Back in London, I found a London Paradise called Hackney Wick. There I subletted a
room, until I found my permanent residence. I was living with an actor/beat-poet, a fashion designer, a
singer and two crazy Italians. Next door to my place was a film-maker and a Dj
for example, as there are people of all creative professions in this arena. It is
an isolated community in East London, situated next to the revamped area of where the
Olympic site is being built. It overlooks the new Olympic village across the
Canal. This area is filled with factories and abandoned warehouses, as this is
where much of London’s production took place when England actually use to make
goods. Now it is filled with these creative people in the warehouses, who have
transformed them into loft apartments. You have people in their 30’s who act
like they’re in their late teens. It’s a good vibe, a cool place, removed from
society where you can be forever young! It is also the cheapest, most well
valued accommodation one can find in ‘London proper’ for such a large living
space and a massive rooftop terrace. More importantly for me it is another
slice of London’s amazing landscape that I’m happy I’ve experienced, and it is
probably the most special.
Soon after moving into my new place in North London, I went on a trip to
Paris to retrieve the last of my things in Europe to install into my new
residence. I met with old friends. A sound engineer who had a liking for 20+ years
aged Scotch whisky; a banker from a working class home; a film-maker who has a
short film at the Cannes film festival this year. I stayed with couple made up of an soon-to-be Osteopath and a training Graphic designer. My ‘banker’ friend had college peers who
were all from the upper echelons of society – he was not. He did not have
connections, like for example one of his peer’s mother, was the daughter of the
BNP Paribas chairman. Nonetheless this lad was extremely smart; he even did
some study in China and picked up Mandarin, one of the many languages he can
speak proficiently. He lived just by Place Monge, a very cool BoBo area where I
went out for a drink with him. BoBo is the term for Bourgeois Bohemian. He was
living with his girlfriend here. A BoBo he is not, a BoBo his girlfriend is for
sure. BoBo is characterised by people who are upper-middle class, but vote Left
Wing, buy organic food and generally care about the environment. It’s like a
new fashion – people with money who have a conscience. He though likes money;
he never had much money like your regular BoBo but now he has made it in a
world of big bonuses and big pay-checks, why should he subsidize his income
further when he had nothing to begin with. He accused me of being a BoBo – I
found this to be absurd but I was not surprised. True I have the many makings
of a Bobo – I’m a well mannered, compassionate, observant, 25 year old boy.
Sure my parents have given me everything I’ve required and brought me up in an comfortable stable environment. BoBo though I am not. The main reason being,
though my parents have the class and makings of a Baby Boomer Bourgeois couple,
wealthy they are not. Wealthy in love, yes, in culture too, even in richness of
experience, but never in monetary terms. So my mother teaches yoga and buys organic
food; my father has pledges large sums of money to Africa; my brothers are
vegetarian and don’t buy branded clothes; but this is all due to their morale code
not because they want to adhere to a fashion. My family members are just ‘good’
amazingly caring people (for animals, for the planet, for the impoverished, for
the world in general). Perhaps this social liberalism has rubbed off on me.
However since living in Europe I’ve become cynical about Liberal
Cosmopolitanism for example. I’ve moved further to the Right. Though my family
all vote for the Green Party (a left-wing socially conscience party from New
Zealand), I feel I’ve moved to the Right. Voting for the Left is fine when you
just have to worry about a population of 4.5 million people and there are
enough resources to go around. But when the NHS (National Health Service) in
the UK is hugely in debt for example, and you have to cut social schemes which
are mandatory to the betterment of society – there is a problem. My experience
starts when I initially lived in a housing estate in London. I saw (white
English) families on welfare (for an eternity) and I didn’t like it. They were
wasters; the 19 year old daughter had a kid, the uncle was a coke-head, and they
were given a flat for free, while I paid an expensive rate for a box-room. In
France, on my walk home from the train station I saw the same North African
youths doing nothing, just hanging out on the same street corners smoking and
drinking every day. Inspiring it was not. I have a problem with the EU – you
have Europeans from Poland to Spain who come to the United Kingdom to claim
benefits – though they have never contributed to the society or even have no
resemblance of caring for Britain. This has put a huge strain on the more
developed European societies such as the UK, Ireland, Germany and France to
name a few. This is perhaps why Marine Le Pen, the right wing leader obtained
nearly 20% of the vote at the recent 1st round elections in France.
Yes the vast majority (probably 90%) of Europeans who come here such as the
Polish and the Spanish, come to work, and only claim benefits to get a start in
a position where they can care for themselves. All my Spanish, Polish,
Romanian, and Italian friends work, as most of my friends here aren’t British,
and I love the mixture of people that live in London. But I’ve seen and knew of
many Jamaicans in the area of Camberwell (where I once lived) who didn’t have a
job or were ever going to get one. They are afforded these things from the
British, due to the exploitations by the Commonwealth Empire in years previous.
BoBo I’m certainly not. A BoBo is someone who has lived in harmonious
circumstances, and can smugly look over to the poor and care because there is a
bit of guilt there and makes them sleep at night better, that though they drive
a Prius or holiday in Greece regularly – they still give generously to
charities. I on the other hand have not always had that luxury, once you’re
thrown into the ‘deep end’ you see the absurdity of it all – that my tax
dollars (on my miniscule wage) are making people better off who have never and
will never work a day in their lives. They are better off than me. I believe in
equality. I believe in democratic freedoms. But I don’t believe in supporting
filth. I guess I’m bitter, as I’ve always worked low paid, low skilled jobs,
but sweated my ass off, and have found myself in an inferior economic situation
to people who have never worked. I see a whole in the system and I feel like I’ve
been a victim of it!
Nevertheless, I love my life in London. I’m poor yes, but there are
opportunities everywhere, and experiences to enrich my life every week. Acting
has been my latest thing. I played a lead in a short film which was about a
love triangle. I was in a commercial as an Extra for a Japanese beer. I played
a French Policeman in a 1960’s Film Noir. I had a casting to be a Red Bull
presenter, and also to play a small part in a Bollywood picture – neither role
did I succeed in getting. Now I have an interview for a tour company; I’m going
to be working on a Pakistani fashion show in Kensington; so I’m just generally
getting myself out there in fashion, media, and film! I’m doing things, most things
I’m not being paid for. But the more experience I compile, something will
finally happen where perhaps I don’t have to work another low skilled, low
paying job again!
To conclude this political diatribe, which can be characterized with the
new people I’ve met in my life and the new place of residence where I find
myself. I’ve made a very good friend, a man a couple years older than me, a
Romanian. He has never worked a ‘proper’ day in his life. He has been afforded
scholarships to continue his tuition in the USA, Belgium, Germany, and now
England. This is because he is brilliant. Brilliant at bullshitting to be
awarded such scholarships but extremely intelligent as well. And so the
inspirational people I met on my latest London journey were all his friends,
all of whom were Romanian. Now Romanians have perhaps the worst reputation
of all European nations. It was also fitting that they were arriving on Mayday,
workers’ day, the day that pays homage to all social unions and their workers;
since my move from the Social Left side, I met a group of people who were not
of this class or never needed such an implemented apparatus in their lives. All
in their mid-late 20’s, they were brought up right after the fall of Communism
and the end of the dictatorship in their country. This group of Romanians were
the most intelligent company I’ve ever dined with at a BBQ. They were PHD
students from only the top universities in the world, Harvard, Oxford,
Cambridge, UCL, and one who would be attending Yale next year. Each person had
a 3rd fluent language along with English and Romanian of course, be
it German, French, Spanish, Russian; one guy spoke six languages. I was quite
out of my depth. Even though there were two guys who were not academics, one was a proper
theatre performer who was on a large salary with a theatre company whom he
travelled with in France, and the other was a former successful painter, and
now a fashion designer. These two guys were the real thing. Due to Romania and
Bulgaria being the last two nations to enter the EU, they have been blacklisted
making it harder for them to obtain a student allowance, to be accepted to
universities, to study, to work and generally harder to get government
assistance. So these two guys, from modest Romanian homes, squatted in Paris. Squatted,
because they didn’t have the money to pay rent as they were not afforded any
government assistance. Nonetheless, both have made it out of (technically
speaking) impoverished circumstances. These two are the real ‘Beat’ generation,
the real people ‘On the road’.
See cliff-notes
*1* *2*
Conclusively however, my point here is that, these Romanian academics at
the BBQ, are here in Western Europe because they have the intellectual capacity
and determination to successfully be assertive and participatory in society as
opposed to being a strain. The two Romanian former squatters, did what they had
to, to make it in the society they found themselves. If you come to a country
and don’t intend on bettering yourself I don’t believe you should be afforded a
‘free ride’. These two Romanians had no choice and look how successful they
have begun. Now to be fair, these probably are exceptional cases, and there are
probably many people who don’t make it and end up on the streets forever, thus
causing more problems for society. Therefore the welfare state in the long-run
does more good than the eventual harm that would ensue without it. Such as
having people on the streets having to steal, beg and borrow, because they have
to get by. So maybe my right-wing feelings are not as proven as I thought, and
perhaps I should retreat to my Leftist routes... However, Europe’s most
affluent major powerhouses – France, Germany, and the United Kingdom are
becoming over-crowded and it is on the working class majority who have to pick
up the cheque for those who come here with nothing. The philosophical question
posed here is, is its one duty to take care of those who are in an inferior
position to you even if they don’t have much in common with you (and are
foreign). Should it be a moral obligation of yours? I’ll leave you with this
question that I believe highlights the whole issue besetting Europe today.
*1* - The theatre performer owes people lots of money for debts he has
never covered because he needed money to get by in times of need; now he lends
people money who are in the position he once was – so perhaps this is a vicious
cycle in-itself. Whatever the case may be, he is a man who is experienced much,
and is extremely generous because he knows what it’s like to have nothing.
Another point is, he begged and squatted for many years, but obtained a Masters
degree after four year of study – that is a legend!
*2* - The former painter prodigy sold works for several thousand Euros
at 17 years of age in Romania. He now designs clothes; works in a clothing
store in Shoreditch, and resides in Hackney, while he is preparing for his 1st
year of art’s college. A legend in the making perhaps.
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