FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Vice Blog

LONDON - FERAL PAUPERS ARE COMING TO TOWN

If you have ever had the misfortune to accidentally fall asleep on a train and wake up somewhere north of Cockfosters, you will know the true desolate horror that is ‚ÄòThe North of England’. Chipped-tooth vagabonds bare-knuckle fight in the street, wheezing children wipe the soot and snot from their faces with rat-hide, consumptive women scrub their doorsteps with bitter tears while the local gangs terrorize hunch-backed pensioners with timber planks and rabid dogs. And things are only getting worse up there. According to a study from the University of Sheffield (itself just a pile of rubble and rusty steel girders, patrolled by armed guards) England’s North-South divide is getting wider, while the poor are getting poorer. A co-author of the report, Professor Daniel Dorling briefly took off his gas mask and gum shield to tell reporters that ‚Äòthe North is city islands that appear to be slowly sinking demographically, socially and economically’. So, to the terror of our Agyness Deyn/ Bertie Wooster hybrid and Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, they're coming down south.

Apparently there are 750,000 caravan-dwelling, cock-fighting, shoeless paupers in London on the waiting lists for social housing. So old Boris has decided to ‚Äòjump-start’ the housing market by building 50,000 new homes in the next two years. Of course he won’t stop at 50,000. By 2018, London is going to have so many brand spanking new homes that the suburbs will reach right up to Newcastle. The tube will have to be extended to take in the whole of Wales. The Congestion Charge will include Nottingham. Leeds will be the home of the new Arsenal stadium. It will cost ¬£8.75 for a coffee in Bognor Regis. And as the North-South divide becomes a mere fleck of blood in the spittle of Fate and our social geography is but a twinge in the kicked bollock of Destiny, we can rejoice in the knowledge that we are all Londoners now.

NELL FRIZZELL