frontalman wrote: ↑Tue 26 May 2020 5:04 pm
There are many council housing estates in both Islington and Westminster. Cummings lives in Islington, among Corbyn, Thornberry and Blair's old house in Richmond Road. I believe that Cummings lives in Canonbury, next to Highbury - one of the poshest neighbourhoods I know. You want to get your facts straight.
I can’t see what we are arguing about here tbh you yourself are saying Islington or a fair few parts of it are very affluent.
Islington I know, or used to fairly well, back in the day was more dump than palace but has become more gentrified over the years. Left many a portion of skin on their AstroTurf pitch.
Of course there are council places which people will stay in to their dying day. If I had a council place in Berkeley Square which I was paying £50 a week in rent on you’d need Semtex to get me out of it.
The best and most personal example I can give of the phenomenon of gentrification is Hoxton where I grew up. Without going all four Yorkshireman it was a dump, even the Krays were frightened to visit. Deprivation was rife although personally we did ok. When we moved to Walthamstow my father thought we had moved to the shires which in comparison it probably was.
Hoxton, Shoreditch and those areas had two things going for them. It was near to the City, you could walk to Liverpool Street in half an hour and it was full of derelict warehouses and suchlike which at the time were great places for oiks like me to play in. But those derelict warehouses had good bones and with a bit of tlc could make very swanky flats. So following the example of the Docklands the area got seriously gentrified with yuppies who liked to be near work and bought those lovely and very expensive apartments. Obviously they wont be sending their kids Oliver and Felicity to the local schools as they’d be eaten alive by the locals but yes they technically live in Hoxton. Some live in Dalston, another previous armpit that has been reborn and can come over as very edgy if they wish but in truth they live in a gated bubble.
So it would be more accurate to say Blair, Corbyn, Lady Nugee, Cummings and assorted luvvies reside in Islington they don’t really live there by any stretch.
Hopefully that explains my point better?
As an amusing aside my father had been bought up in the Docklands and it choked him that a place he had clawed his way out of became so posh, he died before Hoxton took off, thankfully although no doubt spinning in his grave. “Do you know how much that council house is worth now? You know how much I could’ve bought it for?”
When his ship used to come in he was always at the airport.