Beware speculators who wreck our communities

Published: 20 August, 2010

• GO into one of the coffee outlets in Southampton Row, for example, and it is a sure bet that you will see a commuter sitting in front of his/her laptop.

The purchase of a cup of coffee allows them time and space to concentrate on their business and the table that they have “rented” seems to be sufficient for their needs.

Yet Boris Johnson is happy to see high-rise projects continuing around WC1 and WC2 even though computers allow businesses to function as above or in remote and decentralised environments. 

Of course, Mr Johnson, a classics scholar, may be unaware that high-rise buildings increase the price of land and property around them. 

Speculators are never so unaware and they will be checking, for instance, the Oasis and Endell Street. 

After business lunches and heavy lobbying around SW1, they will hope to change the area away from housing and leisure and create an office complex that will become a global icon.

One hundred years ago Winston Churchill, as he was then, said: “The profits of property speculators rise in direct proportion to the damage they do to the rest of the community.”

Margaret Thatcher smashed “the community” (Tony Blair nodded his approval) and now a member of the Cameron clan has a piper playing a lament for that lost (now broken) society as he and his coalition Bravehearts smash it to pieces with claymores and sledgehammers.

BOB DAVENPORT
WC1