amotal chat footnote

[Eric Alan Weinstein]

My wife used to work in one of the office towers in 
Docklands that was recently blown to bits by an IRA bomb,
and she knew quite well one of the men who died, as he sold
her the Guardian each morning. Visiting the site last week,
I realized that I was maybe a mile from where my father's 
boyhood home had been blown up, near what is now the Sidney and 
Jamaica housing estates. As a footnote to this, Blooms kosher deli,
which held on fifty years after the old east end's jewish 
community had left for leafy suburbia, closed its doors
two weeks ago after losing its Beth Din licence. 

Before becoming depressed, however, my wife and I had a walk up 
Brick Lane. We saw Gilbert and George dressed as in their paintings,
walking down the road amid the multi-ethnic throng of Saturday 
shoppers. Then we had an amazing lunch, cheap,delicious, at an 
Indian Bati house, one of maybe a hundred resturants on the Lane.

  As for the complications of London, dear reader---they are 
endless. As John I'm sure knows, Docklands is presently
home to more than its fair share of our modern not-quite-equivalent
of "Lords" and "Ladies"---City dealers, corperate lawyers---in the 
new developments facing (away from the working class and towards)  
the river. Speaking of which---not long ago I spotted a houseboat 
in Chelsea Harbour called the Gravity's Rainbow. But then we're 
facing westwards again.

Home in a leafy suburb reading Cornell West this afternoon,

E.A.Weinstein
Centre For English Studies
University Of London
E.A.Weinstein at qmw.ac.uk

Dennis Jones wrote:
> 
>   Again, London is not like your
> >typical big city.  Even in the Eastend, even in the Docklands, you have
> >and had Lords and Ladies (though more in the past than now) living amongs
> >the dockworkers.  Moving the target offered zero assurance of avoiding
> >ANYBODY.  It's disproved by the very facts of the city.
> >
> >I'm not arguing that the British were incapable of doing what the theory
> >suggests.  I am saying that they were smart enough to see that any input
> >they could impart would have no possibility of doing anything useful.
> >Assuming that the War Office was not entirely populated by psychotics,
> >they had no reason to do what is imputed.
> >-----------------------------
>  I think we've just about flogged this one to death, but just as a parting
> shot are you really saying that they would have percieved no overall
> 'benefit' whatsoever by attempting to move the bullseye thus? Of course the
> picture is, as you point out, far from being a clear cut one and you
> obviously now your London, but how many Harrods branches are there in Tower
> Hamlets land when it comes down to it? Surely percentage-wise  they may have
> judged it to be worth their while . Anyway, who knows, maybe one day the
> details will emerge.
>                      d.j.
> 
> P.S. Actually, on first reading the Gwenhidwy passage in GR, what really
> sprang to mind was the standard explanation given to us in social history
> classes: cities separate out socio-economically as the more affluent do all
> they can to get upwind of all the stench and filth (as well as away from the
> poor, of course). In the British Isles the prevailing winds are
> predominantly westerly or south-westerly so to the West of cities is the
> place to be. Even London, for all its complications, tends to obey this rule
> it seems to me.