godzilla and the march of the new builds

horsemouth has posted a picture of himself as giant horsemouth (as if godzilla) rampaging round docklands destroying the new builds (people seem to like it). he posted a blue oyster cult playing godzilla clip to go with it (larded with lots of footage of godzilla doing the do - oh no! there goes tokyo! godzilla!). horsemouth is warming to the blue oyster cult's catalogue - they were hard workers, whipped into shape by a good production team (sandy pearlman and murray krugman). 

he also posted a picture of himself in the george lansbury costume. he should probably take to playing gigs like this (in fact he's already done that once but now that he's gone grey it looks even better). 

is this the end of urbanisation? ask PICTET (ostensibly for the FT but in fact advertorial content). of course not they answer. there are winners and losers in the post-pandemic economy but the truth of it is the larger the city is the more its economy is defined by hospitality, and it is hospitality that has taken the full brunt of the covid restrictions, and so the bigger the city the longer it will take to come out of post-pandemic depression. further, as one venue owner put it, 

'we are definitely not through the worst - once the public purse tightens up again, it will tighten up and more so, and that will squeeze our model more than others.'

here the public purse is consumer spending. each shock accelerates changes in employment (and these are not usually to the benefit of the workers). 

retail as well, in the sense of physical high street stores has taken a battering (particularly in the centre of larger cities) and will continue to take a battering. 

construction seems to have marched through the pandemic but it is like a giant lizard, it doesn't know it is dead yet. neither offices, nor shops, nor flats in destination larger cities are going to seem as appealing in future. those detached houses out on developments in the smaller towns those are going to be attractive. 

the interesting thing is that the crash of values in retail space, office space and residential space hasn't happened yet (and indeed it may never come). 

for horsemouth, as one of the generation who came back to the city after their parents had moved back to the countryside, this seems a crazed retrograde move (like planets zig-zagging round the heavens) but it is (of course) all entirely commensurate with capitalist development and rent farming.

yesterday horsemouth achieved very little. he watched pirates of the caribbean  (er. the one with the dead pirate hunters) and then he watched peter sellers in an entirely forgettable caper movie after the  fox strangely directed by neo-realist hero vittorio de sica. it features the following two-liner;

'what does neo-realist mean?'

'no money.'