|
Murderous London is like old New York By Janet Daley (Filed: 01/12/2004) What is happening to London? Where is the cheerful, relaxed, "swinging" city that I found when I arrived in the 1960s? That was when Chelsea meant the King's Road scene and "debs" (as they were called then) living in what everybody regarded as an enclave of sheltered privilege. Now there has been a murderous attack, at an early hour of the evening, inside one of those very homes that would be regarded as almost ethereally superior. In Notting Hill, they have grown accustomed to being mugged. That is a neighbourhood which, for all its status, is euphemistically described as "mixed". You have your good restaurants and your local dinner-party circuit, but you pay for your chic address by avoiding the Tube station at night. Up the road in Holland Park, some friends of mine have installed electronic security gates outside their house, but that did not prevent a laptop computer - containing irreplaceable research - from being stolen from their car in the drive. Over in Islington, they pretty much expect to be burgled. It goes with the cool urban territory. But somehow Cheyne Row in Chelsea still seemed like another league. If that kind of wealth and influence can't buy you protection from a bestial attack, then who is safe? What chance for the poor on their sink estates who are being terrorised by the local drug gangs, or the middle-class suburban homeowners trying to avoid the routine loss of their possess...
more...
|