It’s an interesting thing to return to a city you
grew up in and lived and worked in as a young man, a town
you knew like the back of your hand but left 30 years ago
and hardly ever been back.
Arriving at Heathrow and driving into London along the M4
in the bleak and chilly pre-Spring they call April it really
didn’t look any different from the early 70’s.
The elevated freeway gives the same vistas of a low-rise town
with outskirts made up of interminably drab semi-detached
terraced houses. Probably worth half a million quid by now.
Which is to say, some things just haven’t changed a
bit. In other ways, it’s a different world.
The streets and layout are more or less as they were. But
if the town is much the same, the people are not. They seem
more Americanised than they were, or at least globalised,
which in many ways is the same thing. It seems that at last
the English have managed to overcome the stifling bounds of
their class system. Back then you were judged and despised
by someone, whatever your supposed station in life, the second
you opened your mouth. Now it really doesn’t matter
any more. You can even speak posh and it’s OK. Today
it’s a branded meritocracy and I reckon that’s
an improvement, so far as it goes.
Blairite Britain seems to be in a terminal stage. Everyone’s
fed up with him and wants him to go, but no one likes Brown,
his anointed successor-in waiting (and waiting....) and the
Tories remain a bad joke. No wonder the NPC, the neo-Nazis
gone respectable, are picking up protest votes. Of course
London isn’t Britain, in fact it’s another country.
The country as a whole is supposed to be prospering and I
guess it would have to be to afford the high price of every
breath you take.
I’m not sure how the poor get by in today’s Britain.
I doubt this apparent prosperity is soundly based. Too much
of it is tied up in inflated property prices and there is
a curious and non-productive spin on almost everything.
Nothing really gets handled, more and more people get hired
to administer wishful thinking. You’ve only just got
to cast your eye over the pages and pages of want ads for
local government in The Guardian to see that. I don’t
think it can go on much longer.
City of Thieves
It’s still a larcenous city, alright. We got our passports,
cash and airtickets nicked right out the room safe in The
Halkin, one of Christina Ong’s faded 5-star but poncy
hostelries in Belgravia. We had a nightmare time getting
our passports replaced and, if that wasn’t hard enough,
we were treated like criminals by the Americans getting our
visas re-issued. You try getting all that done in a week over
Easter, it’s no fun I can tell you. The police said
it was almost certainly an inside job and “investigated”
for a week before closing the case. The nice DC on the case
shared that they never really caught anyone, but would we
like some counselling? The hotel couldn’t have cared
less and didn’t lift a finger for us.
So nice as it was to visit the old smoke in some ways we were
more than ready, documents restored and persona grata, to
fly into warmer climes and opaque haze that is Los Angeles.
LA Mayday or Primero de Mayo
In most countries May 1st or May Day has long been associated
with organised labour, if not socialism. In the US, where
the radical Left has always been marginal and nowadays even
the word Liberal is perjorative, organised labour is now a
shadow of its former self. Except that is, where it applies
to Hispanics. This May 1st over 1 million people marched in
cities all over the US. It was billed as a “Day without
Immigrants” and designed to show the US Congress, currently
considering enacting laws to solve the “immigrant problem”
and Americans as a whole, that like it or not they and their
economy cannot do without their brown brothers to the South.
And it’s true, any fool can see that.
In this day and age who else in America is going to do all
the shit jobs for less than the legal minimum wage? Who’s
going to pick the fruit, mow the lawn, tend American children,
wait at tables and do the dishes? You try living on $300 a
week
in the US today and see how you like it. Things are getting
tougher, not easier. And yet millions more Latinos
want to try their luck in America. Why on earth would they
want to do such a thing?
Not the Reconquista
If almost half a million people marched in Los Angeles this
May Day it was a remarkably peaceable affair. The flags the
marchers and their children waved were “Old Glories”
(albeit made in China), not Mexico’s. The Loony Left,
anarchists and Che lookalikes, bent on the demographic reconquest
of the American South West were nowhere to be seen. No, what
the marchers wanted, if they were illegal, was the chance
to work hard and become Americans. If they were already legit,
they wanted some respect. In fact most Latinos are no more
and no less than good Republicans-in-waiting. The rednecks,
anti-immigrant vigilante groups, general bigots-at-large and
sundry talk-show hosts really have very little to fear. These
are not people who want a free ride and are going to sponge
off an ever-decreasing pool of welfare dollars funded by taxpayers
in increasing revolt. All they want to do is work and make
a decent life for themselves and their families. What’s
more, once enfranchised, most of them would vote to send any
bludging compadres right back to where they came from. These
people want to be Americans, by which they mean citizens of
the USA. The last thing any of them want is to be re-absorbed
into Greater Mexico.
Where is Everybody....?
If the May Day marches around the US were a success in some
respects, bringing home to Congress the insanity of building
and policing a 700-mile fence along the Mexican border, deporting
the people prepared to take out your trash and generally pissing
off over 43 million Hispanic voters, in certain parts of LA
the march was barely noticed. In fact a lot of Angelenos,
who seldom if ever go East of La Brea, couldn’t quite
work out why the roads and freeways were so clear of traffic.
Your average Beverly Hills Prada-carrying, Dolce & Gabbana-clad
matron wouldn’t have noticed much of anything either,
unless that is her housekeeper had called in sick. Nor would
the men and women-who-lunch have noticed anything unusual,
unless they’d booked at Chaya Brasserie, to find it
closed for the day as the Mexican staff were out marching.
In which case they had only to cross the road to The Ivy and
be waited upon by aspiring young actors. This is a part of
town into accessories, not pro-immigrant rallies.
I Am Woman......
But this is a fun town. You never know quite who is going
to pop up looking like a million dollars after decades in
obscurity, and younger than they did 35 years ago. Do you
remember that nice looking but quite plain adenoidy-voiced
women’s libbish Ozzie girl who made it big back in the
70’s with anthems like “I am Woman”, “Angie
Baby” and ”Ain’t No Way to Treat a Lady”?
Well, Helen Reddy’s back in town and promoting her memoirs
with a CD billed as the “Definitive Collection”.
I happened to catch sight of an ad in the LA Times promoting
her book and CD signings at a succession of Barnes & Nobles
around the city and nearly fell off my bar stool. Even with
mega airbrushing it’s an amazing transformation. Judge
for yourself.
