on the streets if there is nowhere to go.
- nkoren 9y ago> It's harder to sleep on the streets if there is nowhere to go. I'm puzzled by what kind of psyche underlies a statement like this. I'm sorry to frame it in these terms, but honestly it seems... evil to me. Do you not understand that for many people, sleeping on the street is last remaining alternative to death? Take away the ability to sleep on the street, and you are killing people. If that is your intention, there are faster and more humane ways to do it. Or do you believe that that were it not for the myriad comforts of the streets, the homeless would simply go back to paying off their mortgages or at least crashing on friends' sofas? Because if that's what you believe, you're simply wrong. Homelessness is a last resort. (And no, the government services which one ought to be able to avail oneself of are no longer always available. Particularly if you are a working-age male, it is often virtually impossible to prove to a social worker that you are not "voluntarily homeless", which then disqualifies you from receiving help.) I'd like to believe that nobody participating in this discussion is that malicious or that ignorant. If you can show me a third way, I'd genuinely appreciate it.
- djmobley 9y agoI'm not saying London is a hellhole, but all of the issues I mentioned are commonplace, and I will see every item on that list in the course of a typical week. I've lived in various areas, currently a bit further out in Zone 3, which means I should add rampant fly tipping and unlicensed/uninsured/abandoned cars to the list. Eliminating these nuisances from an area is a costly business. It requires round the clock security, extensive CCTV monitoring, constant maintenance and adherence to the "broken windows" philosophy. It is essentially a luxury, which private property owners bestow upon their 'pseudo-public' spaces. The public would be outraged if councils sought the funding, through taxes, to apply the same to truly public spaces.
- 7952 9y agoArguably the biggest social problem to effect public space is massive amounts of car traffic. That causes orders of magnitude more problems than any of the things you mentioned. Our most important public spaces are overrun by cars that mix well with nothing.
- Boothroid 9y agoAchingly left wing. You seem to pick and choose which social problems to acknowledge based on your political agenda.