Nobody knows what will happen to London after “Brexit” comes into effect. In the UK the majority of the population voted to leave the EU, but in London (as in Scotland and Northern Ireland) the majority voted to remain. London has other problems, however. In recent years a great deal of property has been bought by wealthy foreigners who have no intention of living there. As a result, some of London’s neighbourhoods are becoming “ghost towns”. Local shops and other businesses are suffering. The situation is particularly acute in Earls Court, where the famous Exhibition Centre was recently demolished to make way for a “residential village” that will have very few residents.
old problem
Many people blame the situation on London’s previous mayor, Boris Johnson, who also led the “Leave” campaign. Johnson, who is currently Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs in Prime Minister Theresa May’s government, was seen as being unduly “friendly” to business interests. Yet the problem is older than Johnson’s mayorship. 50 years ago, a property speculator, Harry Hyams, built the Centre Point office building (pictured right) near Tottenham Court Road and left it unoccupied for many years. It was recently converted into “luxury apartments”.
Con audio:
Rich and Poor
They say that London is becoming a ghost town for the rich. This is because foreign investors are buying property, but purely as an investment. They leave the houses empty and, if you go to fashionable addresses like Cadogan Square in Knightsbridge after dark, you will notice that there are no lights on. One person who feels strongly about this is the artist Duggie Fields. He lives in Earls Court, where he led an unsuccessful campaign to save its famous exhibition centre from demolition. It will be replaced by a “village” for absent residents:
Duggie Fields (standard British accent): Well, so we have the tourist hot spots being very crowded, the residential areas being emptied out, it’s a very strange phenomenon, you can go down empty streets and you turn a corner and you’re in a throng, and you’re in a throng of transient people who are all thronging for the same thing, and then you can go into a neighbourhood so close by with the most beautiful properties that are all shuttered and shut up most of the time.
The refugee problem
And there are many examples of empty property in Earls Court, as there are all over London:
Duggie Fields:Up by the Tesco’s there are these blocks that are maybe 10 years old and they look so tacky because they are mostly empty. There’s a huge lot down there actually, already. They already exist, they already are under-occupied, and yet we have this boom in homelessness at the same time and this boom in people being pushed out for more empty buildings. It’s not logical, it’s not sane, it’s not rational. We could actually house all these refugees, these poor people who are stuck. We could easily offer them homes, but the homes are owned by people, and they’re owned by offshore companies, so there’d be no organization to actually do it, and squatting is now illegal, so we couldn’t bring them in as squatters either, so we’re just going to let them struggle, while we stand by with all these empty properties.
The one per cent
The divide in society between rich and poor is becoming increasingly evident, and not only in London:
Duggie Fields: Well, we’re certainly returning to an age where there’s a bigger social divide than appeared to be happening. I mean, the ‘60s was an era where everyone thought the social divide was breaking down, and now it seems to be we’re in an era with... all around the world, the one per cent is getting richer and the 99 per cent are having less to share out amongst themselves.
