Live data from Hacker News

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

bbc.co.uk

51–60 of 300 posts

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

#51
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-putins-oli...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/14/nearly...

https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2022/02/04/...

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

#52
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 Parliamentary Bill may very well not pass, in which case the Corporation may be in something of a pickle. I think it's highly unlikely that it would fail.

True, but it would definitely be funny.

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

#53

It's interesting to see how cities are handling the increasing bifurcation of wholesale and retail markets. In Sydney, the current Fish Market is a grotty assemblage of small warehouses in what's now a prime waterfront location of the city that has become an unlikely tourist attraction, but still serves the wholesale market. They're building a new one right next to it that looks far nicer, leaves tourists much less a…

Yes, although it sounds like Preston has / is / will be at risk from developers that own the land and want to build apartments.

The thing about markets like this is that once they're gone, you can never get them back again. My home town, Wellington, shut down the markets at some point in the distant past and have been trying to restart them in the more recent past to little success (think a bunch of cars parked in an uncovered car park trying to sell vegetables).

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

#54

> "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?

Which many people call “Tesco’s” for some reason. I had to read your comment twice to spot the issue.

Because the name is a contraction of T. E. Stockwell and Jack Cohen.

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

#55
Smithfield features quite heavily in “Great Expectations”. Dickens hated the place. He subscribed to a theory that a city needed good circulation, which meant that things that obstructed traffic were considered bad, and Smithfield was hugely stationary and snarked up everything around it.

Of course, he had no concept of the circulation of money as being interesting and important to the “health” of a city, but most economists since Marx do.

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

#56
post #24

Statement from the City of London Corporation which is closing them down: > Chris Hayward, policy chairman of the City of London Corporation, said the > decision represented a "positive new chapter" for the markets as it "empowers > traders to build a sustainable future in premises that align with their > long-term business goals". This is a great statement. Like firing people to free them up to find jobs that better…

Christ, yeah - I came here to post the same quote. What kind of horrific shit does one need to go through in life to become capable of uttering that kind of horseshit with a straight face?

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

#57
post #41

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_…

"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.

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

#59
Farringdon station happens to be where the Thameslink line from North to South London, intersects with the East to West Elizabeth line.

As the Elizabeth Line was being finished I realised that the whole area around there is going to change hugely.

Mind you if that’s the case the station would need to be rebuilt.

The article discusses converting the market to a social space to make the most of the new Museum of London.

Am I missing something, I would have thought the new Museum of London would open as the Old one closed, not a year or so later.

And how on Earth is a new market in Dagenham spec’d as costing a large fraction of a billion quid?

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

#60
When money is all that matters, it makes sense (to first order) to push out everything that seems to lose money and is purely cultural.

This is the machine winning.

To second order(s) and above, erasing culture reduces the desire of folks to live and prosper in the first place.

Post reply on HN