Has this future begun now.? The country formally known as London.

Why Sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No Sir, when a man is tired of London he is tired of life.
 
On Radio 5 this morning.

Instead of comparing London with the rest of the UK you should be comparing London to other International Cities. London comes out little different to Paris and Berlin.
 
Paris and Berlin are nowhere near London as international cities.
 
You can read up about it under Global City on Wikipedia. I don't see how London being a Global City is a bad thing for the rest of the country.
 
When it comes up on I player check the radio programme out. It's hypothetical of course but a very plausible vision of the future. Well worth a listen just to see how Boris Johnson pans out.!
 
You can read up about it under Global City on Wikipedia. I don't see how London being a Global City is a bad thing for the rest of the country.
Top of the shop, above New York- London.!
 
Why Sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No Sir, when a man is tired of London he is tired of life.

What about the Michelin man?
 
Top of the shop, above New York- London.!
Depends on which table you use though I'm not sure why London being a top Global city is a bad thing.
 
I'm not saying it is a bad thing. It's been a global hub for a couple of centuries. But, and with an eye on the related thread, we need to be careful that the rest if the UK benefits from its wealth and that it does not suck all the wealth, talent and opportunity into its gravity well as it has been for the last few decades. The link in the thread is the obvious and probable result if we don't recognise and rectify this.
 
I thought it was London and Southern England largely supporting the rest of the UK and to some extent probably the EU as well. From the look of it it is something we are doing well. Shouldn't we be glad?
 
I thought it was London and Southern England largely supporting the rest of the UK and to some extent probably the EU as well. From the look of it it is something we are doing well. Shouldn't we be glad?

The taxes collected in London largely support the rest of the UK.

...Uncomfortable though it seems.
 
I thought it was London and Southern England largely supporting the rest of the UK and to some extent probably the EU as well. From the look of it it is something we are doing well. Shouldn't we be glad?
Again, I'm not saying we shouldn't. But a rebalancing out to the provinces isn't necessarily a bad thing. What we don't want is Londons runaway success to lead to the situation proposed in the radio link at the top of the thread.
 
I work for an English company that moved some of its key operations to Scotland as a cost-saving initiative. Ripple effect has been helpful to me.
 
Not if Scotland breaks away I suspect.
 
Yes, something I am keenly aware of (but a lot of nationalists seem to be blinkered to).
 
I believe that for a much longer time, the French have a view of Paris as almost separate to the rest of France. They consider Parisians to be quite different.
 
I believe that for a much longer time, the French have a view of Paris as almost separate to the rest of France. They consider Parisians to be quite different.

As do the Scots about Edinburgh folk, and the Irish about Dubliners... :)

In fact the expression "beyond the Pale" comes from the segregation between Dublin and the rest of Ireland back when the English controlled it. The Pale - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
BBC News - Why did UKIP do less well in London?

Article is relevant here and to the UKIP thread.

Looked at in that way, it is pretty difficult to see how London could be put back in its box, even if the government wished to do this, without doing serious harm to the nation's finances and prosperity.


If London's growth were to slow considerably, then revenue generation for the government and employment creation for the country would also slow - probably harmfully.


So for those who want a more regionally balanced UK economy, the trick presumably is to spur faster growth outside London.


But that has been the ambition of so many governments, for so long. And has arguably become even harder in a world where capital seems increasingly drawn to capitals (very bad pun, sorry).


Or to put it another way, the problem isn't London. The problem (if there is one) is that globalisation is all about how money, data and skilled people do what they want and go where they want.
 
We can either be like King Canute and try to hold the tide of the sea or in this case Globalization back (and fail miserably) or we can embrace it and make the necessary changes to how the Economy works and recognize that London is a beacon to the world. This has been looming in the background for a while now, Politicians have avoided tackling it head on for various reasons. But it will come to a head soon.

The internet has merely speeded the process up i.e. all you need is a secure internet connection and you can pretty much do business anywhere in the world. National Borders are meaningless as the Internet has none, aside from countries that try and control it using censorship. We are perhaps in another revolution, all be it an Information/Communication revolution. This all plays into how we view London and ergo immigration.
 
I recently saw a BBC programme on the property boom in London. Apparently, 85% of new build developments in some areas are sold to foreigners. The properties are often advertised abroad first and many investors in Hong Kong buy a London flat as, I quote, a "toy". They never move in - it's just an investment.

Maybe the future of London is as a population doughnut - an outer ring of people with an empty central zone consisting of uninhabited properties.
 
As for the Estuary airport - that will mean more congestion for the rest of the country to get there.
 

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