Fuck London

wektor

Well-known member
nothing shall interrupt my sourdough open sandwich lifestyle.
oh so it's called open sandwich? I always wondered if there's a specific name for that way of serving, in baltic countries that's what people do usually, except you're taking one to go to have at school/work.
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version

Well-known member
"Technology allows developers to control which parts of new buildings people have access to, sometimes with the support of the police. In many tenure-split blocks, access to certain floors is via a fob or key-code, which prevents movement between levels."

🤨
 

boxedjoy

Well-known member
"Technology allows developers to control which parts of new buildings people have access to, sometimes with the support of the police. In many tenure-split blocks, access to certain floors is via a fob or key-code, which prevents movement between levels."

🤨
if you were writing a novel and this was a metaphor your editor would tell you it was too on-the-nose.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"Technology allows developers to control which parts of new buildings people have access to, sometimes with the support of the police. In many tenure-split blocks, access to certain floors is via a fob or key-code, which prevents movement between levels."

🤨
Yeah my friend was in a block like that in Tottenham. It wasn't like any level was more exclusive than another, just that your electronic key only opened the door between the lift/stairs and your floor. It was a weird idea cos it creates loads (he was on the 20th floor or something) of little gated communities with interactions between different floors all but impossible.
 

RWY

Well-known member
Started seeing through all this "gated communities are bad", "poor doors are discriminatory" nonsense peddled by the likes of Anna Minton after witnessing the aftermath of the complete clearout of a friend's flat in Peckham.
 

RWY

Well-known member
The reasonable solution to this problem would be for government to give power back to local authorities to initiate the construction of social and affordable housing on the scale which is presently required in London, thus eliminating these mixed developments which, by the logic of all concerned, don't address the issue of housing for the poor. But we all know this will never happen.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Different question. Because - my guess - we believe that we're equal, we can walk down the same streets and go in the same shops and talk to each other. A cat may look at a king as the saying goes, and that is the case for anyone in public spaces, regardless of how wealthy or posh we are. Dividing up public spaces depending on how much money people have feels wrong - and parts of a building outside the door of the flat have always been viewed as public to the people in the building in the past.
I mean, it's a weird thing, I hardly want to go for a stroll round the floors of a tower block but when I couldn't do it suddenly seemed very restrictive.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
The reasonable solution to this problem would be for the government to give power back to local authorities to initiate the construction of social and affordable housing on the scale which is presently required in London, thus eliminating these mixed developments which, by the logic of all concerned, don't address the issue of housing for the poor. But we all know this will never happen.
What I don't get is how there are no consequences for companies that promise to build, say, thirty percent of their flats as "affordable" (whatever that means) to win the contract and then completely ignore that stipulation thereafter.
 

RWY

Well-known member
Dividing up public spaces depending on how much money people have feels wrong - and parts of a building outside the door of the flat have always been viewed as public to the people in the building in the past.
The interiors of housing blocks aren't (or shouldn't be considered) public space in the sense of, say, a town square or municipal park. If you don't live on a particular floor, what justification is there for you to be allowed access to that floor?
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Yeah I deliberately worded it like that to make the distinction between the bits inside a tower block (kinda semi-public?) and a square which is open to everyone.
I was at my friend's flat in Tottenham and I wanted to take a picture of the Spurs stadium going up down the road but I couldn't get a decent view from his floor, I needed to walk up the stairs half a turn to the floor above - is that so wrong?
What if I have friends on the floor above or below or ten away? What if I want to make friends on the other floors? What happened to neighbourhoods and things like that?
 

Leo

Well-known member
I've heard the argument made that anyone is allowed to access the posh parts of those buildings if they buy or rent them. you won't assume you could walk into football stadium or concert hall without buying a ticket to the event, why should residential buildings be any different? different living quarters have different features and amenities, based on the asking price.
 

boxedjoy

Well-known member
I've been burgled and it's the worst - not just the stuff lost, but the invasion of privacy and safety and the inability to relax. Even five years and two addresses later I'm still reluctant to be out my house overnight. If someone was in my block who had no purpose to be there I would assume the worst, mostly because people don't go to hang around these places without a purpose. If I had a proper house in a street and someone parked their car outside my door and sat waiting I would feel just as uneasy.
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
I think the complaint here isn't really about only having access to areas of the building that you need to go through on your way to your flat, it's about the fact that that access is deliberately and unnecessarily segregated to avoid market rent-payers having any nasty povvos impinge on their worldview and hence reduce the value of their property. I can see how having a keyfob to access your floor once you get off the lift is justifiable in the name of security, but having a whole separate lift system that people have to use to access the floors where the plebs live just in case they spoil someone's high-society fantasy lifestyle is dystopian as fuck.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I've heard the argument made that anyone is allowed to access the posh parts of those buildings if they buy or rent them. you won't assume you could walk into football stadium or concert hall without buying a ticket to the event, why should residential buildings be any different? different living quarters have different features and amenities, based on the asking price.
I do hear this argument and I get that part of the resistance to this idea is simply that it never used to be that way in UK blocks of flats.
 
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IdleRich

IdleRich
I've been burgled and it's the worst - not just the stuff lost, but the invasion of privacy and safety and the inability to relax. Even five years and two addresses later I'm still reluctant to be out my house overnight. If someone was in my block who had no purpose to be there I would assume the worst, mostly because people don't go to hang around these places without a purpose. If I had a proper house in a street and someone parked their car outside my door and sat waiting I would feel just as uneasy.
Yeah me too.... several times. It's horrible of course. All that kind of thing months later when you're saying "Hey, have you seen my Ipod, I haven't seen it in age.... oh fuck".
 

RWY

Well-known member
it's about the fact that that access is deliberately and unnecessarily segregated to avoid market rent-payers having any nasty povvos impinge on their worldview and hence reduce the value of their property.
Why is this a negative?
having a whole separate lift system that people have to use to access the floors where the plebs live just in case they spoil someone's high-society fantasy lifestyle is dystopian as fuck.
How exactly is this dystopian? I honestly do not understand what the Left's obsession is with regards to this arrangement.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
You don't find something slightly unpleasant about the idea of people who will feel that their life is tarnished by having to share a lift with someone who earns less than they do?
 
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