Three thousand recycled bottles have been promoted to Brompton Road, which is more than the Budget managed for me.
KNIGHTSBRIDGE, England (The London Prat) – The doorman has told me, with the gravity of a man reading a will, that the Christmas lights are going up on Brompton Road this week. He said it before I had my coat off, which is how I know it is the most important thing that will happen to either of us today.
Morning
I wrote the first line of this entry standing in the lobby, holding a bag of oranges, while Desmond explained the lights to me as though I had not walked under them every winter of my adult life. They are free, they run along Brompton Road, and this year they are made of aluminium and about 3,000 recycled plastic bottles, with 12,000 low-energy bulbs threaded through them. I have this from Time Out’s page on the Knightsbridge lights, which also says the design nods to the Hyde Park Barracks and the Household Cavalry, with hidden horses in it.
Hidden horses. I like a city that hides things in plain sight. It is the entire plot of every London legend I have ever loved, from the ravens at the Tower to the stone nobody can quite explain on Cannon Street. I told Desmond I would look for the horses. He said he had already found three and was not telling anyone where.
Breakfast was a flat white and half a cardamom bun at Crumb and Consequence, the cafe on Brompton Road with one working radiator and a very firm opinion about oat milk. The barista asked if I was doing anything nice for Christmas. I said I was doing the Budget first, and she nodded like a woman who had also read it.
Midday
The Budget, then. Chancellor John Healey delivered his first one, and LBC’s live blog has the greatest hits. A 100 pound winter energy payment for about 20 million households in council tax bands A to D, at a cost of 2.6 billion pounds. A tax break for high street firms. A decision on defence spending put off for another day. The Office for Budget Responsibility trimmed its growth forecast to one per cent and the fiscal buffer was cut to 15 billion pounds.
I am not in bands A to D. I have checked, twice, with the sort of anxiety usually reserved for a lump found in the bath. Desmond’s mother is in band B and has already decided what she will do with the money, which is nothing, ceremonially, in the front room, with the heating on.
What I enjoy about a Budget is the afterlife. For a few days everyone becomes a forensic accountant. Full Fact went through the claims and found, among other things, that the promise to remove gas standing charges “from next year” sits oddly beside government documents that aim for the end of 2027 or as soon as possible after. It also noted that the Opposition’s line about the tax burden being the highest in history only goes back to 1948, and that the comparisons with the Napoleonic and Second World Wars were not supported. So both sides left the building with a small dent in the paintwork. That is the most balanced thing to happen in Westminster all year.
A word on “which economy”. Every party describes the economy as either booming or flattened, and I have always assumed they were describing two different countries. A piece I read this morning on farm.fm, where farmers ask which economy is booming, put it better than the Treasury benches: if you have to ask which one, you are in the other one.
Afternoon
Which brings me, by the only route I know, to Dick Whittington. Everyone remembers the cat and the bundle on a stick and the Bow Bells telling him to turn again. Fewer remember the central premise, which is that a boy walked to London because he had heard the streets were paved with gold, and found them paved with stones and a deeply unreasonable cost of living. He then became Lord Mayor three times, which is the only reliable route to wealth in this city and has nothing to do with the cat.
I walked the length of Brompton Road at three o’clock to check on his legacy. Paving: stone. Gold: none. Cat: one, in the window of a shop selling candles the price of a small car. Lord Mayors: not in evidence. Bottles: not yet visible, but the lamp posts had the look of structures bracing for something.
- One lamp post with a fresh cable tie and an air of anticipation.
- Two workmen debating a ladder with the intensity of a select committee.
- Three pigeons who knew exactly what was about to be hung above them.
- Zero horses, so far.
I took the long way home through the edge of Hyde Park, where the plane trees had finally given up their leaves and a man in a Barbour was shouting gently at a spaniel about loyalty. The spaniel had the face of a creature who had read the Budget and drawn its own conclusions.
Evening
Dinner was soup. I mention this because a friend asked whether the Budget would change how I lived, and I said that soup was already a policy position.
Later I opened the laptop and read about the hundred-pound payment again, because that is the sort of person I am. I have no complaint about help for people with small incomes and large radiators. My only quarrel is with the theatre of it all: the red box, the long pause, the Chancellor looking up at the gallery as though he has just discovered fire. They all do that, whatever the party. Whittington’s story is a pantomime staple, and I have never understood why, when we have a perfectly good annual production at the other end of Whitehall.
I know I am not supposed to say this, but I find Budget day cosier than Christmas. Everyone gathers, everyone is slightly disappointed, someone cries into a spreadsheet, and by the weekend it has all become somebody else’s problem. The lights, in contrast, are a rare bit of public spending that I can actually see. If 3,000 bottles and 12,000 bulbs can be turned into something that makes a wet pavement look hopeful, then the Treasury could ask them for advice.
Desmond rang up at ten to ask whether I could see the lights from my window yet. I could not. He said not to worry, they would be there soon, and that he had been looking at the same lamp post since six. That is the thing about this city. It is a place where men wait, in uniform, for a decoration to arrive, and consider it a perfectly sensible use of an evening.
I will be on the pavement the minute they are switched on, with a cardamom bun and a notebook. If you want more of this sort of thing, there are more of my daily notes at The London Prat, and if you want the other side of the street, the British Onion has a few things to say as well. For a straight-faced run through the week, try London news with a perfectly straight face.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/