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I do not understand the point of this post in the “culture war roundup” thread.
This just reads like a travel blog. What are you getting at here? This seems like a lot of words to say: “I am Indian. I went to London and it was more expensive than last time. There are fewer English people here than last time I was here.”
What would your ideal follow up comment to this look like?
My follow up comment would simply be "I am appalled that you sat through the plant-fucking thing three times."
Just three? I was there for several hours, and if the blurb was accurate, the damn thing looped every 17 minutes.
Rest assured I quickly stopped paying much attention.
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The south Asian presence, The art show, the price jumps, and the juxtaposition of a closed Canary Wharf hotel hosting asylum seekers jumped out at me. That said, it didn't read like the culture war was central, but rather the backdrop for a humorous post about someone's trip to London.
I laughed at this. It reminds me of when people used to comment "Imagine the smell." when looking a certain images, and then others would get creative and say the same thing but use different sentences like, "Contemplate the aroma."
One is also reminded of the increasingly-roundabout euphemisms for a second American civil war: it started with “the Boogaloo”, then moved on to near-homophones like “big luau” and “big igloo” before metastasizing into convoluted synonyms for the latter (cf. “ice housing of tremendous proportions”, “absolutely mammoth Polynesian festivities”)
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Really? If you insist, I can actually mug someone in Bromley, a racially-motivated hate crime will, I hope, count as CW.
I think you're missing several clear culture war elements that run throughout the post. Let me point out what I see, I have an advantage courtesy of writing this post, and also having functional, albeit myopic eyeballs:
The observations about London's demographic transformation ("It has more Mirpuris than Mirpur, and more Bengalis than Bangladesh") directly engages with ongoing debates about immigration and cultural change in Britain. I acknowledge my 'privilege' in being able to say it so bluntly at all.
Critiques of modern art or post-modernism in general are hardly new, but they're still entirely relevant. I went into detail on how the Tate is the best parody of itself that one could hope for.
The economic observations about London pricing aren't just complaints from an inept tourist, can't you see the link topolitical debates about housing costs, wage stagnation, and quality of life? When noting that doctors are striking and that London's pay premium doesn't match its cost of living, that's quite explicitly touching on healthcare policy, the failures of the NHS and urban planning issues that are very much culture war.
The asylum seeker hotel conversion mentioned is an explicitly political topic that's been contentious in British politics. The speculation about it connects to real debates about immigration policy and resource allocation. I can only repeat that people are rioting over this as I speak.
Even the class observations throughout - from Bromley's safety to Canary Wharf's demographics to the woman pawning her ring - what do you think they say about inequality, social mobility, and economic stratification that frequently appear in culture war contexts?
It's both travelogue and cultural commentary precisely because I'm observing British society through the lens of someone who's both insider and outsider, which gives it analytical value beyond mere tourism reporting. The culture war elements are everywhere, interspersed with what I deem to be illuminating (or at least funny) experiences, and I don't see how one can miss them.
If this wasn't enough, the CWR thread also, at least from established precedent, allows just about anything that is high effort. If I'm in violation, I'll turn myself in to the other mods and await sentencing. If I were you, I wouldn't hold my breath.
I never made such a claim, because whatever demographic change happened in a mere three years wouldn't be obvious just by looking.
Edit:
You asked what an ideal follow-up comment would look like. I suppose it would be someone engaging with one of those specific threads. For instance:
Someone arguing that my take on the Tate is philistine and I'm missing the point of conceptual art. I would be very skeptical of such a claim, but I'd engage with it.
Someone offering a counter-narrative on social trust in a neighborhood like Bromley. We've got plenty of Londoners on this site, and in this thread.
Someone with more economic expertise explaining why my "pint index" is a flawed metric or offering a better explanation for the price discrepancies. This has at least partially happened already.
Someone sharing their own experience of the "vibe shift" in London over the last few years.
If I'm wrong about anything, I seek to be corrected. I'm not wrong about this being CW, at the very least.
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The rules for what's allowed in the CW thread have always been extremely loose.
It would probably be good to encourage people to create more threads outside of the CW though, because then people might actually start looking at the non-CW threads more often!
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