Death Of London

[feed]

20 minutes ago, Errol said:

This isn't my experience at all. London seems mostly empty still in the working week.

Working day maybe different.  Friday night out, busiest i've seen it in a long time.

I go in about once a month, purely social, see how/if it changes.    

Edited February 10, 2022 by feed

[GTM]

4 hours ago, Austin Allegro said:

The last slammers in the UK went out of service in 2005. Long before that in London, I think.

2010 on the Lymington branch line. They refurbished a couple and kept them running until then. 

[GoneDark]

2 hours ago, Errol said:

This isn't my experience at all. London seems mostly empty still in the working week.

I am talking about west and south west. I have no idea in the City, is that where you're talking about?

Selfishly I hope it does go pure hybrid, going to the office is shit.

[With a crooked smile]

Northern line central London this evening 16:45. 

Flying visit for a team meeting at The Comedy Carnival. There's people about but it's early 2000 levels. 

[With a crooked smile]

Train had a reasonable amount of people on it. Ie not uncomfortable. 

Interestingly every seat taken at the Comedy Carnival. 

[Bien Pensant]

11 hours ago, Austin Allegro said:

The old Routemaster buses and the 1938 stock tube carriages went out of service that year as well I think.

Can't say it's been for the better really. At least the Routemasters had windows that opened in hot weather!

I used to love the Routemasters and used them in preference whenever I could so I was really sad to see them retired.

But, a few years after they were mostly withdrawn I eagerly jumped on one of the ones that TfL was running as a 'heritage service' and it was fucking awful - cold, drafty and noisy as fuck, literally like sitting on a tractor.

It seems that nostalgia had clouded my recollection. As fondly as I remembered them, their time had come TBH.

[Bien Pensant]

7 hours ago, feed said:

Working day maybe different.  Friday night out, busiest i've seen it in a long time.

I go in about once a month, purely social, see how/if it changes.    

That would be ironic, if people start working from home and only go into town to socialize.

[eight]

18 hours ago, feed said:

I went in last Friday night.  Essex into Liverpool street.  
Train in was rammed, standing room only.   5pm 
Train out was even more rammed, cramped standing room only.  11pm 
Tube, was rammed.  Although northern line was out of action, so that will have had some effect.

Going in just before Christmas, it was like a ghost town, really weird.
Now, Friday night, apart from the masked, it's almost normal.  
 

They'll all be dead in a fortnight.

[feed]

7 hours ago, Bien Pensant said:

That would be ironic, if people start working from home and only go into town to socialize.

Essex has always been a bit like that; no real nightlife as London has always been easy to get too.
But maybe with the closure of more local venues, the only option becomes going in. 

[Stuey]

1 hour ago, eight said:

They'll all be dead in a fortnight.

Oh. Are they eating your bacon butties? 

[steppensheep]

17 hours ago, feed said:

Working day maybe different.  Friday night out, busiest i've seen it in a long time.

Yeah, I cross London to change trains every couple of months, normally at weekends the tube has been as busy as normal. My thamslink post above was my first midweek crossing. Quite a weird turnaround.

[feed]

20 minutes ago, steppensheep said:

Yeah, I cross London to change trains every couple of months, normally at weekends the tube has been as busy as normal. My thamslink post above was my first midweek crossing. Quite a weird turnaround.

Thinking about it, maybe we shouldn’t be all that surprised. I’m more or less asocial but even I need to get out now and then.

If people are mostly working from home and only interacting remotely or with their family, then that need for a social / recreation outlet is probably higher.  
 

[Errol]

16 hours ago, Bien Pensant said:

That would be ironic, if people start working from home and only go into town to socialize.

This is exactly what is happening.

All the jobs I see being offered now are 100% remote as well. This is the reality of it - whatever the Government is saying. Businesses across London are recruiting on a 100% remote basis.

Edited February 11, 2022 by Errol

[Austin Allegro]

16 hours ago, Bien Pensant said:

I used to love the Routemasters and used them in preference whenever I could so I was really sad to see them retired.

But, a few years after they were mostly withdrawn I eagerly jumped on one of the ones that TfL was running as a 'heritage service' and it was fucking awful - cold, drafty and noisy as fuck, literally like sitting on a tractor.

It seems that nostalgia had clouded my recollection. As fondly as I remembered them, their time had come TBH.

After spending some time in India and travelling around on old British Leyland buses that would have been rejected from the set of 'Mad Max' for looking too smashed up, my idea of comfort may be a bit different!

[Option5]

17 hours ago, Bien Pensant said:

I used to love the Routemasters and used them in preference whenever I could so I was really sad to see them retired.

But, a few years after they were mostly withdrawn I eagerly jumped on one of the ones that TfL was running as a 'heritage service' and it was fucking awful - cold, drafty and noisy as fuck, literally like sitting on a tractor.

It seems that nostalgia had clouded my recollection. As fondly as I remembered them, their time had come TBH.

Snob, it's predecessor the RT took Sir Cliff Richard on his Summer Holiday.

[The Generation Game]

17 hours ago, Bien Pensant said:

That would be ironic, if people start working from home and only go into town to socialize.

Time to go long on tennis racquets and Reebok?

 

[Wight Flight]

1 hour ago, Option5 said:

Snob, it's predecessor the RT took Sir Cliff Richard on his Summer Holiday.

Mrs Flight's ex father in law was a bus driver once. Just once.

You might have seen him.

[MrPin]

22 hours ago, Option5 said:

Snob, it's predecessor the RT took Sir Cliff Richard on his Summer Holiday.

I remember going to school on those. On Sunday, the timetable was different, and we got Routemasters. Must be some religious thing?

[Bien Pensant]

On 11/02/2022 at 18:38, Errol said:

This is exactly what is happening.

All the jobs I see being offered now are 100% remote as well. This is the reality of it - whatever the Government is saying. Businesses across London are recruiting on a 100% remote basis.

As I've mentioned a couple of times, I'm reading The Third Wave by Alvin Toffler ATM and it just strikes me as weird that at the very same time that they're pushing what he called the "Electronic Cottage" TPTB seem to be swimming so hard against the tide of decentralized politics.

Well, the book's the better part of 600 pages long, maybe they didn't make it all the way through

[ninjaborrower]

6 minutes ago, Bien Pensant said:

As I've mentioned a couple of times, I'm reading The Third Wave by Alvin Toffler ATM and it just strikes me as weird that at the very same time that they're pushing what he called the "Electronic Cottage" TPTB seem to be swimming so hard against the tide of decentralized politics.

Well, the book's the better part of 600 pages long, maybe they didn't make it all the way through

Never heard of the electronic cottage, but it pretty much sums up the middle class white flight model

 

[Bien Pensant]

2 minutes ago, ninjaborrower said:

Never heard of the electronic cottage

Well it's not really about buying an AGA (whilst, at the same time, endlessly virtue-signalling about the environment) and moving to Brighton , at least the way Toffler saw it.

His idea was that with people's lives reverting to being "home-centric" that family roles and structures would start to resemble those of 'First Wave', agricultural, societies with many of the things that are now 'contracted out' to centralised institutions, like work itself, care for the indigent or education for children, being brought back into the home.

I.e. The very antithesis of getting someone to ride fifteen miles on a moped to bring you a soy macchiato.

[ninjaborrower]

3 minutes ago, Bien Pensant said:

Well it's not really about buying an AGA (whilst, at the same time, endlessly virtue-signalling about the environment) and moving to Brighton , at least the way Toffler saw it.

His idea was that with people's lives reverting to being "home-centric" that family roles and structures would start to resemble those of 'First Wave', agricultural, societies with many of the things that are now 'contracted out' to centralised institutions, like work itself, care for the indigent or education for children, being brought back into the home.

I.e. The very antithesis of getting someone to ride fifteen miles on a moped to bring you a soy macchiato.

I think the back to nature thing isnt that new really, people like john seymour where pushing it in the seventies

 Even the arts and crafts movement in the late victorian, edwardian period, its something that keeps being brought up, even more so now with the internet

 Technology has made it so much more appealing now to the middleclass dreamer i feel

[Bien Pensant]

29 minutes ago, ninjaborrower said:

I think the back to nature thing isnt that new really, people like john seymour where pushing it in the seventies

 Even the arts and crafts movement in the late victorian, edwardian period, its something that keeps being brought up, even more so now with the internet

 Technology has made it so much more appealing now to the middleclass dreamer i feel

Partly, to be sure.

I really like James Howard Kunstler's political analysis (it was him who prompted me to start analyzing The Steal with reference to Watergate) but his economic prognostications fantasies are just '70s hippie-dippy nonsense - 'hey man, we're all going to live in watermills and travel by boat', completely ignoring the billions who will have to die for that to be possible and how those who are going to live will defend themselves against the dying and desperate. Typical, childish, spoilt, flower-child crap.

To me, personally, progress means energy usage and its as simple as that. 'Clean' energy is fine but any scrimping and saving of it is just a regression to a lower standard of not just living but life (although that doesn't mean that it won't be necessary).

In contrast, Toffler does seem quite based.

 

P.S. Here's Kunstler talking to Doug Casey and chum, in case you're curious:

 

P.P.S.

Here's a much more based farmer talking to Casey about 'Third Wave' farming, actually beating Costco on price despite being organic:

 

Edited February 12, 2022 by Bien Pensant

[ninjaborrower]

9 minutes ago, Bien Pensant said:

Partly, to be sure.

I really like James Howard Kunstler's political analysis (it was him who prompted me to start analyzing The Steal with reference to Watergate) but his economic prognostications fantasies are just '70s hippie-dippy nonsense - 'hey man, we're all going to live in watermills and travel by boat', completely ignoring the billions who will have to die for that to be possible and how those who are going to live will defend themselves against the dying and desperate. Typical, childish, spoilt, flower-child crap.

To me, personally, progress means energy usage and its as simple as that. 'Clean' energy is fine but any scrimping and saving of it is just a regression to a lower standard of not just living but life (although that doesn't mean that it won't be necessary).

In contrast, Toffler does seem quite based.

 

P.S. Here's Kunstler talking to Doug Casey and chum, in case you're curious:

I agree, there is a certain vibe with this type, as you say a spoilt pampered vision just like marie antoinette and her farm

 I think the way forward is self reliance to a degee but it involves making real changers to your life

 But its something you have to do ,not something that the rest of society will do alongside you because it just wouldnt work, the real gift is being one of the minority who can see it ,seeing it and doing it

 

[Errol]

Apparently Bojo thinks the reason people are not going to work in London is because of Covid.

No. It's because they don't want to pay £4000 for a train ticket or spend the day in a laughable office when they can work just as well (or more efficiently) at home and enjoy a massively higher quality of life.

Covid has nothing to do with it. Pandora's box has been opened. There is no going back to how it was - nobody will ever be doing 5 days a week in the office again.

Edited February 20, 2022 by Errol