urban wanderings with economical and political observations relative to matters applicable to, and illustrated by, the estates

horsemouth has started on william cobbett's rural rides - cobbett points to the corporations, to crown lands usurped by various lords, he points to taxfarming and rentiers, 'base and fraudulent paper money, that loan-jobbers, stock-jobbers and jews' etc. etc. cobbet rides out west (kensington to uphusband) past the country houses of the gentry who sit in parliament and have let this happen. likewise, though thankfully without the anti-semitism,  horsemouth finds marshall berman's all that is solid melts into air is useful here. here to horsemouth, in the east, on his urban wanderings, robert moses and his corporations and expressways, here at the edge of docklands, in an interstitial district of swamp and car yards and (at best) distribution centres triangulated by giant sweeping roads, cycle paths, trainlines, tubelines. muddy tidal rivers reveal the swamp underneath.

at goodluck hope a footbridge spans the river and a new luxury district rises where there were once factories and warehouses. everywhere the cranes rise up at their command depositing investment silos of debt serving rental income like alien eggs. deep in the earth tunneling machines enact 25 year plans. the city's population will swell by the million until the floodwaters come, or the future runs out.

and on the estates a sure but steady rinse begins where even the social housing that remains on them is sold or the tenants within displaced by bedroom taxes (the requirement of overcrowding by law), by housing benefit caps, in the long march of possession orders for rent arrears through the courts. above this and as ideology a willingness to seek market value to fund affordable housing, a romance of development in difficult times, where the old stock is either demolished or supplemented by properties at affordable rent. affordable rent itself already falsified by vast increases in housing benefit for those in work, by working tax credits.

oh the crocodile tears up at the unaffordability of it all, dressed in the costume of cobbett, in the sack cloth and ashes of prudence. soon an adjustment will have to be made, perhaps lean years for the investors, creative destruction - the dumb money harvested, their assets picked over, and then returning market confidence, returning investor confidence. the water flows down to the sea, the sea floods in, tides turn, estuary mud stinks but it is soon covered again, the money is loaned out, assets created, rents charged, the debts are repaid with interest or the assets seized, it all balances, it's all cycles, and the money.... the money seems to pervade everything and yet fly upwards into the skies, whether those skies are troubled or clear and blue.

it is a landscape that is making a killing.

and down below (as if on google earth) our camera zooms in on a solitary figure walking, circling round him, with him, close by, watching and silently judging. it is horsemouth. he walks out to bow ecology park to do a little reading, watching the construction round what was goodluck hope, waiting to see if they will open up the riverside walkway at the other end of the park - one that stretches clear down to the tip of canning town. but look at his face, you can see he is troubled, old wrongs trouble him, he watches the water flow down to the sea from this his garden. horsemouth has no horse, he only has his feet, he will take you where he can, and show you what he sees, he will tell you what can be told and leave a silence to indicate what cannot. and then he will hand you over to someone who will tell you something altogether different. he hopes that in the end you will see it his way.