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Returning home after spending the past fortnight in the US has proved a little bit taxing.
Just as Gulliver's rather more prolonged sojourn in Lilliput acclimatised him to the sight of tiny people, so that when he finally got back, the faces of his fellow Englishmen struck him as grotesquely large and coarse, so my happy acceptance of Lilliputian American prices has made London seems like the capital of Brobdingnag.
A mediocre meal for four at Kettner's in Soho, with indifferent service, set me back £140. That's nigh on $300! I doubt I spent that much on eating out the whole time I was in the States, where, needless to say, the service almost always comes with a smile. As for getting around, in the interests of fruitful comparison, as I was visiting five major cities, I resolved to compare their public transport systems with our own.
In San Francisco the express bus in from the airport - which took half an hour - cost £2. In New York, a Metro Card - their equivalent of an Oyster - gives you an unlimited-distance journey for 62p. It's the same in Los Angeles where, in the spirit of English eccentricity, I resolved not to set foot in a car for three days, and found it eminently possible to get around by bus and metro. In Seattle, the buses stop in a city centre "tunnel", which is well-lit, heated and sparkling clean. Needless to say, they arrive and depart with Swiss precision, and the airport shuttle costs exactly £1. In Chicago the train in from O'Hare set me back, gulp, 85p.
On the West Coast they've heard about our ludicrously expensive high-speed rail link and chortled heartily at the notion of a $30 ticket. In LA they'd also heard - and greeted the notion with more horror than Saw IV - about our congestion charging. But then they would, wouldn't they?
Of course, I'm not trying to pretend that everything in the American economic garden is rosy. So far as I could see, wherever I went a lot of homeless African-American men travelled on foot, pushing all their worldly goods in shopping carts; while the numbers of toothless and disabled people you see in the poorer parts of these cities are an eloquent testimony to the demented grip the healthcare insurers have on the throat of government.
But we have to admit that there's a certain sneaky pride in London at the moment. We moan about it, but we still take our status as the world's most expensive city as a badge of our economic success, when really it's only a sign that the Prime Minister has given criminal tax breaks to Russian oligarchs, while the City doles out astronomic bonuses to its triumphant traders. The wealthy may laugh in the face of restaurant bills the size of a weekly pay packet, but even middle-class Londoners are feeling the pinch of economic chill in the core of our overheated economy.
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OUR LONDON: Who’s really to blame?
Over priced housing stock, inflated rates, high tax, exaggerated prices, oh and not forgetting; home to the $5 ice-cream…
Everything has a price, be it a property, a service, function or item and will only sell for what someone is willing to pay for it – simple supply and demand.
If people continue to pay, someone will always be willing to squeeze for that little extra, be it the Government, Council, shop owner or street trader.
Presumably the majority of us have conveniently and quietly pushed aside the notion that we ourselves are directly to blame for our highly inflated tax Capital?
We blame any and everyone, yet we, the public, put the Politicians, Mayor, Council leaders etc in power who, in return tax us to the hilt.
So remember why you have just paid for that over priced coffee you are so willing to pay for – the owner is simply trying to survive…have an ‘over priced’ nice day!.
- David J Harvey, Milton Keynes - UK
London has become a city for either the very rich or very poor. Everybody else is being driven away because of high property prices, high taxes and high prices.
- David Payne, London
