TV Come Home

I’ve only watched 2 of the Secret History Of Our Streets documentaries (due to our Humax DVR becoming sentient and trying to decide for us which TV progs we should watch. It has a particular dislike for the Daily Show Global Edition) but enjoyed both. The first one was about Camberwell Grove, which I found interesting as I realised a tiny bit of my history was in there. I used to walk up the Grove reasonably often (it’s near Lyndhurst Grove, which Mr Cocker wrote about) and I remember noticing builders working on what I thought were new build houses, done in an olde worlde style. A guy from Walworth was interviewed about his living there in the 70s and 80s. He was offered a new flat at Elephant and Castle that he didn’t want and he persuaded the council to let him rent one of the dilapidated Georgian houses at the end of the Grove. He split up with his wife, turned the house into an anarchist squat with vegetables and trapeze artists in the back garden. He was eventually evicted and the council sold the buildings to a developer who did them up and sold them in 1996 – which is when I moved to Camberwell.

The second programme focused on Portland Road in Notting Hill. Now, I am old enough to remember W11 as a bohemian area: Rough Trade, Portobello Market, Record and Tape Exchange. I have known people who’ve rented there. I’m not sure when it changed – when East London became fashionable? When Cameron et al moved in? That awful Curtis film? From working to middle to upper class - the old boozer that became a wine bar in the 80s is now a beauty salon for yummy mummies. However, the bankers interviewed didn’t seem happy about living there. One complained that it cost an awful lot to be a banker nowadays - £3mil on the house, chauffeur, private education, togs for the missus. I must be heartless because I didn't cry for them. Another one was fed up of the Hill lifestyle and had moved to the countryside and was living in a shack. This was contrasted with someone who had lived in social housing on the street for 20 years, but now resides in a mobile home on the coast. The programme didn’t mention the middle-classification of council estates, people like me who can’t afford a Victorian conversion but can put down a deposit for a 1950s or '60s bed council flat. That is a new social trend that will probably have repercussions in the future when there's nowhere left for the working class to live.

Of course, the producers were manipulating the average viewer’s class hatred, which seems to have made a comeback, I think due to the recession. In good times, we look up to the rich, thinking we could become like them. In bad times, we see them as part of the problem. Even the most rabid working class/lower middle class Tory surely can't believe that the deficit is caused by the disabled. The increasing gap between rich and poor is no good for anyone - crime occurs not when everyone is poor but when there’s a chasm between the people at the bottom and the people at the top. The posh people up one end of Portland Road were very scared by the last remaining council block at the other end of the road.

Talking of housing and class, Mr Cameron’s ludicrous notion of cutting housing benefit for 25 years olds, i.e. stopping mobility (literal, not social), stopping people taking part time jobs, stopping matri- and patri- cide (I would’ve gone insane if I’d had to live with my parents one day past the end of my A-levels). When I lived in France, everyone under 25 got housing benefit, whether you wanted it or not. Even I, as a) a student and b) an English person, got it. Maybe Sarkozy put paid to that, but it seems such a contrast to Cameron’s vision of the UK as USA-lite.