Tonight:
10°c
Londoners already look back at the peak of the bubble as if remembering a dream world. Did we really think it was wise to mortgage ourselves to the hilt to buy jerry-built hutches in areas the estate agents called "up-and-coming" and our friends called "scary after dark"? Did we really believe our jobs were safe and pensions secure?
Recessions change everything, and every Londoner now knows it, except one: the Mayor.
His recent pronouncements have sounded like a cross between Pollyanna and Ethelred the Unready. "The City is still alive with the sound of people making money," he cries. House price falls were not so bad and London was still a world leader. So "spend and be merry for it's not the end of the world".
Boris Johnson has been getting the economy wrong ever since he greeted the crash, at the Tory party conference, with a misjudged defence of the speculators who have so mismanaged their (and our) affairs.
Unfortunately, his notion that we live in a healthy city that can handle a little turbulence does not stand up to scrutiny. He doesn't seem to grasp it but London was never a part of the "soft South" that Northerners are so fond of grumbling about.
As the London Chamber of Commerce put it to me, London is volatile. In the recessions of the early Eighties and Nineties, its economy shot up in the good times and down in the bad. The Chamber now expects a far worse recession because "this is a crisis rooted in financial services, one of London's primary industries, which will hit Londoners hard".
Nevertheless, its business leaders have not condemned Johnson for saying London is a wonderful place, and they admire his Keynesian desire for the Government to fast-track Crossrail and other job-creating projects, which might jump-start the economy.
I do not think they realise how Johnson is leading them into a trap. Suppose the Treasury can borrow more money to jump-start the economy: the North, Scotland and Wales will be after every penny. Those regions will make their case by advertising their suffering and warning of imminent disaster.
Why should a government that has already taken vast sums from London to appease the Labour heartlands listen to the arguments of a Tory Mayor who has spent the past few months whistling "Always look on the bright side of life"?
Johnson warns us against talking down the London economy. He could not be more wrong. He should be warning of the danger we now face and fighting hard for every scrap of central government funding if he does not want London's recession to turn into a depression.
This Dubya is no pushover
Oliver Stone's Bush biopic, W., is out next week. I saw a preview, and can say he has produced an intelligent film that shows the president to be a bad but also a complicated man. After Stone's shameful JFK, which aimed to please conspiracy nuts, this is a work for grown-ups.
But not for Russell Brand. He had Stone on his Radio 2 show at the weekend and was furious with the director for not showing Bush as Satan. He could barely manage a minute's chat about the film before going off into a bragging monologue about how he had bedded some woman after they had last met in California.
Still, I was glad to learn that Brand has his moral standards. It is fine by him to broadcast obscene phone calls to a young woman's grandfather. But to make a serious drama that doesn't quite parrot received wisdom, up with that he will not put.
Half term's a riot at the British Library
It is half term. The recession means that only secure parents want to spend money on a holiday. Never mind, on Monday the British Library advertised a children's book party starring Alex Scheffler, Quentin Blake and other illustrators worshipped as gods in the homes of the London middle class.
All we had to do was pick up either the first batch of free tickets at 11am or the second at 2pm. By 8am, desperate families were milling in the Euston Road. By 10.30, the Library's piazza looked like Terminal 5. Families joining queues without knowing why, children getting tired and lost, parents getting tired and frantic. Thousands piled in. Children hung over the staircase and mezzanine railings with a contemptuous disregard for health and safety legislation.
At 1.30, fresh hell as more hordes arrived for the 2pm allocation. “They've all gone,” explained a terrified librarian as he handed out maps to the nearby Coram Fields playground in a vain attempt to placate the furious throng. “We had to give them up, otherwise there would have been a riot.”
A library spokesman told me it was reviewing the ticketing arrangements for next year's show.
Reader views (3)
I agree that Johnson has been getting the economy wrong. it was clearly misguided to suggest, as some journalists did about a month ago, that 'the Mayor had a half-argument' in his speech to the Tory Party conference.
I wonder, too, if Boris should have thought a little harder over cancelling the deal Ken brokered with Venezuela. Perhaps Nick agrees?
- Steve Wilson, london
I agree with Fresh - no one would have been able to accuse Ken of not lobbying hard for London, and his recent eight point plan - reported by Pippa Crerar on her blog on this site - is well worth a look.
- Votedforken, London, UK
If there's one thing Ken can't be accused of, it's not grabbing money for London whenever possible.
His rather ill-advised admission that he used the Olympic bid as a golden opportunity to raise money to redevelop the Stratford area at least showed that he was always looking out for London, whether we liked his methods or not.
His recent 8 point plan for London is worth reading, and implementing at least in part. Even if Boris alters the words and makes it look like he thought of them (even if some would be a U-turn on his recent policies), who cares?- let's look out for London- no-one else will.
- Fresh, London
