Notes from London 1
Oct. 14th, 2008 12:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusA tube ticket to go one stop in Zone 1 now costs £4.
On TV everything seems to be platoons of soldiers attacking things. The only thing that isn't soldiers is chef Gordon Ramsay. But he's depicted at the head of a digital line of chefs attacking pans of food. "Don't let me down!" Ramsay barks at his platoon.
I eat the buffet-style breakfast in my hotel (MyHotel) assuming it's free. Nope: a bill arrives at the end. My two bits of bread and cheese, one orange juice and one tea cost £14 plus gratuity (in this case, zero).
The hotel does provide free newspapers, but only right wing ones: The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mail and The Financial Times. The pink paper has a pull-out Japan special which congratulates the nation for not deregulating its banks. The fact that Japan still makes stuff (Toyota is the world's most successful car company, and Kyoto-based Nintendo has the highest per-worker profitability of any company in the world) makes Japan better-placed than Britain to weather the current crisis.
The cleaner in my hotel is Polish.
British women all have "toxic highlights", peroxide blonde. Sign in Soho hairdresser's window: colourists wanted.
At Boots they have self-service pay stations now instead of human cashiers. You take your purchases to a post, swipe the barcode, and feed cash into slots.
I go into RBS to pay in some cheques. A young black employee cuts off my path to the vacant teller's windows. Can he set up an interview with a financial advisor? There are products that could save me a lot of money. "Paying these cheques in will save me money by getting me out of overdraft!" How much is my overdraft limit? How long have I been with the bank? "£2000! Since 1978!" Eventually I get to the teller window and pay in my cheques. As I leave I want to compliment the young man on his tenacity by saying "I hear this bank has room at the top!" (CEO Sir Fred Goodwin has resigned) but then pause to wonder where exactly the "top" of RBS is now that the government owns 60% of it. I guess that makes Gordon Brown its CEO, and my hungry young promotions man a potential prime minister.
I buy Studio Voice and Ku-nel at the Japacen. London for me mostly means better Japanese shopping than we have in Berlin.
Downstairs at Zavvi, which used to be Tower, then used to be Virgin. The Afropop trend is confirmed by articles in Frieze and NME (which, like me, slags Keane). Modern Painters seems to be finished -- their ad-famished July / August issue hasn't been replaced. (Update: In fact the magazine has relaunched.)
I consider buying Animal Crossing for Hisae's DS, but it's thirty quid. No wonder Nintendo is so profitable!
Zavvi contradicts my rant about the plethora of categories in record shops; here there's just "Music", and within that "Rock / Pop". The extensive shelf space is taken up with multiple copies of the same CD. This aggressive promo is the opposite of the global diversity which was Tower's USP when it opened here in the 90s. Zavvi is anti-diversity.
Zavvi has two Momus CDs, Circus Maximus and the Creation years compilation. Sister Ray has two too: Summerisle and Otto Spooky. So on Picadilly Circus I'm an 80s artist from London, and on Berwick Street I'm a 00s artist from Berlin.
I buy The Wire -- which has a Joemus ad headed "Live gloriously through art!" on page 2 -- in Selectadisk. They're playing a band called Noah and the Whale, who sound quite good.
District Line services are suspended because of a Person Under a Train (PUT) at Earl's Court.
Inflation in the UK has hit 5.2%. The bank bailout amounts to £288 for every person on the planet. "Death of City Bonus Culture" is the Evening Standard billboard. The headline on the paper is "London Property Prices Fall by 20%".
On TV everything seems to be platoons of soldiers attacking things. The only thing that isn't soldiers is chef Gordon Ramsay. But he's depicted at the head of a digital line of chefs attacking pans of food. "Don't let me down!" Ramsay barks at his platoon.
I eat the buffet-style breakfast in my hotel (MyHotel) assuming it's free. Nope: a bill arrives at the end. My two bits of bread and cheese, one orange juice and one tea cost £14 plus gratuity (in this case, zero).
The hotel does provide free newspapers, but only right wing ones: The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mail and The Financial Times. The pink paper has a pull-out Japan special which congratulates the nation for not deregulating its banks. The fact that Japan still makes stuff (Toyota is the world's most successful car company, and Kyoto-based Nintendo has the highest per-worker profitability of any company in the world) makes Japan better-placed than Britain to weather the current crisis.
The cleaner in my hotel is Polish.
British women all have "toxic highlights", peroxide blonde. Sign in Soho hairdresser's window: colourists wanted.
At Boots they have self-service pay stations now instead of human cashiers. You take your purchases to a post, swipe the barcode, and feed cash into slots.
I go into RBS to pay in some cheques. A young black employee cuts off my path to the vacant teller's windows. Can he set up an interview with a financial advisor? There are products that could save me a lot of money. "Paying these cheques in will save me money by getting me out of overdraft!" How much is my overdraft limit? How long have I been with the bank? "£2000! Since 1978!" Eventually I get to the teller window and pay in my cheques. As I leave I want to compliment the young man on his tenacity by saying "I hear this bank has room at the top!" (CEO Sir Fred Goodwin has resigned) but then pause to wonder where exactly the "top" of RBS is now that the government owns 60% of it. I guess that makes Gordon Brown its CEO, and my hungry young promotions man a potential prime minister.
I buy Studio Voice and Ku-nel at the Japacen. London for me mostly means better Japanese shopping than we have in Berlin.
Downstairs at Zavvi, which used to be Tower, then used to be Virgin. The Afropop trend is confirmed by articles in Frieze and NME (which, like me, slags Keane). Modern Painters seems to be finished -- their ad-famished July / August issue hasn't been replaced. (Update: In fact the magazine has relaunched.)
I consider buying Animal Crossing for Hisae's DS, but it's thirty quid. No wonder Nintendo is so profitable!
Zavvi contradicts my rant about the plethora of categories in record shops; here there's just "Music", and within that "Rock / Pop". The extensive shelf space is taken up with multiple copies of the same CD. This aggressive promo is the opposite of the global diversity which was Tower's USP when it opened here in the 90s. Zavvi is anti-diversity.
Zavvi has two Momus CDs, Circus Maximus and the Creation years compilation. Sister Ray has two too: Summerisle and Otto Spooky. So on Picadilly Circus I'm an 80s artist from London, and on Berwick Street I'm a 00s artist from Berlin.
I buy The Wire -- which has a Joemus ad headed "Live gloriously through art!" on page 2 -- in Selectadisk. They're playing a band called Noah and the Whale, who sound quite good.
District Line services are suspended because of a Person Under a Train (PUT) at Earl's Court.
Inflation in the UK has hit 5.2%. The bank bailout amounts to £288 for every person on the planet. "Death of City Bonus Culture" is the Evening Standard billboard. The headline on the paper is "London Property Prices Fall by 20%".
Re: Suicides from financial crisis cause concern
Date: 2008-10-14 04:52 pm (UTC)"The financial stress builds up to the point the person feels they can't go on, and the person believes their family is better off dead than left without a financial support," said Kristen Rand, legislative director of the Washington D.C.-based Violence Policy Center.
Dr. Edward Charlesworth, a clinical psychologist in Houston, said the current crisis is breeding a sense of chronic anxiety among people who feel helpless and panic-stricken, as well as angry that their government has let them down.
"They feel like in this great society that we live in we should have more protection for the individuals rather than just the corporation," he said.
It's not yet clear there is a statistical link between suicides and the financial downturn since there is generally a two-year lag in national suicide figures. But historically, suicides increase in times of economic hardship. And the current financial crisis is already being called the worst since the Great Depression.
Rising mortgage defaults and falling home values are at the heart of it. More than 4 million Americans were at least one month behind on their mortgages at the end of June, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.
A record 500,000 had entered the foreclosure process. And that trend is expected to continue through next year, despite the current programs from the government and the lending industry to refinance delinquent homeowners into more affordable loans.
Counselors at Catholic Charities USA report seeing a "significant increase" in the need for housing counseling.
One counselor said half of her clients were on some form of antidepressant or anti-anxiety medication. The agency has seen a decrease in overall funding, but it has expanded foreclosure counseling and received nearly $2 million for such services in late 2007.
Adding to financially tense households is an air of secrecy. Experts said it's common for one spouse to blame the other for their financial mess or to hide it entirely, as Balderrama did.
After falling 3 1/2 years behind in payments, the Taunton, Mass., housewife had been intercepting letters from the mortgage company and shredding them before her husband saw them. She tried to refinance but was declined.
In July, on the day the house was to be auctioned, she faxed the note to the mortgage company. Then the 52-year-old walked outside, shot her three beloved cats and then herself with her husband's rifle.
Notes left on the table revealed months of planning. She'd picked out her funeral home, laid out the insurance policy and left a note saying, "pay off the house with the insurance money."
"She put in her suicide note that it got overwhelming for her," said her husband, John Balderrama. "Apparently she didn't have anyone to talk to. She didn't come to me. I don't know why. There's gotta be some help out there for people that are hurting, (something better) than to see somebody lose a life over a stupid house."
___
Associated Press Writers P. Solomon Banda in Denver, Joann Loviglio in Philadelphia, Juanita Cousins in Atlanta, Samantha Gross in New York and John Rogers in Los Angeles contributed to this report."