Professor Goodwin goes to London

Or: The Heart of Darkness 2

These things happened to me in London yesterday but are depicted here as seen through the eyes of Professor Matthew Goodwin.

I walked to the tube station. In the lift a young woman – quite possibly not British – nudged into me with her backpack and smiled at me while apologising as if to say “this is our lift now” – as well she might, nearly half the population of this borough not being born in England.

On the tube train all looked superficially clean, but when the muscular though swarthy young man opposite me lifted his foot there was a piece of silver paper under his shoe. He did not pick it up and none of the other passengers dared approach him and demand that he should. Would this have happened in 1950?

At Warren Street tube there were three dark people loitering who were obviously part of a begging crime ring. I pulled my sleeve down to cover my Fitbit.

A group of noisy American students very nearly jostled me on the pavement. They went into a place displaying the legend “Pret A Manger”. Is it asking too much to have shop signs in English? Then I passed Catalina’s Mexican restaurant, the German Doner Kebab and Grill restaurant and a falafel stand. Nowhere could I see an establishment offering traditional White British jellied eels. Straightforward discrimination.

I hurriedly dictated the above into my phone, looking around anxiously in case I was mugged. Fifty years ago no one was mugged for their iPhone. That’s Sadiq Khan’s London for you.

I passed a Bulgarian-looking street cleaner with his cart in Fitzroy Square but two blocks away on Hansen Street there was a big piece of wind-blown bubble wrap. Then round the next corner there was another Bulgarian-looking street cleaner. What are these people paid for?

On a railing was a poster for the “Fitzrovia arts festival 2025” The programme featured piano music by a Pole but did not include the national anthem.

There was an ambulance parked outside a University of Westminster building. No one around. Odds are that it was an overdose. Or murder.

Into the BBC. There were two Black security people in the reception area. The woman said hello in an accent that marked her out as African. Probably from Gambia. A third security guard - Asian looking (Sri Lankan at a guess) - said “good afternoon, sir and have a lovely day”. Fine, and a reminder of the benefits of empire, but couldn’t an unemployed indigenous person be doing that job?

I had my meeting with the producers of the programme I present. One went to Cambridge; another was talking about his son’s university choices. They were talking about Iran and neither mentioned our left-behind seaside towns. Do these people of the New Elite have any idea how the rest of the country lives?

Walking back to the tube and on the corner of Clipstone Street a very lithe young woman – Maldivian by her looks - in a leopard skin dress was doing a dance in front of her iPhone. She was alone and strangely unaware of the risks she was running of serious sexual assault.

I passed the “boys boys boys Gallery and Café” with obviously homosexual photographs visible through the window if you looked hard enough. In better times cafes were for everyone and featured pictures of Swiss mountains.

There was an ad attached to litter bin advertising a “Happy Hour: £5 pints or two margaritas for £12”. Drunk for a penny, dead drunk for tuppence. That’s London today.

Back in Warren Street a Somali-looking DPD man was delivering heavy boxes where in better days people would have gone to a store, met the salesperson face-to-face and then carried the box themselves back to their car. The elite calls this progress; I call it the death of community.

Outside the McDonalds on Tottenham Court Road there was a homeless man sitting covered with a blanket, but he is not one of the white tramps of my childhood with their gloriously unkempt beards, fascinating wild eyes, trousers held up by string and their natural smell of wee. My aliendar suggested he was Angolan.

I walked beside a line of rental bikes taking up what would have been prime parking space: a reminder of the mayor’s war against the motorist. A young father strolled past carrying a toddler. In the middle of the day. Where is the child’s mother? Ten to one she’s on the game.

Example of disfiguring graffiti on the Northern Line

Back on the tube. No graffiti true. But a sign above the seat read “hold the handrail”. Why would anyone need to be told this? Probably because modern Londoners are likely to be drug addled or traumatised by being forced to endure another day in this hellhole.

And of the five of us who were in the carriage I was the only one who was seriously White - and frankly these days I’m not even completely sure about me.

When I finally got home I did a quick check to make sure that no one had pinned an “I am a c***” note to my back. This time they hadn’t. London is SO over.

The ludicrous extended X post that suggested this parody can be found under this handle:

Matt Goodwin⁦‪@GoodwinMJ‬⁩