Londra merda – Marco Venturini Autieri

Most accommodation in London includes homes that would be regarded with suspect in the rest of the United Kingdom, would only appear amongst the saddest ghettos within developing countries, and could not possibly be on the market in the rest of Europe.

"It's surprising how at home you can feel in the city", reads this billboard placed in a visibly run-down area of London, above the iconic sign of a tube station (Aldgate East in Whitechapel High Street), at the boundary with the City. The ad was commissioned by Berkeley Homes and displayed by Primesight. A clothing store is visible at the ground floor of the building. Overall, the image focuses on the contrast between the rich shown in the billboard and the poor shown by real London. — “It’s surprising how at home you can feel in the city”, reads this billboard placed in a visibly run-down area of London, above the iconic sign of a tube station (Aldgate East in Whitechapel High Street), at the boundary with the City. The ad was commissioned by Berkeley Homes and displayed by Primesight. A clothing store is visible at the ground floor of the building. Overall, the image focuses on the contrast between the rich shown in the billboard and the poor shown by real London.

Certainly, not with their actual price tags.

“Le parole sono importanti!” (words are important, Nanni Moretti): calling “London”, with one word only, a ragbag of luxury villas and shit-hole flats does not make any linguistic sense, yet it is what the game of post codes does by law, and the slums of South East (SE) may appear on the tourist guides under the same name as the penthouses overlooking Buckingham Palace.

I am finally leaving this cursed land, where millions of parasites pay top money to live like ants, to breathe a heavily polluted air, to grow old while commuting in the public transport, and only because unable to find any other employment, anywhere else, different from servicing and supporting the grandeur life of those few, rich ones (who still breath shit, however).

I see that this whole aberration will soon be over. Already London never appears anymore in the wish list of those who know, and shortly (a few years, at most) the big, wrong name “London” will excite a well different set of emotions, certainly including spite, contempt, and pity.