In short -
Even Evan Davies is worried about London getting too big.
26 years after Margaret Thatcher visited, it's taken a Malaysian property developer to fix Battersea PS.
'Are you looking at other parts of the UK?'
'No'
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Debate!
"Mind The Gap: London Vs The Rest"
(64 posts)-
Posted 10 years ago #
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Posted 10 years ago #
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Watched the repeat last night after Newsnicht.
Overall the tone seemed terribly smug and self-congratulatory. I know some Londoners are a bit like that, but really "the rest" can do without that kind of braying about how much better London is than everywhere else (except maybe New York or Paris).
Some quite interesting information, particularly about King's Cross. That area was always so run down and dodgy for decades, which seemed odd as it was very central. Finally gentrifying in a rather aggressive manner.
Apart from the the brief mention of the Romans while we visited the new container port, and a few bits of archive footage representing 'the C19th' and 'post-war reconstruction' there was very little in the way of historical context. Davies seemed to be focussed instead on the 'now' of the current London boom, and the 'agglomeration effect'. I didn't really buy his line about creative people all rubbing shoulders, etc. - straight out of the Richard Florida handbook. I was waiting for the word 'synergy' to pop out but the 'a' word was used instead.
Interesting too the diversion into Elephant & Castle and questions of urban gentrification, but Davies seemed more concerned about the fate of the right-to-buy owners than the former council tenants - goodness knows where they ended up.
What annoyed me most was this idea that London has this unique environment where workers connect and compete with each other, etc. Yes this effect may be more pronounced in certain areas of London but not all. It's an effect shared with other, smaller cities too. Also I have to take issue with all the graphs and stats about workers' productivity being extremely high in central London. It would be interesting to see how exactly that was measured as I reckon it's a myth.
The elephant in the room that was hinted at, but not spelled out was the role of The City. The only person who came clean about it as a key factor was the director of the new biomedical research centre in KX. Unless I missed it I never heard Evans mention the role of financial services once. That's a glaring omission, and I can only imagine it is deliberate. After all if he were to really deal with that, not only the productivity argument but the whole fuzzy theory around 'London's just this amazing place where gold lines the streets and everyone is amazingly creative' would not stack up.
There were other hints though at the lopsidedness of the economy though. Firstly, he could hardly find anyone to talk to who had what we might call a 'real job' (save for the hard hat types): the commuters were all managers, consultants, niche entrepreneurs and marketing types with job titles that bordered on satire at times. I was waiting for 'C.J.' from 'The Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin' to walk on. This was revealing of a service industries boom. Davies also expressed anxiety that the Russians, the Saudis or the Malaysians might stop coming, that it was all a bubble. He didn't really tell us why they are coming to London.
He definitely espoused the 'magnet' theory of London's economy, and even asserted that London's boom benefits the rest of the UK. To be fair he was a bit more sceptical when Boris outlined his 'underwater' suck/blow theory.
There was a slight critical/sceptical edge to it (eg. questioning why "the rest" subsidise Crossrail to the tune of £5 billion), but mostly it was just celebratory of the 'invisible hand' of market forces, or "millions of individual decisions" as he called it. The role of government, the state, or policy, was only mentioned a few times, and only in relation to infrastructure and city planning, not macroeconomics or monetary policy.
So that's my brief critique. I will be intrigued to see the next episode, and his take on as he put it "what does the rest of the country do"?
Posted 10 years ago # -
"gentrifying in a rather aggtressive manner."
Think there has been some success in preventing demolition of some housing.
Much more set to go around Euston IF HS2 goes ahead.
"I will be intrigued to see the next episode, and his take on as he put it "what does the rest of the country do"?"
+1
Posted 10 years ago # -
"King’s Cross: renaissance for whom?"
Posted 10 years ago # -
More on Crossrail.
In addition to £4.7 billion from central government (ie. "the rest"), it would appear that:
"Network Rail will undertake works costing no more than £2.3bn to the existing national rail network raised through projected operating surpluses from the use of Crossrail services."I have no idea how long it will take for track access charges to repay £2.3 billion, but I'm guessing it's quite a while. One can argue Network Rail is also investing money in rail schemes across the UK, but £2.3 billion is a good chunk of cash being paid by "the rest" toward Crossrail. Or, put it another way, what could Scotland do with £2.3 billion of Networks Rail investment?
I make that £7 billion subsidy from "the rest" to London's Crossrail, which as Davies points out, is "local transport" for Londoners.
Posted 10 years ago # -
"What we might call a 'real job'"
Which is?
Posted 10 years ago # -
@stickman, good question.
Probably (IMO) something that doesn't involved gathering around a whiteboard drawing flowcharts with boxes labelled 'home insurance', etc. for Comparethemeerkat.com?
@chdot: great find. Well worth a read.
Posted 10 years ago # -
On track access charges, I found tables for the charges to 2019 (when Crossrail is due to open). Only figures I could find for London (Overground rail, Crossrail could be dearer I suppose) were from a mere 7p per mile, to over £1.60 per mile. Not sure what the variables are, but I preume relates to peak/off-peak/weekday/weekend, also congestion charging of some sort. So for a full 26 mile run of one train you are looking at (potentially, I don't know how the charges are applied) £1.82 up to £42.64. Assuming a service 15 mins frequency each way, 22 hours per day across the whole length, at the maximum track access charge that is £7.5K per day. £2.7 million per year. At that rate it will take a very long time to pay off £2.3 billion.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Yesterday, out of idle curiosity I looked at Evan Davis' Wiki entry (never had cause to before). Some interesting snippets there that I didn't know but pershaps should not have been surprised by.
"Davis began work as an economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and while there he was briefly seconded to help officials work on early development of the Community Charge system of local government taxation (better known as the Poll Tax). In 1988 he moved to the London Business School, writing articles for their publication Business Strategy Review. He returned to the Institute for Fiscal Studies in 1992, writing a paper on "Britain, Europe and the Square Mile" for the European Policy Forum which argued that British financial prosperity depended on being seen as a bridgehead to the European Union.
In 1993, Davis joined the BBC as an economics correspondent. He worked as economics editor on BBC Two's Newsnight programme from 1997 to 2001. In the mid-1990s he was a member of the Social Market Foundation's Advisory Council; he is a member of the British-American Project for a Successor Generation.Writing
In 1998, Davis' book, Public Spending, was published by Penguin. In it he argued for the privatisation of public services as a means to increase efficiency. His second book was published in May 2011 by Little Brown, with the title Made In Britain: How the Nation Earns Its Living."All of which seems to place Davis, ideologically and socially, on the right wing of the Blairite faction of New Labour. You know, the bleeding edge that blends imperceptibly with the neoliberal wing of the Conservatives.
Not that his background nor his beliefs necessarily invalidate his arguments, of course, such that he made any (rather than assertions, which he made aplenty). However it does rather cast his ode to London as politics rather than the disinterested economics it purports to be.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Well yes.
If you want economic journalism with a leftish background you need http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Mason_(journalist)
But he's left the BBC.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Or Chris Dillow.
Posted 10 years ago # -
@crowriver It sounds like you're looking at variable track access charges. You'd also need to take into consideration the impact of Crossrail on a range of other (often more substantial) charges like fixed track access charges and station access charges.
Network Rail's capital expenditure is usually recovered over 30 years but I think I read somewhere that for Crossrail this was upped to 50 years given the scale of the investment.
Posted 10 years ago # -
@PS, yeah I'm the first to admit I don't know how this works. Did see tables for fixed charges. Station charges differ according to whether 'franchised' (á la Scotrail) or 'managed' (å la Waverley, Glasgow Central).
I'm sure someone with more detailed knowledge of the railways would be able to make a stab at an estimate of likely repayments from 2019 onwards...
Posted 10 years ago # -
Particularly enjoyed this post on endogenous preferences.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Part 2 now (BBC 2)
Posted 10 years ago # -
ED trying the Manchester Velodrome -
Posted 10 years ago # -
Aye, watched it last night (intermittently while various family members interrupted).
Did anyone else find it pretty patronising to the north?
The only point of any worth Davis seemed to make was the idea of the 'great northern city' spanning the Pennines "like LA". Seems a fair observation, of not entirely original. Folk have said the same about Glasgow/Edinburgh. In north American terms, they would be the same city (like Boston).
Posted 10 years ago # -
Very patronisning to the north.
Pretty much said they can't do anything high tech or high wage and should stick to things like the roller disco business and leave the good jobs to london.
Posted 10 years ago # -
I was underwhelmed by the programme.
Although he talked about the UK he really meant England and didn't talk much about anything except greater Birmingham and the 'Northern central belt' idea.
"Did anyone else find it pretty patronising to the north?" Think it was just patronising to anyone who didn't agree with him.
The appearance of Ian McMillan, who 'somehow' manages to get by without living in London, didn't add much because ED clearly doesn't understand why anyone wouldn't choose to live (or at least work if they couldn't afford to live there) in a megacity.
Conclusion was that 'people shouldn't resent London AND that 'somehow' the rest of the UK (England?) should get a bigger 'share' of infrastructure/development money'.
Except that he seemed to think that 'somehow' London should get the same as now and the rest should get more...
Posted 10 years ago # -
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-26472423
I hadn't heard of Zipf's Law
"the size distribution of cities within countries tends to follow a pattern in which the biggest city is about twice the size of the second city, three times the size of the third city, four times the size of the fourth and so on."
(Doesn't apply to the UK which is the point of the article).
Posted 10 years ago # -
Having walked from Kings Cross to Bishopsgate this morning I struggle to understand why so many people would want to live in a place like this!
We are very spoiled by our built and open environment in Edinburgh, where the sea, the horizon, the hills and the sky can be seen from so many places around the city and all at once.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Very patronisning to the north.
Pretty much said they can't do anything high tech or high wage and should stick to things like the roller disco business and leave the good jobs to london.
That was not my take on his argument at all.
It was about agglomeration and the fact that industry sectors benefit from being concentrated in a particular geographical area. His example was biosciences clustering in Cambridge which, although not The North, isn't London either. Cities that find themselves a niche like that (Edinburgh and finance?) can thrive. However, those towns and cities that can't are not consigned to the economic scrapheap but instead need to focus on realistic areas for the local economy (the rollerdisco example, which is a successful business, versus the speculative office space investment for which there is no demand).
As for investment, the Liverpool/Manchester/Leeds corridor would greatly benefit from more infrastructure investment and improved transport links. Their needs should not be drowned out by London's desire for Crossrail 2, 3 and 4.
He'd need a much longer series if he was going to cover off every area of the UK. I noticed Cumbria didn't get a mention, but I didn't get too upset by that.
Posted 10 years ago # -
@kaputnik - totally agree! My previous job meant I was in London a lot (usually the City or Canary Wharf). I don't understand how people can put up with it. I used to take great delight in annoying my London-based colleagues by telling them how my commute to work was about 15 minutes by bus or bike, and that I could be out in the hills or at the coast in the evening whilst they were still on the tube home. (And I I was feeling particularly irritated at being in London I would compare house prices/sizes....)
Posted 10 years ago # -
"I hadn't heard of Zipf's Law"
Me neither so I looked up -
Wasn't sure if ED was using it properly or appropriately (it's a bit technical).
UK/England didn't 'conform' in the way that other countries seem to.
He was basically saying that UK/England 'should' have a bigger second city.
Not clear in what way this would make a difference.
An argument is that London has got bigger while other cities declined and Government (based in London) didn't do 'enough'.
If there was an new city called LiverLeeds it oughtto make it easier to get infrastructure spending.
In a Scottish context (with or without independence) Zipf's Law might work better apart from the fact that the two largest cities are of similar size - though of course that depends on whether you are talking about population within a certain council boundary or a bigger travel to work area without unified political control of services/transport etc.
Posted 10 years ago # -
I thought Glasgow is a lot bigger than Edinburgh?
Posted 10 years ago # -
Glasgow is bigger than its boundaries. There are a lot of areas that are outside the city officially but, for all practical purposes, part of Glasgow.
Edinburgh, by contrast, stays within its boundaries, except at Musselburgh. I'm not sure if this makes Glasgow effectively twice the size of Edinburgh but they're not of similar sizes.
Posted 10 years ago # -
I'm saying 5.8 is similar to 4.8.
Then there's the Lothians and parts of Fife.
"
Glasgow is by far the largest of Scotland's cities, with a population of 584,240 in 2008. The City is located at the centre of the Glasgow and the Clyde Valley Conurbation, which has a population of 1,755,310."
http://www.glasgow.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=3969
"
Edinburgh: Population (2012) • City 482,640[1]
"
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinburgh
http://www.urbanrealm.com/news/3390/Edinburgh_to_rival_Glasgow_in_size_by_2035.html
Posted 10 years ago # -
Ah, I see. I think I must have been thinking of the conurbation, as AKen says.
Posted 10 years ago #
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