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London's 850-year-old food markets to close

bbc.co.uk

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Re: London's 850-year-old food markets to close

#131

Post by surfingdino »

zzbn00 wrote: post #128
philipwhiuk wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The City of London isn't legally reliant on a charter. It draws existence from 'Time Immemorial'. Specifically it exists because it existed before 1189

This is a good and subtle point of law -- The City of London is a corporation "by prescription". But while it was created by neither statue nor royal charter, I doubt the parliament could not end it if it so decided....

That's why the City has the Remembrancer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Remembrancer taking care of the City's business in the Parliament.

Re: London's 850-year-old food markets to close

#132

Post by contravariant »

roughly wrote: post #57
sdwr wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Preserving the irreplaceable value of ..." works great as a personal motivation or a mission statement, but terribly as an explicit rule. It's the same problem as carbon offsets - if there's a formula for converting intangible values into cold hard cash, people will exploit the definition of the intangibles to make money.

This is largely because we’ve built a philosophy that eschews any concept of a collective or a people or a culture or a future.

People keep forgetting that money is just a set of rules we've created for ourselves and not a goal on its own.

Re: London's 850-year-old food markets to close

#133

Post by surfingdino »

petesergeant wrote: post #9

> "It means there’s no fish market for London, which would mean the populace of London would have to resort to using local fishmongers" I mean, or Tesco?

What local fishmongers? Where I live in East London there are only a handful left. None exist anywhere near new residential developments.

Re: London's 850-year-old food markets to close

#134

Post by surfingdino »

qingcharles wrote: post #69
walrus01 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the local government authority for the City of London, which is only the part of London that is within the walls of Roman Londinium Also known as the most efficient and high volume money laundering machine ever devised by man. Do a deep dive into russian oligarch money and the City of London, from reputable journalism sources, and you won't like what you find. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/03/28/how-putin…

The City of London (aka the Square Mile) is literally a world unto itself. Even the Mayor of London is not the mayor of the City of London. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London

They even have their own mission to the EU so they don't have to rely on the UK government to discuss matters that matter to the City of London https://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/supporting-businesses/global...

Think of it as a vertical, focused embassy

Re: London's 850-year-old food markets to close

#135

Post by tim333 »

walrus01 wrote: post #51
cjs_ac wrote: post #2

> The decision to close the markets and offer traders compensation was made by the Corporation's Court of Common Council. > The Corporation will now have to file a Private Bill in Parliament as it seeks to absolve itself of the legal responsibility of running the markets. The Corporation in this case is the Corporation of the City of London, which is the local government authority for the City of London, which is onl…

> the local government authority for the City of London, which is only the part of London that is within the walls of Roman Londinium Also known as the most efficient and high volume money laundering machine ever devised by man. Do a deep dive into russian oligarch money and the City of London, from reputable journalism sources, and you won't like what you find. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/03/28/how-putin…

I'm not sure that much is down to the old City of London as opposed to London as a whole. Most of the property buying mentioned in those articles is in Kensington and Chelsea. Even the Guardian says City of London but when they quote the guy with quotation marks it's "40% of that money comes through London and overseas territories and crown dependencies".

British papers tend to mix up City of London as in the old city and city of London as in the general financial services including Canary Wharf etc. Bit like how 'Wall Street' doesn't always mean that exact street.

Re: London's 850-year-old food markets to close

#136

Post by throw0101a »

tempusalaria wrote: post #127
walterbell wrote: post #8

Need a City quant PhD to invent a mathematical analog of Black-Scholes [1] for pricing and trading the irreplaceable value of culturally significant physical spaces to future generations. Then City-like [2] institutions can compete financially for ongoing preservation rights, rather than a one-time chop shop auction. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black%E2%80%93Scholes_model [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_…

The reality is that these are not culturally significant institutions and most people in London don’t care. Ordinary Londoners rarely use these markets, and they mostly sell to restaurants, and require major financial support. Not everything from the past is good. We don’t still run coal power plants in London just to get that historic smog. They were already planning to move both markets way out of central London (t…

> The reality is that these are not culturally significant institutions and most people in London don’t care. Ordinary Londoners rarely use these markets, and they mostly sell to restaurants […]

Just because most Londoners don't care doesn't make them unimportant. They can provide a useful 'infrastructure' role for allowing this specific sector to run more smoothly.

There's a similar thing in Toronto, the Ontario Food Terminal, that allows various local businesses (restaurants, local grocers / veg stands, (neighbourhood) florists, etc) buy directly from producers without having to go through a middle-man:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_Food_Terminal

There was some worry that the facility would be retired and the land (e.g.) used for housing, but there are no plans to get rid of or relocate it:

* https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-food-terminal...

* https://farmtario.com/news/ontario-food-terminal-distributes...

Given that Toronto is the largest city in Canada, it allows for a somewhat convenient location for producers to sell to a large amount of buyers in a concentrated space.

> […] and require major financial support.

Running a modern society requires major financial support. The question is: what are the benefits to society of the infrastructure in question? Are the vendors not charged rent? Are the buyers perhaps not charged a membership fee? At least when it comes to OpEx do annual fees not cover expenses? The above mentioned Ontario Food Terminal is self-sufficient from fees (perhaps the government helps out every so often with CapEx?).

Re: London's 850-year-old food markets to close

#137

Post by tim333 »

Daub wrote: post #27

What the betting that they will turn in to a hive of chi-chi coffe shops, gift shops and bespoke offices, like they did to Coventry Garden and borough market. Since the early 80s London has been on a death dive, with real life London being replaced by a plastic equivalent.

Probably but Covent Garden and Borough Market are pretty popular.

My friend had a pub next to Smithfield so I used to be down there a lot but the meat market is mostly slabs of meat and associated body parts, diesel trucks and closed to the public. It seemed a little out of place in gentrified modern London.

Re: London's 850-year-old food markets to close

#138

Post by bobthepanda »

surfingdino wrote: post #130
BehindBlueEyes wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no no > "Unlock the huge potential" = "We have big money with big self serving plans coming in." tldr from bsremover too: Smithfield: Big meat market, been there since 1860s. Billingsgate: Huge fish market, been there since 1327, now moving to make way for homes. So a real state take over, pretty much?

Yes. Canary Wharf is being transformed from a purely financial district into a mixed business-residential district. They want to move noisy and smelly businesses away from the offices and apartments.

Smithfield Market and the City of London are nowhere near Canary Wharf

Re: London's 850-year-old food markets to close

#139

Post by hyeonwho4 »

vegetablepotpie wrote: post #112
acadapter wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The things people say in the era where comment fields have been removed from news websites (in the name of "avoiding misinformation")...

I’m not sure the comment fields are considered by media organizations or public figures… like, at all. I remember talking to a journalist about a series they were working on, they said the feedback they’ve gotten has been overwhelmingly positive and no one had anything bad to say about it. The comments on their articles were absolutely negative and vitriolic. I don’t think anyone with a shred of influence or responsi…

For an article like this, the negative comments would be aimed at the people in the article, not the journalist. So the article can be a great (muckraking) article, and the comments might also be vitriolic, and everything is good if the rage is well-aimed.

Re: London's 850-year-old food markets to close

#140

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

walthamstow wrote: post #85
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #64

The same thing happened to Covent Garden in the 1970s - the original site was closed, a new one was opened that over time became very evidently much better suited to being a large scale wholesale fruit and vegetable market. Everybody and their uncle bitched and moaned about it, but I think there are few people today who would argue that London would be better off if Covent Garden was still the central produce market…

But they're not opening a new one! They're closing the current one and telling the traders to fuck off somewhere else

Yo E17 my homie!

Think of it as encouragement to the traders to find their own new location :)

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