Afternoon:
10°c
Time Out is rather a shallow magazine and its coverage of politics verges on the puerile. But when its editor-at-large, Michael Hodges, announced he was standing as a mayoral candidate, he struck a chord.
"I want to save the soul of the city," he told the Standard. "Under Ken Livingstone, we have seen pubs, clubs and theatres closed at an unprecedented level."
The Mayor, said Hodges, "claims to celebrate London and its diversity. He does this through big events but he's not so hot on the smaller, grassroots stuff. London is made up of lots of little communities, and what matters to them is the little things."
London, we're always told, has never been more "dynamic" or "vibrant". Those are, in fact, two of the deadliest words in the language, often joined to their chilling cousins "regeneration", "Norman Foster", "Continental-style piazza" and "new luxury apartments".
They're politicians' words, meaning the replacement of an organic piece of London (a street market, say) with some instant, artificial creation (the fake corporate bonhomie of a Pret a Manger, perhaps).
I was at the Elephant & Castle shopping centre last week. Outwardly, this concrete-and-glass block is hideous - fully deserving its imminent "regeneration" and replacement with, er, new concrete-and-glass blocks three times the size.
But inside, life has taken over. There's an excellent second-hand bookshop and a cluster of Colombian cafes. There are internet places filled with Africans, a greasy spoon, a bingo hall and an outdoor market with London's cheapest Nike trainers: all now doomed, of course.
Across London, hundreds of pubs have vanished too. So have many live music venues, like the Spitz and the Hammersmith Palais. The Electric Ballroom and the Astoria die soon. In their place - the 02.
One of the reasons London is successful is that people want to work here: not, by and large, because of non-dom tax, but because it's an interesting place to live. There, though, may lie the problem. Wealth is banishing the marginal, grooming the scruffy, hunting the Elephants to extinction. Wealth is making London less interesting.
One of the reasons Britain is successful is that it's creative. We don't sell more cars than China but we do sell more records. Now the music venues which nurtured that creativity are being destroyed, the pubs where actors boozed are thinning out and some of the variety that stimulated the writers is being lost.
So fighting blandness is an economic priority, not just an aesthetic one. But though Mr Livingstone has started talking about protecting some sites, he remains the developer's friend. And his is a deeper problem: at heart, he's a Continental-grand planner, unable to see that our city is, and always has been, a glorious agglomeration of small pieces.
I haven't been to a gig since Ken was Left-wing, but I agree with Hodges. London's character is at risk, and it's not just a problem for Time Out readers.
