I just got back from a good long trundle. Serkan wanted to mop the floor, meaning it was a good idea for me to leave my flat for a while. I headed over to the Isle of Dogs today. I’ve been going there quite a bit lately. I find it remarkable: it’s like a fragment of Manhattan which has been scooped up and brought over the Atlantic to be plonked down in east east London. It feels so full of energy and dynamism, quite different to anywhere else I know. The area is still very much a building site though, and has been for as long as I have known it. Between every existing skyscraper it seems like a new one is being built. There are obviously colossal amounts of money going into that part of London.

Yet from this, two questions occur to me: firstly, is this all about to change? Regardless of what the Tories claim or try to achieve with their ridiculous budgets, it’s clear that the uk is going through a massive period of economic decline.  Brexit has cut us off from our closest neighbours and London is not the capitalist powerhouse it once was. Outside of Europe we can no longer attract foreign business to invest in the country as we once did. We may still have the big glamorous buildings, but pretty soon I fear  they will be standing empty. And are all the new skyscrapers being built in some weird effort to deny our new reality?

The second question which occurs to me when I think about Canary Wharf is: what about elsewhere? If so much money is going into building up the Isle of Dogs – not to say London in general – are other parts of the country getting the same treatment? Does anywhere else in Britain look like Canary Wharf, with it’s sparkling skyscrapers and ultra expensive-looking hotels? If not, something extremely concerning is up with the UK economy. It’s clear vast amounts of money are being spent in London, not only on building new skyscrapers but also on other infrastructure, such as Crossrail. Of course, without such investment and infrastructure, there’s no way a guy like me could live successfully in a metropolis as big as this. But are other parts of the country being left behind? London seems to have become a big, self-important, global city while everywhere else seems to have been forgotten about. Do we see the same sort of massive construction projects in Manchester, Birmingham or Liverpool that I see all over London? If we don’t, then the disparity between London and the rest of the country has grown to a frankly quite frightening level.