Week 33: Let London Shake
Week 33: Let London Shake
Libraries, cultural similarities, music and scorn
I’ve been in London for a couple of weeks now. Mostly I’ve been working each day from the British Library (above). Being on the move so much, I spend a lot of time in libraries, this is far from my favourite. Having been built in the 1970s, the building itself isn’t particularly spectacular. Somehow it has been heritage listed, for reasons those with a keener architectural eye than mine must understand.
Prior to the mid-1970s, the library shared a space with the British Museum. Recently the museum has restored the original domed Reading Room – reopening several weeks ago – which looks to be a magnificent space (from photos on the internet, see below). But the queues to get into the museum itself have dissuaded me from seeking to use it. Maybe I’ll make the effort this week, as obviously it would be an incredible sight to witness firsthand, and an amazing place to work from.
What I have been enjoying about London has been the cultural similarities that may seem insignificant, but I deem important. To be in a land – like Australia – where public toilets are free is quite literally an incredible relief. Both continental Europe and Scandinavia make you pay for public bathrooms. As someone who drinks a lot of water and has a very small bladder, it is very costly to leave the house. However, there is also an ethos here. People need to use the bathroom. It is as vital as water and oxygen, and so should be considered a public good that is accessible to all. For all their numerous sins, this is something Brits and Australians have got right.
Alongside this, there is the delight in being in a society that understands that salt and vinegar crisps (chips) are a essential food group.1 In Sweden there is one brand that make salt and vinegar crisps, but they’re not very good. So I’ve been ploughing through bags of crisps, assessing which is the best brand. While several are very good, I’m confident that an Australian brand called Red Rock is objectively superior.
Alongside tastebuds, it is also good to be in a society that has a noticeable disregard for pedestrian rules. In Sweden crossing against the green man – or not at a designated crossing point – is likely to bring about the entire collapse of Swedish society. However, the green man is a coward. He’s far too cautious and has no respect for my need to be moving quickly at all times. Here, as in Australia, pedestrian rules are suggestions only.2 People trust their own ability to judge both their own leg speed and the speed of oncoming traffic and calculate what is safe. This should be a basic life skill. No-one needs the state to help them with it.
While Australians and Brits might be a bit looser on crossing roads, London’s approach to rubbish collection is a little too loose and would never be tolerated in Australia. Rather than household bins that are collected on a certain day of the week, here you just throw a bag of rubbish on the footpath whenever you feel like it and eventually someone will come and take it. But in the meantime, birds will come and rip open the bags and scatter the rubbish across both the footpath and the street. It is, quite frankly, sheer lunacy.
I did manage to make it out of the library to attend a PJ Harvey concert on Sunday night. Fortunately, a friend had a spare ticket, and invited me along. Although I have tapered off as a fan in recent years, it was still worth going. And I was glad that she played a few songs off her first two albums Dry and Rid of Me – two absolute ballsack shredding records that governments should issue to all teenage girls.
And one final note on an article I wrote this week for The Diplomat. Former Australian prime minister, Paul Keating, has grown tired of being a retired politician in recent years and decided to insert himself into – and against – Australian foreign policy. Given his former position he can garner a lot of attention by doing so.
What Keating has been displaying recently is the most appalling disregard for the people of Taiwan. Having been to Taiwan twice this year, I have a deep fondness for the country and bristle at anyone who wishes to throw them to the wolves of the Chinese Communist Party.
So I wrote a piece pushing back on Keating’s ignorant and heartless pronouncements:
In modern parlance, Taiwan, to Keating, is an NPC – a non-player character. It is, in his view, a state that has no legitimate right to its own agency. It sits idly there in the Western Pacific waiting to be interacted with by the “main characters” – on whom it is entirely dependent. Given that Keating once led a country that could also be considered an NPC in this line of thinking, he has an extraordinary lack of empathy for smaller states and their people.
Most people who believe themselves to be “grand strategists” as men like Keating do are obsessed with the machinations of great powers. There’s an instinct that this should be the only real concern of “statesman” – and believe themselves to be playing a larger game of chess.
Of course, it is actually true statesmanship to think about those with lesser power, and how their security and prosperity can be improved.
Australia has a unique dialect that refers to both crisps as chips, and chips as chips (what Americans call fries). I prefer to distinguish by using crisps, but obviously in Australia context is key. Of course, there may be scenarios where you are eating both simultaneously. And you’d be having a fantastic time if you were.
In general, Australians LOVE rules. We’re a nation of cops. But with crossing the road we still maintain a bit of convict spirit.