Canary Wharf has always been an alien presence, and this can give some clue to its origins, growth and probable fall.
Canary Wharf rises abruptly out of the brick terraces, and recedes just as quickly back into them. It does not make any concession to the local vernacular, or to the supposed communities that surround it. Its style is High Globalist: sharp lines, veined marble, long escalators and chrome. It is the lost buccaneering Globalism of the airport lounge and of Simon Murray, still observable in places like Hong Kong and Singapore, but long since abolished here – first by New Labour, still more by Lockdown and, finally, by Net Zero. Canary Wharf’s original slate of office buildings are big rectangular hulkers. These buildings are maddeningly self-assured. We do not find in Canary Wharf, as we do in the City, attempts to stylistically apologise for itself as a centre of high finance. We find no ‘Cheese Graters’, ‘Walkie Talkies’ or big pickles – gimmicks proceeding from a spirit of post-1997 British twee. Canary Wharf has the courage to take itself seriously.
Canary Wharf was built for a specific and practical purpose, that is, to house the multinational banks whose old Victorian offices could not accommodate the computers and electrical wires of modern finance. This alone sets Canary Wharf apart from two other closely allied projects. The first is ‘regeneration’, where declining cities are held in place for sentimental reasons, with public sector boondoggles, universities of dubious quality and foreign students of dubious origin. The second is ‘gentrification’, a curious term, whereby white Britons are chided for moving back into areas in which they predominated less than 50 years ago. Canary Wharf remains the only true redevelopment that has ever occurred in London. It did not nibble around the edges of decay as the regenerators or gentrifiers have done. Canary Wharf annihilated. Specifically, it annihilated a row of declining warehouses, no trace of which now remains. What was created in its place is not, as is often alleged, soulless. Canary Wharf is a real place with a real purpose; it is a place to make money, and an arena for people’s ambitions. It thus has more of a claim to soul and ‘Community’ than whatever Salford Quays is.
Did Canary Wharf destroy the historical community of East London? Yes and no. Look at it this way: the wharfs of the old Docklands, long since derelict, were once the busiest in the world. They sat at the centre of a global network of commerce, loading and unloading goods from all seven continents. Which is more in keeping with this spirit – HSBC, or Luftur Rahman?
The purpose of Canary Wharf was to create a new financial centre in East London, which would then, in turn, spawn the houses, apartments, shops, theatres and schools to service a newly-prosperous East End. Canary Wharf was only ever meant to be the start, but it has been an overture with no first act. With Canary Wharf the history of East London reaches a turning point and fails to turn.
For this there are two reasons. The first is style. The initial towers of Canary Wharf have never been aesthetically answered. No other structure has picked up the gauntlet thrown down by One Canada Square, 8 Canada Square, One Churchill Place and Citigroup Centre. The original five were joined only by a handful of meagre pencil towers, and as a result the profile of Canary Wharf in 2023 is little different from that seen in the old Year 9 Geography textbook. Not a new style, then, but a flash in the pan.
The second reason is political. In 1998 the dictatorial Docklands Development Corporation, which had built Canary Wharf through executive fiat, was wound up. This left the fledgling commercial district at the mercy of the retrograde local councils that surround it. What followed was a successful rearguard action against the forces of modernisation. The district’s natural growth was successfully constricted, and has yet to fill out even the modest Isle of Dogs peninsula. The main instrument has been social housing, which makes up over a third of all stock in Tower Hamlets. This figure rises to 45-49% in Poplar, the district to Canary Wharf’s immediate north. This housing cannot be purchased or rented by the productive citizens who work in the offices of Canary Wharf. British social housing – we are reminded – makes no distinction between citizen and non-citizen, and is doled out by local government for political and ideological reasons. Much has been said of the trespasses of Canary Wharf on local communities. We invite local communities to explain their trespasses on Canary Wharf. The councils which dominate East London have chosen to house, not the young professionals of the Docklands, but enormous quantities of unemployed and unemployable migrants in what is some of the most valuable real estate in the world. These communities are not historical but artificial – far more artificial than Canary Wharf ever was. Unlike the Docklands they have no economic logic; absent these controls, the area would speedily transform into something like St John’s Wood.
Unable to grow, Canary Wharf has withered on the vine. It has not spread into a real neighbourhood, or a metropolis; it is a medium-sized office park. Without the ordinary trappings of middle-class life to sustain it, it is unsurprising that Canary Wharf is finding it harder and harder to compete with the City, and has indeed started to haemorrhage tenants.
The decline of Canary Wharf is a cultural event. In it, the East London of Dame Tessa Jowell Boulevard and the Olympics defeats the East London of economic modernity. Indeed, the Olympic redevelopment – Canary Wharf’s latter-day rival – has been the capstone of local government’s project of urban counterrevolution. In place of high finance, we will instead keep around the fossilised remains of a sporting event that ended eleven years ago. Defeated, too, is the social phenomenon of Canary Wharf. During its fairly brief life, the Docklands was an outlet for the talented to London’s east: that is, the products of lingering grammar schools in Kent and Essex. Essex-boy-done-good will disappear with Canary Wharf; he will not trouble London with his presence, and will leave it to Harriet Harman and her various clients. With no stage for his talents, he will stay in Essex and watch Celebrity Gogglebox instead.
Canary Wharf was – consciously or not – a rebuke to the Britain of 2023. It did not answer to the parochial tastes of its governing classes. It showed that so many imagined social questions were, in fact, so many Gordian knots to be cut. It was too dangerous to be kept alive.
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Maybe one thing we’re learning from the covid years (and their aftermath of net zero etc.) is that freedom comes from within, from freedom of thought, and when there are sufficient people with freedom of thought you have true societal freedom.
It’s been touch and go here in the West, and I wouldn’t say that freedom has won yet. Too many of our society are simply too intellectually bone idle to think for themselves, and they’re dragging the rest of us down with them.
Maybe China is stepping gingerly the right way. You have to admire those protestors. They’ve put their lives on the line almost literally, and at least are maybe now waiting for the knock on the door. We had it pretty easy here by comparison. You could be the only person in Tesco without a mask and everyone simply averted their eyes. And if you actually got fined you didn’t have to pay knowing pretty well that the thing would lapse in 6 months anyway.
And still very few of our society stood out against the attacks on their freedom. As if they’d lost the will to live as independent human beings. As I say, it’s touch and go here – could go either way.
I admire your optimism. I don’t believe it’s touch and go in the West at all; I think that we are in a minority and that the majority are about as free thinking as a broom handle. When they come for us, which they will again, our line will be the only thing that stands in the way of the precipice. We can only hope that our actions will embolden others. This is undoubtedly my hill.
I don’t think the free-thinkers have to be in an absolute majority. I reckon 20% would do it, easily. I always. said that if merely 20% of people had refused to wear masks the whole charade would have collapsed there and then.
I think that’s a good point. The majority of people are followers. They just need to be persuaded to follow the right crowd.
We’re into Desmet territory here of course, and it’s difficult to speculate on absolute figures or percentages.
But my feel is that the percentage of free thinkers can actually be remarkably low for them to carry their case.
Yeah, the only way of bringing the NPC cattle around is using the same tactics that captured them. Once there’s the critical mass of realisation the rest will follow – as in their namesake. The “authorities” know this of course so continue to indoctrinate the masses, whilst simultaneously blocking any attempt to shock them out of it. Precisely why we should be all-in on the freedom of speech issue to level the playing field (granted I’m singing to the choir here but for anyone else reading who might be momentarily swayed by their enacting censorship under the guise of…. whatever).
very few of our society stood out against the attacks on their freedom. As if they’d lost the will to live as independent human beings
maybe 10-30% fought against the fascism. Now the Ronatards are in admiration of the people rising up against the CCP tyranny. For 2.5 yrs they screamed that anyone in the UK who dissented from the narrative should be imprisoned, condemned, tortured, ended.
But they see no irony or hypocrisy, because after all, they are the ‘science’. And when the fascists lock down for the climate-thingy-next scariant-caused by warmtarding-they will happily travel back to 2020 and scream support for lockdowns, camps, forced injections etc.
I would put it right at the lower end of ’10-30%’, and probably even lower. I seemed to be either alone or in about 1% of people around me not wearing a mask, and saying the whole thing was bollocks.
And of course it’s easy cheering from the sidelines at the freedom fighters in China standing up for their rights. A different matter to having to put your own head above the parapet and take some small risk for what’s right. And of course in the cowardly logic which inhabits such minds it’s easy enough to find the justifications for such rank hypocrisy.
Definitely. Same here. I was marching in Hyde Park with Piers and 70? others in March 2020. I went to every protest, every march I could. I never wore a diaper, scorned the jabs as pharma poison and told anyone who would listen that it was medical Nazism and the end of our world. Very few gave a shat. Most thought I was just another looney nutbar. Until the whack job con theories starting coming true…including the dead from the stabs. But the Rona religious don’t care. Rona proved to me that 80% of the pop are stupid.
Untested. Untraced. Unmasked. Unjabbed. That’s the TJN household.
Didn’t go on any demos though – bit difficult from down here in rural Devon with small children. Do feel I missed out by not going on one of those London marches.
Something I’ve never understood about China and their social credit system, or gotten around to finding out, is what if you haven’t got a mobile phone? It’s the phones that are the main way of controlling people, right? So how on earth do the authorities ensure every single person has an expensive phone and contract, even poor people? And given the vast amount of surveillance cameras everywhere, what about people living in the outskirts and remote villages? And what happens if you’re in a village and have no reception for your phone anyway? And how would these people be surveilled if they can’t put cameras everywhere? It’s surely easier to be anonymous outside of the cities, and also self-sufficient, therefore less easily controlled and watched. Anyway, if anyone can fill in the blanks I’d appreciate it.
I’ve wondered this too… I suspect ‘they’ just limit the necessities to the sub-urban and country regions, limiting growth anyway. That’s the only thing I can think. Or having something similar to the ez pass in new york, stopping people from using the highways. I also sort of suspect that we’re not hearing the full story either way…
Informers at every level of the bureaucracy? The CCP version of the Political Officers in the USSR armed forces. We’ve seen how many people loved to dob their neighbours in it for breaking nonsensical rules in the UK so just imagine how easy it would be for informers to thrive in China.
Never buy an Apple product again, they have actively worked with the Chinese Government to supress dissent, and therby support tyranny and torture of Chinese citizens by its Government. If a Corporation like Apple will do that in China, they will not hesitate to do it for any other Government. The bottom line is more imprtant to the CEO of Apple than the lives and rights of ordinary people,
vote with your pocket, don’t buy from them,
Aren’t all mobile manufacturers and associated tech services supporting China or reliant on them for in one way or the other? Which mobile, laptop, search engine, OS to use?
Samsung aren’t
Those with long memories may recall a poster called Biker, who could be very straight talking at times. I recall him saying similar about using Apple appliances, and someone pointing out that he was posting off an Apple (he’d alluded to it previously). He had a right go at them.
I’m posting off an Apple btw. Can’t stand them as a corporation, the more so after their rigorous attitude towards masking in their shops.
But what do you do? Everything’s tainted.
The WEF are watching China and instead of being repulsed, they are fascinated and want to replicate it.
We’ve been warned: if we don’t stop them now, it will only get harder.
Oh, we’re well on the way. In my nearest town – small, rural, sleepy – multiple new street cameras appeared during lockdown and ‘smart’ junctions are currently being put in. On the one recently completed, I counted at least 18 cameras, all pitched at different angles (face, numberplate, etc). An ATM has recently been removed and the remaining ones occasionally run out of cash. There have been 3 new mobile masts put up locally in the last year alone. So there’s plenty of money for control and compliance, eh Klaus?
“cameras appeared during lockdown and ‘smart’ junctions are currently being put in.”
I have stated frequently on here that £37 billion on Track and Trace was spent on traffic infrastructure.
I have just noticed that in the headline picture the two people behind the principal subject are European – the girl in the mask and the unmasked guy behind her recording via his ‘phone.
Stock photo?