A knife wielding schizo-boy cut down six people at random today in North East London. The attacker was car-based and seemed to be modelling his technique on the classic American drive-by, only with a knife rather than a gun. So far, one of the victims has died and the others are critical. Reading through the initial accounts I was struck by this line …
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Chief Superintendent Simon O'Brien said the first victim was a man who was walking to the station to go to work. "He had just left his girlfriend when he was stabbed a couple of times in the back. He thought he had been punched and carried on."
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Chief Superintendent Simon O'Brien said the first victim was a man who was walking to the station to go to work. "He had just left his girlfriend when he was stabbed a couple of times in the back. He thought he had been punched and carried on."
That says so much about life in London. 'Oh, some random stranger has punched me in the back. Never mind I'll just carry on to work. Oh, I'm bleeding, maybe I should do something about it after all.'
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A friend mentioned that someone spat on him from a car a few weeks ago, apparently just because he was wearing a work suit. In hindsight, he should count himself lucky.
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Earlier in the week, a shop keeper was stabbed to death in the same part of London over the theft of a couple of bottles of spirits. Looking over the current 'Christmas Special' issue of the South London Press this week, the only Christmassy elements I have identified involve knife attacks and rapes in the vicinity of seasonal decorations. As a general rule of thumb, we're looking at one particularly nasty knife murder in London every week, in a city where such things were once a novelty. People got cut up, sure enough, but not killed.
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Have I mentioned elsewhere in this blog how much I love what London has become?
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I think I probably have. I'm quite sure because someone commented on one of my anti-Olympic postings earlier on this week. He said that it was sad that someone like me was so negative about the city in which I live; one of the five great cities of the World. He was very polite and tried his very best to counter my point of view without wanting to seem aggressive or judgmental. I respect that and I won't give him too much shit.
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However. He deserves a small pipette full of shit. The implication of the comment seemed to me that I was at fault, not the changes that have overcome my home town.
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First off. He appears to be Manchester-based, which means he doesn’t know what it's like to live in London and isn’t looking forward to paying out hundreds in extra tax to pay for the Olympics.
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Secondly, he suggests that my negative outlook is the result of falling under the malign influence of the Two Ugly Sisters - The Daily Express and The Daily Mail. For those not familiar with these two newspapers they are a) Hysterical and b) So Right Wing that they occasionally feature articles that criticise Hitler and General Franco for being too soft.
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No. I don’t read that dross. Nor do I read the equally deceitful and disgraceful Guardian, so beloved of middle class liberals, either. All newspapers are rubbish and the only time I open one is to look at the TV listings or if I'm working with glue.
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I know London has become a terrible place to live in because I have lived here, on and off, all my life and it has become a terrible place to live in. I don’t need some middle class tosspot journalist of either persuasion to tell me what's going on outside my front door. Actually, what's currently going on outside my front door is that junkies have been shooting up outside my bedroom window for the umpteenth time this month.
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I was listening to a talk radio show a few weeks ago and the topic of conversation was 'Advice to give young American women moving into London'. I think some movie star or another was talking about buying a flat here. The advice form the callers was wide-ranging and featured such sarcastic tips as:
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'Don’t go jogging in Victoria Park'
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'Don’t use public transport in Richmond'
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'Don’t walk along any canals near Kings Cross'
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'Stay at home'
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… in memory of some of the succession of now deceased foreign young women who have seen 'Notting Hill' once too often, moved into London and carried on under the mistaken impression that a very large proportion of this city is not really scary and really dangerous.
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But if the rise in violent crime doesn’t deter the budding Wannabe Cockney, how about some corruption and mismanagement?
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I know the Olympic bid is corrupt and, if successful, destined to become a colossal white elephant because every public project in London in recent years has been a corrupt white elephant. I've watched the Millennium Bridge wobble. I've gazed at the empty Dome and the multi-zillion pound and equally empty tube station that went with it. I've scoffed at the Diana Memorial Fountain and the dozen staff that have had to be employed to stop people breaking their necks on it. I've also helped pay for it all; my property taxes have doubled in six years, it now costs me just under five pounds to travel three stops on the Tube and back, and I now have to pay just under four pounds for the privilege of having someone park outside my front door, etc etc.
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The whole management of The Tube has become particularly surreal. Tube drivers earn £30-35,000 pa (roughly 50-75% more than a nurse or schoolteacher) plus extras and get 52 days holiday a year. They're going on strike over the holiday period. I don’t need to read the Daily Mail to help me make up my mind about what I think about that bunch.
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Nobody in London has been given a chance to vote on whether they want the Olympics here, even though it is being underwritten by us and, unlike the Athens Olympics or the Commonwealth Games in Manchester, the cost is not being spread outside of London. I have yet to speak with a Londoner who wants the Olympics here or believes that it would be a success. Yet, once again, public concerns are ignored.
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My local MP, Kate Hoey, was on television last week talking about the Olympic bid. She's a Labour MP and presumably doesn’t read the Daily Mail or The Daily Express:
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"The inevitable thing over the next six months will be the hype about London's bid and how we're going to win by miles - the inevitability is Paris will win,"
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"Longer term we should host an Olympics sometime but not at the moment because I don't think we are ready.
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"We don't deserve it and Paris does."
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"If we want to regenerate London, regenerate London, but don't wait for 123 IOC members to decide we're going to regenerate it,"
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"I think the Olympics should be the icing on the cake of a wonderful sporting infrastructure in the country. We don't have that yet."
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I love you Kate Hoey.
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