The adventures of Momus in Britain

This past week I've seen otherwise. Why has he fallen so suddenly from grace? Or was I wrong from the outset?

Momus in "unable to recognise Girls Aloud" shocker.

There isn't anything interesting about Momus' dislike of London because he is so certain that he dislikes it. He would write better about what he loves in London. Or what disgusts him about Berlin/Tokyo.

The black BMW driver lecturing the homeless/junkie bloke sounds made up. If not then Momus may want to make sure he didn't unwittingly stumble onto the set of Cliches 'R' Us.

Poor students in Hackney live in shitty flat shocka! "What's the asthetic?" he asks. "What's his point?" I wonder...

I'm tired, but this chat is something we have to do before we can sleep. I try not to cough or seem too self-righteously sober.

These are FRIENDS he's visiting? Right? People putting him up for the night after a tiring journey only to have him tell the world (or the tiny part of it that reads his blog) that their flat is a shithole, they smoke too much, they are inconsiderate boring E-heads? Do they know he has a blog?

I didn't feel safe walking around with my laptop in a bag. The atmosphere didn't feel benign at all, nothing like soft, safe neon nights in Tokyo. Minicab sharks, cars pulling up behind pedestrians. You're in there, protected, and I'm out here, not. I'm just going to have to hope you have a good heart. People in hip hop hooded tops looking hard in kebab shops. It all feels like one of those Streets videos where a bunch of tanked-up British guys end up with blood streaming down their faces. 'Mate, mate, I don't want any trouble, mate.'
But no-one actually said or did anything remotely threatening towards him. Apart from wearing hoodies, obviously.

'Bling bling: fashion designer John Zhao shows off his crystal encrusted iPod'. Britain speaks fluent bling bling. Britain, from top to bottom, embraces the showy materialism
This (along with all the other rants about marketing) from someone who lived in Tokyo? A city that consumes, period.

He's right about the transport all the same...

(Onimo so ridiculously OTM)

Berlin is no doubt a much cleaner and civilised place but then again so is Singapore. The bottom line is that London culture is about a thousand times more vibrant than Berlin's, much as I like that city.

The train station has a sign on a seat that says "No smoking". What do they take us for? Why not say "You're a cunt, aren't you"? (punctuation is correct) The assumption of guilt. But our hosts later tell us that people do smoke. Often. Fuck.

Marketing! Slick! The girls in bikinis don't interest me at all

hahah this is because they're not in sailor schoolgirl uniform right?

Once again, I stifle a yawn and make the same old responses; yes, London (and, ergo, Britain) can be a horribly threatening place much of the time - but you learn to live with it as there are so many good things about it; yes, Tokyo is a fabulous, exciting place and is safe, clean and things work - but it can do your head in in other ways. I know, having lived there a long time, like many others on this board, and like them without the bubble of adulation that Momus is undoubtedly couched in at times when In Japan and Among The Japanese.

Like Onimo said, the inconsistencies in Momus's article are legion, and reflect a hate that was never in doubt, no matter what experience M was to have when returning to the UK. It's like when my Mum would have a go at me when she came home some days, no matter what I did, just because she had to.

NO MORE SNOBBY, SLEF-AGGRANDIZING BLOG POSTS PLS

A white man gets out of the train and comes into the flat to reform them. 'Look at yourself, mate, you've got to stop using the stuff. Clean up your flat, man, have some aesthetic, get out of this state you're in, it's a fucking shame on you, man!' He's a winner, the junkie's a loser. Clean up a flat, have an aesthetic, get a laptop, join the winners.

PEOPLE FART IN GERMANY AND JAPAN TOO, ON TRAINS.

We connected to the Internet. There's a livejournal entry; bloggers pay tribute to other bloggers. There's lots of Momus and lots of n/a. 'nothing like soft, safe neon nights in Tokyo.' Marketing, innit? Some other blogger drifts around, a bit more bloated than I remember him. There are loads of blog comments of people saying how perennially great the blog entry was. No dissenting opinions at all. A lot of applause.

ok i stop now :)

Oh and-
"The bottom line is that London culture is about a thousand times more vibrant than Berlin's, much as I like that city."

now i love london and have no intention of leaving: but unless you're either a. fabulously wealthy, b. in a grime crew on the sly or c. not referring to any sort of independent film, art or club culture, this is mentalism.

That's me to a t, not that I was ever young and cool.

Genius...and the makings of a TV programme: "Momus on the State We Are In."

all of these descriptions need the reader to already agree with you for them to make any sense.

I sometimes wonder if liberals become conservative when they get older as a bitter reaction to the realization that their team has lost; this is often the way I find myself thinking when I'm in full-on "I hate everyone around me" mode.

There would, however, be more shooting.

Sure, but there's undoubtedly a certain thuggish, macho drinking culture prevalant in Britain that isn't so prominent elsewhere. That's not to say people don't get fucked up in Berlin or Prague or Tokyo, but there's definitely a different attitude. The macho drinking culture of the UK has combined with the post Thatcher breakdown in community, where people feel it's ok to be greedy, to get fucked up and screw everyone else, and that's a pretty nasty combination. This sort of atmosphere is ripe for exploitation by big business. The Murdoch press, the Daily Mail and Blair, in his strategy of playing to people's fears and greed, have made this a really odd country, not a particularly nice one at times.
We work the longest hours in Europe, so no wonder when people get home for the weekend all they wanna do is drink and blitz out the boredom and exhaustion of 12 hour shifts in a call centre.
It's very easy to fall into a trap of work, drink, fight and fuck. What else is there to do?
Now, don't get me wrong, I like a drink, but I'm not into the whole macho drink-ten-pints-then-puke-all-over-my-Ben-Sherman-shirt-while-chanting-sectarian-songs. Neither am I into the cod-bohemian squalor of Pete Doherty et al.
It just seems there's something pretty rotten in British society, a poverty of aspirations, a lack of intelligence, a lack of love and tolerance.
Now, I might be the armchair sociologist, and I might be a bit drunk, but I hope I've left you with something to think about. Or not. Most likely not.

Apropos of nothing, this passive aggresive behavious shits me up the wall. If you're in SOMEONE ELSE'S HOME you either put up with their ways, ask politely if smoking (or whatever) can cease, or leave. Gah!

Sorry... sore point with me. Carry on.

Now that's just making a deliberate dig at me. I'll have you know it was a Fred Perry.

When I came back from my first trip to Tokyo in 1992 I couldn't see London the same way again. It looked dingy, backward, cautious, sloppy, ugly, some dark city from a previous century. (I challenge anyone to go to the dense, dynamic cities of Asia and not feel something like that.) Something changed in my biochemistry. I wanted to get out of London. Two years later, I did. I went to Paris. Since then, it's no exaggeration to say that every city I've spent any time in has seemed better than London, closer to my own scale of personal values.

Over my 13 years in London I tried to negotiate some kind of meeting between my values and London's values. It was difficult, because the golden age of New Wave was receding and Thatcherism was the thing. To find values I could live with I hung out at the British Museum, the National Gallery, the ICA, the V&A, the NFT, the French Institute. It was escapism.

Later, I tried a different strategy. I tried to compromise with London's prurience by playing up the pervy sleaze in my work and courting tabloid values. At least I could find some kind of energy in London's sleazy underbelly, its dark side, right? But English people didn't want to recognise themselves in that. I just got stigmatised for being mucky-minded. There was really nothing to do but leave. I came back briefly for 'Cool Britannia' (97-00) and admired the art scene from the fringes. Lots of Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas openings. Tony Blair. It seemed like the tide was finally turning. But the new dawn faded soon enough.

When I lived in other cities, especially New York and Tokyo, I just felt so much more at home. Battles I would have died fighting in London had been won long ago here. It felt great. I became an extravert, an enthusiast, an optimist. People stopped bashing me.

Fair dos, it was a bit disingenious of me to leave that off.

It reminds me of something a friend - now living in Australia - said to me recently. He said that when he tells people in London what a great time he's having in Australia, they just don't believe him, and they don't want to know. London is where it's at, and that's it, is the attitude.

I'd also like to take issue with the following:

The subtext is class. All the things Momus denigrates about Britain - the crassness, the lack of manners, the public drunkenness, the slovenliness, the threat of violence, the tackiness of commerce etc etc - are simply all the things that the upper middle class have down the ages held in contempt about the "lower classes".

This sounds to me like someone middle class talking. Do correct me if I'm wrong in this case, but I have encountered middle class people saying this kind of thing before many, many times. Well, I'm not middle class, unless having a BA immediately disqualifies me - I've studied enough sociology to know that it doesn't necessarily. Let's put it this way, I grew up in the working class and I hate people with no manners, violence, the tackiness of commerce, the utter vacuity of the drinking culture in Britain. What does finding these things unpleasant have to do with class?

Well, this post is biased, because I haven't got time to present a completely balanced view, but I would say that, I have lived Japan and I have lived in Britain, and I prefer living in Britain.

It does strike me, however, that railing against shallow magazine covers, back-slapping award ceremonies, e'd up hosts and farting on trains is rather a waste of energy.

There is shallow commerciality in the UK, ergo this is symptomatic of a lousy society in which Blair is in bed with Murdoch. Come on...

Surely a lot of the things that people decry about contemporary British culture started with Thatcher, right? Why does only Blair get the blame?

Yes, but Thatcher did make the infamous "no such thing as society" speech, she destroyed mining communities just to make a point, she made it easier for late capitalism to fragment society, she encouraged people to think that their home, family and car were all that mattered, she encouraged a climate where greed, ruthless ambition and selfishness was rewarded...
Blair has done very little to challenge that worldview.

Then again, Tokyo is a very commercial city with almost no public sector, yet I don't find it offensive. (Actually, I hate Japanese TV, to be honest. One endless variety comedy chat show stuffed with over-familiar celebs. There, balance!) In the end perhaps it comes down to -- and I know this sounds ultra-poncey -- spiritual values. What does it mean when a shopping centre uses the slogan 'Feed your addiction?' When heroin becomes a basic metaphor for the daily life of citizens?

I can't say I found London all *that* bad but I didnt actually live there - I stayed in the midlands and it wasn't great, but then neither is Dubbo or Rooty Hill RSL, probably.

There's no pop in Berlin?

huh?

huh?

Now, I've never been to the Bronx, or Compton, or West Philadelphia, or Detroit, or Johannesburg, or les banlieues of Paris, or wherever it is that the poor/desperate/drug addled/violent residents of Tokyo hang out, but I refuse to believe that any of these places are less scary than London or Manchester.

Let's not forget that this is HACKNEY* we are talking about, one of London's most deprived boroughs, which also has one with one of its highest crime rates. The fact that it also has the highest concentration of Momus-friendly artist types is beside the point, but is the equivalent area of Berlin or Paris really any safer? I doubt it, but I also doubt its as vibrant culturally as Hackney.

Is both the strength and the flaw of London the fact that it is all so integrated, that you take the rough with the smooth, the ugly with the beautiful? Unlike, say, Paris, where all the central bits are meticulously preserved and beautified and lovely and safe for the casual visitor who never even thinks about venturing into the enormo-ghettoes round the edge of the city where all the immigrants and poor people and other undesirables are shunted.

Of course there's a macho, nasty, violent drinking culture in the UK, especially in some of our medium-sized towns, it precedes Blairism, Thatcherism and all the rest, and EVEN TONY BLAIR AND THE WHOLE OF HIS CABINET ACKNOWLEDGE THIS AND BANG ON INCESSANTLY ABOUT HOW BAD IT IS.

So there you go. Momus and Blair in agreement shocker.

xpost

now i love london and have no intention of leaving: but unless you're either a. fabulously wealthy, b. in a grime crew on the sly or c. not referring to any sort of independent film, art or club culture, this is mentalism.

By which you mean "this statement is completely wrong if you forget about all the vibrant cultural stuff in London".

It's not so much whether it's scary or not as the quality of the scariness. You can get mugged or worse in pretty much any big city, and most of the small ones too. I'm talking about the sense of barely contained aggression, the aggro,the sense that you could get the fuck kicked out of you for absolutely no reason at all. And like I said, I saw this happen right in front of me. (And had it threatened against me myself just for happening to be there.)

A lot of it has to do with class anger, I guess, and of course all societies have some variation on class anger. All I know is that the street toughs I encountered in England gave off a more palpable, physical sense of ferocity than the average redneck or gangsta kid I've encountered in the U.S. Not that there aren't plenty of American biker bars you could go to to get your ass kicked. It's just...it felt different. I don't know how else to describe it. Think A Clockwork Orange -- it's what Burgess was drawing on. (And it might explain why the film was banned in the U.K., it cut too close to the bone all the way around.)

i thought matt's point was that this also happens in the Bronx, or Compton, or West Philadelphia, or Detroit, or Johannesburg, or les banlieues of Paris, or wherever it is that the poor/desperate/drug addled/violent residents of Tokyo hang out

I don't live in London but I go there often and I just don't get this whole aggression thing. I don't hang out in Hackney but I walk all about the city and I don't feel nearly the same aggression that I do on the Paris RER suburban trains, which gangs regularly cruise and girls are often raped without any of the other passengers lifting a finger to help.

But impressions are invariably shaped by where you happen to be and what you happen to experience.

English = Punk, Jungle, Madchester, Grime, etc
French, Dutch, German = ?

Still, this thing about 'cool' menace is bollocks even by the standards of a Momus thread.

I should probably point out that in 25 years of living in London, mostly hanging around some medium-to-dodgy areas, I have never had the shit kicked out of me for no reason at all. I've felt that I *might* have the shit kicked out of me for no reason at all on many an occasion. Maybe its healthy, maybe it keeps me out of the way of potential flashpoints, I don't know.

Its all about perception though, isn't it? You can tell a lot about a country from the quality of its football fans. I remember back in the World Cup, when South Korea beat Italy and hundreds of Koreans, all wearing red, poured onto Regent Street and marched down the road singing. It was a fantastic sight, but my companion at the time was right in saying that if there'd been a similar volume of England fans, there'd have been an air of aggro, even if no one in the crowd had any violent intentions whatsoever. I'm as guilty as anyone of this, and still get a frisson of fear if I'm on the train late at night in the same carriage of Burberry-clad lads who are paying me no mind whatsoever. Snobbery or self-preservation?

(more seriously, Matt DC's point that smaller towns are vastly more hostile is a good one, somewhere like southampton is in my experience vastly more intimidating and overtly violent than peckham.)

England continues to produce interesting music tho, pick what you can out of the Festive 50, throw in all those hot London grime MCs...

England's problems are complex and multi-faceted but much of it boils down to conditioned complacency for me.

Stagnant economy = reason I'm there. Low rents in Berlin will stay low for as long as the city is BROKE. Stay BROKE, Berlin!

Unemployment = lots of people with nothing to do but do graffitti, form bands, etc.

Neo-Nazi parties? Never seen any. I've seen rottweiler-equipped skinheads on London's Commercial Road menacing 2nd gen UK Asians, but I've never seen the Turks in Kreuzberg getting menaced by anyone.

General social discontent? It's true you get public sector demos on the Alexanderplatz, and students protested recently about some downsizing at Berlin University. But the German public sector is still much bigger than the UK one, and university places are FREE, even if you're a foreign student.

i might have taken your point the wrong way, but it seemed to be suggesting that interesting music necessarily comes out of shitty conditions. which can be true, but is far from the whole story. if you only want to listen to the expression of discontent and alienation, then fine,hope you enjoy those vicarious jollies.

well it's the positive coming out of the negative. interesting tho, if the cultural climate was less 'violent' would art suffer? all signs point to maybe.

did you go and help the asian kids?

they just ran the skinheads over in their Previa (just a bit of fun laik)

But isn't Islamophobia just another form of racism? A new strain of the age old Western fear of the Turk? The phobia has more to do with race than religion. That isn't to say people shouldn't be free to criticise Islam or any other religion, but all too often there's a nasty whiff of racism to the attacks (hello Kilroy). Governments need a bogeyman, somebody who represents the other, and Islamic terrorists have slotted into the space left by the "Evil Empire" very nicely.
This is reinforced when the police will arrest North African Muslims on terrorism charges when all they're guilty of is forging documents (ricin is ink remover), or tell us that an attack is "inevitable".

if by this logic it means England would've won the World CUp a couple of times then yes i wholeheartedly agree.

Momus, have you considered the possibility that when you're abroad you are actually less able to determine those people whom you should be afraid of?

It's a serious question, I mean to a certain extent perhaps our fears of "lager louts" etc are based on preconceptions about how people look. I know if I couldn't understand people shouting and they look alot differently to the "lout" equivalent over here I might not be quite so afraid.

I probably feel that way in London to be honest.

I mean I found the original piece a bit ott but not for a second would I deny that that Saturday night atmosphere is just the fucking pits. Even the feeling that someone is going to make a smart comment or something bugs the living hell out of me. Last night I was walking past some guys and one of them bumped into me purposefully and yes, barefaced displays of aggression/power like that are disgusting.

But I presume they happen everywhere.

but this is what the Daily Mail mentality complains about all the time. 'stop apologising for flying the flag!', 'the empire did more good than bad!' etc. they already feel this country in shuffling it's feet quite enough as it is. and they'd be outraged by your suggestions. and that's why you can't live here i suppose...

the Falklands doesn't count?

Well, I'm obviously not articulating it very well, and this is all just anecdotal anthropology. But by 'cool' I don't mean that it's, like, "wow, cool," or James Dean cool or whatever. I just mean there's a different cultural...aesthetic, different ways of expressing a whole range of things, "hardness" or whatever you want to call it being one of them. In my experience (and ymmv, etc.), the expression of hardness/tough guy street menace in the U.K. is more bristly and in your face -- noisy, among other things -- than in the U.S.
But I'll pipe down about it now.

Actually, there is something to that. I think street aggression is a language that both parties (aggressor and victim) have to understand for it to work. I don't entirely understand the grammar of the yakuza look, for instance, so if I see a car in Shinjuku with tinted glass I don't get that little fizz of fear that perhaps a Japanese would. And there's always the 'they only kill their own' thing. Sometimes you just don't fit into the food chain anywhere when you're a foreigner. You don't understand the threats, and there's no trophy for bagging you. (Of course, this only works if you're somewhat uncategorizable. Tourists, for instance, do fit into the food chain. Just like young women do, late at night, just about anywhere, and wherever they come from.)

The black guy chastising the junky was totally not made up, by the way. There are lots of evangelical churches around the Shoreditch High Street, and they were just letting out after their Sunday services, so there were lots of black people, well-to-do black people, the 'black petit bourgeois' as Linton Kwesi Johnson called them, in the mood to give someone a moral lecture and maybe save a soul.

So the black guy was a well-to-do well meaning but ultimately misguided church goer thinking he was doing his bit to help a less fortunate individual (possibly a white one, Momus doesn't think to tell us the colour of the poor lectured junkie, though the colour of the 'petit bougeois' Black Man's Wheels driver is relevant).

What was the reaction of the white cosmopolitan left-wing liberal artiste? To step over the poor cunt and right a blog entry about it.
Whose heart is in the right place?

He's a winner, the junkie's a loser. Clean up a flat, have an aesthetic, get a laptop, join the winners.

Ken C summing up nicely.

Why does Momus appear childlike, instead of decadent, like Wilde?

The junky being lectured was white, like Christmas.

Happy New Year!

Hapy New Year to Momus and To All!

I think the guns have a lot to do with any difference in 'menacing' style. Size and numbers give less security when the target might have a firearm.

these last few months i *have* faintly begun to feel a shift towards an unfamiliar scariness, but i've been under much more emotional stress (re: matters unrelated to where i live), and wd not rest much sociological weight on this

look to the 18th or 19th century: brit urban violence and squalor is v.old news indeed (so is brit urban multiculturalism of course) (ditto ditto london's role as a world centre of trade before all other considerations); i think what's maybe new is a kind of public despair abt how to cope with it, after a long victorian/post-victorian confidence abt being able to achieve some amelioration at least... and perversly enuff what i find dismaying abt blair etc is not their indifference, but rather how so v.often their sincere (over)confidence in their ability to tackle eg PROBLEMATIC YOUTH (or whatever) is directly related to their total unconfidence in (what i consider) the various machineries of popular and/or electoral democracy, and willingness to bypass same

(eg it is very seamlessly top-down: victorian do-gooder liberal you cd say)

(i wz reading yesterday abt anti-alien riots in golden-era elizabethan england: foreign merchants being beaten if not killed)

-- dave q (scrape10...), August 31st, 2001.

I'll be back in London tonight, Berlin Tuesday, and my favourite city, Tokyo, a week on Wednesday. Can't wait!

you clearly didn't understand much of what you saw or heard while living in tokyo (if staying a few months on other people's hospitality can be called "living in" a place). MOST of tokyo is "public sector"- most of japan is. it's so boring to hear oldish, unattractive men go on about japanese people and culture, especially when they doubtless can't speak the language. your references are tired. if you felt safe in tokyo you were clearly living a dull life. mind you, with that eye patch you would have been safe: japanese, as you no doubt know, detest and are terrifired by physical deformity (translation: not my words) and no amount of play-dressing can change that fact.

pull any while you were in tokyo??

New York's fine. Just stay the hell out of Camden.

8.00 pm Down with... 'When a man is tired of London, he is tired with life, for there is in London all that life can afford.' Was Samuel Johnston right? London is often described as one of the world's best cities and dominates the political, economic and cultural life of our nation. But is that position still deserved? Isn't the truth now that London's overcrowding, cost and infrastructure mean it's no longer a good place to live and work? Isn't it now time to re-think the capital's role in the UK?

why are the ethnicities relevant here, in the absence of other detail or comment? and why do i get the uncomfortable feeling that your note about the black kids saving you is meant to "make up" for or balance the gratutitousness of the "hispanic kids" description?

It was 1am, up at Morningside Heights. I had the bright idea to go out to hack into someone's wifi, cos if I can't check my e mail I get antsy. It was up at 110th Street, but I thought I'd be okay if I headed down the side of Central Park a bit. Well, I found an open network, picked up my mail, and was heading back to my apartment in Morningside Heights when these three kids rode up behind. As they passed they said 'Sir, can you lend us $10?' I just laughed and they rode on. Then I saw them conferring and turning their bikes around and coming back. That was bad news for me. I ran up a side street towards some lights, some people on a porch, some black kids. The BMX gang shouted after me 'Sir, we have to talk!' Now, instead of lending them my money, I apparently owed them some and they were debt collectors. But I think they didn't want to tangle with the porch gang, because they gave up the chase. I dodged round a corner, found a late-night grocery and told the guy I was being chased, but he more or less kicked me out with 'I don't want to get involved in any trouble!' So I jumped in a cab and went round the block a couple of times to make sure I wasn't being followed, then went home. Ironically, my apartment was directly opposite the porch kids' doorway. I'd been so disoriented by the chase that I hadn't realised how close to home I was. Anyway, it was scary, and in my two years living in the Lower East Side nothing like that had ever happened. The next day New York had its big power cut and I really couldn't face the idea of going back up to Harlem so I moved in with some friends in the East Village.

People often mention ethnicities or notice them, e.g., "ethnic girls," which has been used to refer to girls who are not white. I think it's disingenuous to pretend not to have noticed by excising references to ethnicity from one's writing. But I think I understand where you're coming from, Amateur(ist). I felt the same way about the reference to Hispanic youth in the Dave Eggers novel. My point is that the narrator sensed that they were different on account of their ethnicity and not mentioning it isn't going to change that.

As you can see from this lurid thing, we enjoy a relatively low crime rate in Morningside Heights.

that is the most pathetic story ever.

I could see mutual unintelligibility working both ways: imagining dangers that aren't there, misinterpreting signs. Comic perhaps.

The Black Kids: "Toodlepip, Sir"

Momus: "Later, Brovaz"

Momus skips off happily into the night, only to be set upon as he rounds next corner by a gang of angry Mongols.

i thought the point of the story was not to carry hundreds of dollars and laptops around with you all of the time.

TEARS OF LAUGHTER

Seriously, who in their right mind wanders out to Central Park at 1AM with a laptop???

more detail - the corner of 110th and Central Park is close to, but is not Morningside Heights. the Heights is up on the hill. the corner in question is down the hill, at least one, maybe two, avenue blocks away (depending on how you define the heights). the corner is sort of a no-man's land at the intersection of harlem to the north and northeast, morningside park (deserted, unsafe at night) to the northwest, morningside heights (yuppie, university area) to the far west, an ill-defined area i'll call bloomingdale (lower-income, immigrant, commercial, housing projects) to the west and southwest, central park west (moderately expensive apartment buildings facing the park, but sparsely populated) to the south, and northern central park (relatively deserted) to the east and southeast.

this corner is not necessarily a high-crime area - momus' map merely places one quadrant of the intersection within a much larger district, extending into harlem, considered to be high crime. if you go a block or two away, you're in morningside heights, which is the big white low-crime area to teh northwest on the map. if you were relying on the map for safety, it would tell you to run into central park or (light pink) morningside park, probably the last thing you want to do. but it is a relatively deserted area, and someone moderately familiar with it would know not to walk around there at night, especially with displayed valuables and especially if you don't know the area well. or, Dan OTM.

I love the way all the scary places you name are ones whitey doesn't live in.

Britain is suffering from an "epidemic" of alcohol-related problems, the Royal College of Physicians has warned.

Extended opening hours are coming into force
The college said there are major problems with drink-fuelled violence and illness throughout the country.

The warning comes a month before new legislation allowing pubs to open 24 hours a day is due to come into effect.

Under the Licensing Act 2004, pubs can seek extended licences from Feb 7, with the new hours starting in November.

Prof Ian Gilmore, the chairman of the college's alcohol committee, said evidence from other countries showed extending opening hours would cause an increase in violence and the number of alcohol-related illnesses.

"We are facing an epidemic of alcohol-related harm in this country," he said.

"And to extend the licensing hours flies in the face of common sense as well as the evidence we have got."

Prof Gilmore said plans to stagger the times people left pubs were an attempt to manage drunkenness rather than prevent it.

He added that the key to tackling the problem was reducing the availability of alcohol and increasing the price.

"I think it is fanciful to think we can turn ourselves into a French-style wine-tippling culture merely by licensing regulations," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

The college's warnings come after one of Britain's top policemen said the move to allow pubs to stay open 24 hours a day needed to be "slowed down" and "given more consideration".

Sir John Stevens, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, said if forces had to "man up" the streets when people left pubs in the early hours, it would take officers away from other duties.

But Richard Caborn, the culture minister, said the plans were part of a flexible approach to drinking that reflected changes in society and would be brought in alongside moves to reduce alcohol consumption.

"It is about dealing with the cause and not just the symptoms," he said.

Ha ha ha ha... I am laughing about too many things in this thread, but in particular I cannot help picturing a young John Cusack wearing an eyepatch and running from a group of nearly identical (Hispanic) 12 year-old paperboys all shouting "TWO! DOLLARS!"

I must say that, just as Momus's Japan is a fantasy postmodern utopia with only a tangential relationship to reality, Momus's London is a fantasy Clockwork Oranage dystopia with only a tangential etc etc. The ultraviolence Momus seems to see in a single day is about what I see in a year. Momus is like some fusty retired colonel in London for a day to see the Chelsea Flower Show. There's so much casual prejudice in that post: "Later, on Hoxton Square, there's a fight between shaven-headed white louts (British people look like Australians in the hot weather)." What the fuck is that supposed to mean?

"You know, sometimes I think the British, Russians and Americans won WW2 because they were simply more brutal than the Nazis. I mean, the Nazis didn't nuke anybody, did they?"

*the traffic is bad
*there are expensive cars
*police sirens blare regularly
*the food is bad
*there's ugly art
*there's both rich and poor areas, buildings, people
*stuff closes early
*there are drug dealers and users
*there are pickpockets
*people can be rude to strangers
*it's hot in the summer
*there's violence
*people drink a lot

... And he's going to New York next??! Someone please hold his hand while he's there. Apart from the food and things closing early, NYC is probably worse in all of those areas. I love it to pieces, but it certainly is, to use his word, brutal. Unless he starts choosing to live in more 'comfortable' areas, which it seems would make sense for him (even though they're also the most boring neighborhoods).

no harder than he on the LDN surely.

still, that's probably just the north for you.

Uh-oh. I appear to have watered the pub's window cleaner. Nick looks up from watching morons v. dorks FITE! on his livejournal about London sucking or not (the answer to this question is of course 'it depends on how much money you've got' and THAT is what sucks) with THE FEAR and worries that we're going to 'get it' if we go outside.

Woman from pub comes outside and asks shouty cockernee man what's wrong; roll on tirade: "I saw this geezer go in and the NEXT THING! The cahnt's done it on PURPOSE! I saw him look at me, straight at me! I'll 'ave 'im" etc whilst up here Nick is going pie-eyed freaking out about getting the shit kicked out of him. I'm trying not to start laughing too hard but point out that no apology will be forthcoming due to overuse of the word CAHNT.

I am looking forward to hearing Nick's version of this in light of telling him that no fucker gets away with calling me that, and indeed, no fucker did. When Ed got home from work he treated it as a logic problem: why would a window cleaner complain that bitterly about getting wet on a hot day?

Revive!

I'm moving back there in a month, and I'm scaaaaaaared...

a) you've got a choice
b) other things in your life are going badly, and you think they would go better elsewhere
c) the city is really overpriced (in other words, the things that are oppressing the people that rob you are oppressing you too -- you're being doubly robbed by the cost of living, and the people who can't hack it, and hack you instead)

A big factor in all this is GINI coefficients.

Ha ha, I like how you put the (hopefully) after older and not wiser, most people do it the other way! Fresh!

I'm now looking forward to a visit to Bill Drummond's pub.

Remember this? Momus just re-posted the link to his blog... on his blog. It's been three years and he's wondering if anything's changed?

Our friends return from the pub, extremely drunk, and sit with us, smoking heavily, demolishing a bottle of red wine. It's, like, 3am. I'm too polite to tell them I don't smoke, and they don't seem to notice. Well, it's their house. The conversation is about drugs. E can't believe I've never taken any. I say it's because drugs tend to make everyone act the same way. E illustrates my theory by alternating aggressive questioning with declarations that I'm his best mate in the entire world. Several times he shakes my hand. We're two Celts who gave substantial chunks of our life to London. Why? The girls sit on the folding bed and speak Japanese. They won't stay long now they've got their MAs. I'm tired, but this chat is something we have to do before we can sleep. I try not to cough or seem too self-righteously sober.

Funny that no-one at the time pointed out that the whole paragraph and memory is self-righteously sober. Anyway, I'm not here to pick faults with a three-year old post on a blog that I like written by someone who on the whole, though I may not always agree, I've always had time for.

How do you think Britain has changed, if it has, over the past three years? Have to say, however much I dislike the place, I can't, nor ever have, identify with Momus' view of Britain as a place of menace and violence. It is a place to shop (maybe it has always been a nation of shoppers; well since the introduction of the motorways at least perhaps).

Still... there's not so much Robbie Williams these days. Got to look on the bright side.

Kumakouji makes a good comment on that blog (as he regulary does):

...sorry, but if you extend that description to the whole of the UK, You really do live in a bubble of centralised Cities and the artworld. Take a step outside it sometime. I remember you saying you found rural Japan "boring", and I find that really sad for someone who claims to be so into ecology. Nature isnt a "theory" to blog about, its there to be enjoyed.

I've also had my suspicions about Momus as travel writer for a few years now since he dismissed Hong Kong - one of my all time favourite places - as something like 'Birmingham pushed onto a small island'.

yeah it's more like leicester

I'm amused at Manchester being mentioned as a locus of violence upthread, I have never seen an ounce of trouble in manchester. Or liverpool. Or london. Maybe I've just been lucky.

Southport, otoh....

weren't there riots in manchester a few years back?

at least joey barton is off the streets

I must have missed them. I don't recall any.

And yes, now we can all sleep safer.

2001, brah.

it was just before i got out there.

don't think there were riots in manchester in 2001. bolton and other places. england can be menacing and violent but i would have thought momus liked that sort of thing, being a flaneur/dandy type.

Momus != Morrissey

Oh aye, there was some kerfuffle in oldham, maybe? Not strictly Manc. I was referring specifically to nights out on the lash in Manchester city centre of which I've had more than a few, and, as yet, no trouble.

A riot, though, is an event with a specific cause, and surely does not equate to the ever-present undercurrent of menace of which people speak. It's not like you'd walk Britain's streets afraid of a riot breaking out. I understand concerns over swaggering, braying groups of lads but I find these, on the whole, ignorable. This is, of course, a personal response. I can understand why people would find them intimidating.

The riots were in Bradford and (I _think_) Oldham.

xxxp

^^^not very pretty i tell thee

I listened to his biggest charting hit and it was like an acid house version of the theme from "May to December". Dubious credibility!!

How do you think Britain has changed, if it has, over the past three years? Have to say, however much I dislike the place, I can't, nor ever have, identify with Momus' view of Britain as a place of menace and violence.

Three years ago, the place did seem to be menacing in some way. On the bus or train to work, there seemed to be a row or a fight once or twice every week, drunk people, who were often very young, aggressive and in your face seemed a common sight. It was all very depressing, and it made me want to emigrate, find somewhere a little less densely populated. It was really a fuck awful time.

Now things seem different, I can't remember the last time I saw a punch-up, not for a year at least. It seems less threatening going out on an evening for some reason, I think people just seem less in your face generally?

The good thing about the way things were back then is that it got me into doing my electrician's qualifications, doing something to make my life better.

I didn't bother reading Momus' piece again, he seems to be a bit repetitive these days.

France has had more social unrest recently than the UK?

Disappointed they didn’t get him a reality TV series where he visits different parts of the UK to get to the soul of the country. John Harris with better dress sense and better ideas.

Did John H go out (and/or marry?) a teenager too? Find the whimsical revisionist nature of this post very strange