Everyday the Evening Standard devotes nearly a whole page to an article disparaging Ken Livingstone. Today we had Rowan Moore, the Architecture Critic, blaming Livingstone’s urban planning for every problem in London, right down to, get this, the increasing gap between the rich and the poor. “Under Livingstone,” he whinges, “The richest and poorest sections of the population have expanded, while those in the middle have declined.”
Quite how the town planning powers of local government have had such far reaching economic implications is beyond me; but not, it seems, beyond Mr Moore. He tries to explain this bold assertion as a consequence of the mayor’s call for affordable housing. Apparently demands for affordable housing have pushed up the cost of what Moore calls ‘unaffordable housing’ (homes built for profit). This apparently squeezes out people in the middle who are not eligible for subsidy and can’t afford to buy at market price. Hence the decline of the middle classes in London and the ever increasing disparity between the rich and the poor.
This does not ring true for a couple of reasons. The ‘middle classes’ usually already own their homes: that’s what makes them such smug posh fuckers. And those eligible for subsidy are not simply the poorest sections of the community; they are key workers like firemen, police and teachers.
Moore is simply attributing the results of long term macro-economic policies to Livingstone’s urban planning failures. It is not the fault of the town planners that the rich are getting richer. It is the fault of central government for implementing policies and tax regimes that subsidise the wealthy. If all the rich people in London paid fair rates of tax then local government would have the funding to house everybody at reasonable prices.
Dx
Filed under: London , evening standard, London, mayor, politics
