Is London broken?


Now that the election dust has settled, the cuts the Liberals promised to suspend are on their way, and the hand-outs to lovers are being handed back. John Ashmore takes a considered look for Peasoup at whether London needs fixing or whether it aint broke so don’t fix it.

 

Election time was high season for purveyors of cant, demagoguery and deception. The Tories’ truism of choice was that Britain was ‘broken’. In fact it’s not just Britain – it’s ‘broken society’, ‘broken politics’, ‘broken families’ - the list is seemingly endless. Indeed, searching www.conservatives.com finds over 300 articles featuring the word ‘broken’.

 

We have been here before, of course. In 1995, another charismatic, youthful and equally shiny soon-to-be Prime Minister invoked ‘the wreckage of our broken society’ to castigate the then Conservative government. Not for nothing did David Cameron say he was ‘the heir to Blair’.

 

But is there more to this particular slogan than partisan guff? And where does London fit into all this?
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5 things to do if you think London is broken and needs fixing:

1. Help David, Gideon & Co. fix London. They may have massaged the figures a little, but you know it was just for emphasis. Sign up to support the London Conservatives and give them the tools to fix London. If you are a tax exile peer, why not give them some extra cash too?

2. Lobby T-May for higher sentences for London’s juvenile killers. Stop all those loony lefties who keep harping on about the rights of the child. You know we don’t want a replication of Doncaster in the capital. Or maybe you are the caring, sharing type? So help London’s delinquent children by clicking here.

3. Campaign for fewer bureaucrats and better pay for frontline workers. You may baulk at neo-liberal ideas about efficiency savings, but you cannot deny that all that extra NHS money has gone to administrators and not nurses.

4. Give up and emigrate. You love London, but you can love it even more offshore, in the same way that Lord Ashcroft and Sean Connery love their countries. How about here? If you can’t bear to emigrate, stay in Britain and move to the Outer Hebrides, it’s a relatively hoodie-free zone apparently.

5. Stop complaining and vote for the local people who can make a difference. Alternatively, put your money where your loud, brash, opinionated mouth is and start your own party. Click here for the form. With any luck, you’ll get more votes than Esther Rantzen. But then again, who wouldn’t.

5 things to do if London aint broke:


1. Click here for a list of the community initiatives that make London great.


2. Report the paper whose flagrant abuse of crime statistics most offends you. The PCC may be toothless, but at least it will get it off your chest.


3. You know that London is doing just fine, but a bit of lively debate doesn’t hurt. You don’t want to be complacent, but you don’t want piss-poor sensationalism either. Get involved in the measured and well-informed debate on www.brokenbritain.org


4. Were you one of the 15.5million people who voted against spending cuts in Britain this year? Let Melanie Phillips know that you are not an irrelevant minority, but the majority. Perhaps you should drop Nick Clegg a line too and remind him and London MP Vince Cable of their pledges to Londoners. That’s the last time you wobble in the ballot box and give a yellow cross.


5. How about some self-congratulatory navel-gazing? Wander round the streets of London and remind yourself of the great and the good who have lived and worked here. Click here for a list of London’s blue plaques. Or make your own here!