One Evening In London: Ambulances, Austerity And The Lies Of The Right

Social media claims that spending time in the United Kingdom's capital is a terrifying experience. Actually, it is in some ways – just not in the manner that some of these propagandists suggest

LONDON HAS FALLEN. That’s what I keep hearing. It’s a dangerous, dirty, violent place, overrun by feral, threatening gangs and no-go areas where the residents speak in strange tongues and normal, decent people are unwelcome.

So here is my experience of one evening in the United Kingdom’s capital.

I went running – you’d walk faster than me. But before I started the proper circuit, I jogged to a small park near home where there are outdoor fitness machines.

While I was doing the first weights, a group of teenagers came in. They were largely mixed race, a couple of black boys and a white lad. They draped themselves around the fitness equipment. A couple of them had a play fight and they were making a lot of noise.

When I went to the second machine, I said to the youth sitting on it, “Excuse me, can I get on there? I’m doing a couple of quick sets. Can you sit elsewhere?”

There are loads of benches around this small garden.

Behind me, a voice said, “Where you from?”

We’ve all read the newspapers. The homeboy challenge imported from the American hood. Gang language. Yeah, I’ve seen the movies, too.

“Liverpool,” I replied.

‘Red or blue?”

OH MY GOD! They want to know whether I’m a Blood or a Crip?

“Red.”

“I’m Liverpool, too,” the boy said. “These are all Chelsea scum.”

Yeah, I’m sure these boys look like a nightmare to Reform types who buy into the politics of fear. In reality, they were nice kids. Teenage boys invariably look intimidating. Christ, you should have seen me and my mates at 17.

Then I went for the run. Coming down Horse Guards Road beside St James’s Park, I heard a huge bang in front of me. A girl had fallen, hit one of the trees really hard and was having a fit. I asked if I could help. The man attending to her said “phone for an ambulance.”

It was a grim experience, which I would compare to phoning Virgin Media about a broadband issue. The person at the other end showed no urgency. I explained it was a complete stranger and she was having a fit. “Is she breathing? Is she conscious?” I was asked repeatedly.

“Is she pregnant? Is she a diabetic?”

Well, I don’t know. But I do know she’s hit her head, her face is buried in the ground and I’m a stranger.

“What’s her name.” By now I was expecting to be asked the first, third and ninth letters in her password.

Now, I’m being polite but in my mind I’m screaming I DON’T FUCKING KNOW! I’M OUT FOR A FUCKING RUN! A STRANGER HAS FALLEN BADLY AND IS HAVING A FIT! SHE’S NOT SPEAKING AND SHE NEEDS HELP.

Deep breath, remain calm. I explain.

“Date of birth?”

This is a 999 call? It feels like an outsourced, offshore call centre.

“Look, I don’t know. She has visible injuries on her head, she is conscious and speaking now but obviously disoriented and probably concussed. Can you get an ambulance on the way and we can get these details afterwards?”

“Let me do my job,” the person said, nastily. Thank fuck it wasn’t a heart attack.

In the end, they told me the girl should make her own way to an “urgent care centre” and, if she was struggling, to phone 111.

No, London hasn’t fallen. And this poor girl’s collapse showed how far the UK has fallen.

A decade and a half of austerity – served on top of the selloffs, deregulation and the ‘there-is-no-society’ ethos of the Thatcher years – has ruined everywhere, never mind the capital.

Economic uncertainty makes people worried and causes them to look for scapegoats. The nation feels nastier.

As for immigrants, London is full of them – it always has been. The identity of the place has been shaped by Huguenots, Irish, Eastern European Jews and more recently the Windrush generation and waves of people from across the British Empire. Those from the Caribbean and the Indian subcontinent were invited in to fill jobs that would otherwise remain empty.

Who cares? After all, I’m hardly a local.

Where I live, within a mile of the Houses of Parliament, I’ve seen different types of newcomers in the 27 years I’ve been here. Round here, they tend to be rich.

In the 1990s, it was Russians. The French came in the 2000s. At the moment, it’s Chinese.

There are less white Londoners – “indigenous” to the morons – than ever. There’s a reason for that. They bought their council houses during the Thatcher era and sold them at a massive profit to move to leafy Surrey, Essex, Kent and Middlesex. Now they want to recast their suburban dream as white flight. Outrageous. They couldn’t wait to make an upwardly mobile move and didn’t give a rat’s arse who filled their houses as long as the price was right.

Like any city, there are problems. The effects of austerity are visible everywhere. Homelessness has mushroomed. The disadvantaged and mentally ill have been cut loose by the system. In the 2010s, there were relatively few people living on the streets – there shouldn’t be any in the shadow of Big Ben. Now, there are scores of them. There are small tent villages close to Lambeth Bridge, 600 yards from Parliament. Desperation has been Britain’s biggest growth industry over the past two decades.

On a night just after Christmas two years ago, I saw someone digging in a bin and eating a discarded yogurt with his fingers out of the plastic cup. A few weeks later, a man crawled out of a clothing recycling skip that had a drawer designed to stop people getting into it. He was risking his life for rags.

As someone who regularly walks the streets of London in the early hours of the morning, it’s a remarkably safe city. There will always be incidents, though.

The lady who serves me at the off licence saw a youth produce a huge blade from his jacket while she was smoking outside the shop. By the time I got there, five minutes later, the police had swarmed the area. You couldn’t move for coppers for the rest of the night.

That didn’t chime with the theory that the Met have retreated from the streets. The response was reassuring.

Yes, London has deteriorated in the time I’ve lived here. The cause is not immigration or foreigners. House prices and rents have spiralled. Public services have declined – make sure you have your checklist ready before you need an ambulance.

The Right always encourage people to look at social problems through the wrong end of the lens. They will highlight commuters bunking the tube to make everyone angry.

Billionaires in positions of power sending their money offshore and evading taxes? Who notices? Companies transferring profits to create an artificial loss and receive tax credits from the Government? Most people don't even know it's happening.

There will always be young scallies trying to avoid paying on public transport but when people feel wealthy, they’ll happily spend on their travel. Shoplifting is up? Only a tiny minority steal for fun: few will risk prosecution and humiliation if they’ve got cash in the bank. The homeless are a problem? Well, give them a home.

If you provide opportunity to those from disadvantaged backgrounds and encourage aspiration in communities that feel lost, there will be positive results. Children start to believe they can escape the restrictions of their birthright and adults crave the chance to break the bonds of their straightened circumstances.

The profits before people contingent don't like this sort of thinking. Too many British politicians find it easier to foster division.

If you say, “I want Britain back,” what exactly do you want? Let’s be frank. Most who repeat this stupid phrase mean they want rid of non-whites and foreigners.

Yet there is another way to approach this phrase. I want back the Britain where public services were owned by the country – power, water, transport. And who sold all that off? Thatcher’s Tories. Tony Blair’s Labour and Keir Starmer’s government continued that dishonourable tradition instead of reversing it.

I want the nation I remember, where hardly anyone slept on the streets, there were no tent villages in one of the richest cities in the world and council housing was available without a lifetime on a waiting list.

I want back a place where an ambulance would come without a cost-analysis expert on the other end of a 999 call deciding whether a young woman in a bruised and vulnerable state should make her own way to A&E.

No, the young multiethnic kids in London are not the problem. There are no no-go zones. It’s one of the safest capital cities on the planet.

Don't believe the lies of those who never come to London or those who are using the mythology to provoke hate.

The real issue is the reluctance of those in power to spread the wealth around. Poor people are more likely to commit more crime, that's obvious.

Making people poorer makes everyone less safe. Wherever they live.