> So, London is a criminal enterprise that provides no real value, or is parasitic, or at least it's reasonable to compare it to one?
As a former Londoner, absolutely yes. London as a city is extremely parasitic, especially when it comes to time and standard of living. It does provide value when you're either so poor or find it so hard to get a job that working there provides you enough value, or you earn such "screw you" money that you can afford to live a comfortable life there. But for anyone outside of those groups, it's best avoided unless you're just visiting for the sights.
> What stings the most is that if London didn't exist, became independent, or fell into the sea, everyone else would likely benefit very rapidly.
Almost all regions/cities make below-average contributions to the UK economy. That's because London drags the total way up (IIRC Bristol is the only other that's above-average, but barely).
That's obviously driven by a feedback-cycle that encourages investing in London rather than elsewhere. That does not imply that the rest of the UK would "benefit" from losing London; it would be an economic disaster.
The problem is that governments are focused on raising the UK's GDP, but that's the sum of each region's GDP and London's contribution is so large that it's equivalent to just maximising London (to optimise a weighted sum, put all the weight on the largest term). Perhaps a solution is to use metrics that combine regions geometrically (multiplying each region's GDP): that encourages investment in poor areas, since they drag down the result (rather than simply contributing less; and in the extreme case, a contribution of zero would wipe-out everything else).
We could do the same analysis on other partition too, e.g. multiplying each sector's contribution would make things less dependent on finiancial services.
I lived there for 7 years and I don't share the same feelings. Sure it's not like you live in 1984 but it feels much more like a "police state" in comparison to the rest European capitals.
> a lot smaller than what people consider to be London
Is somewhere like Westminster technically London? It's definitely what people consider to be London, and it's within Greater London, but as a political entity, it is its own city.
> Not one other European city can wield the level of financial and soft power that London did and still does.
Post-WW2 near bankrupt London got where it is today by being the global dirty money laundering capital of the world[1]. Not something to be proud of, although the economic opportunities in London are second to none vs the continental EU, including the tech sector.
Brexit heavily benefited the financial industry there as now they'll have more room to launder away form EU regulators. The ones who got screwed were the small and medium businesses who made honest money by selling their products in the EU and the youth cheated away from free study and travel opportunities. They're now shafted.
At this pace, the UK economy will turn into a Hunger Games dystopia with the financial elites in the London making insane money along with the service industry catering to the Wolf-of-Wallstreet sharks who work there and to the Saudi royals, Russian and CCP oligarchs who vacation and park their wealth there, while every other business in the rest of the country will be struggling, further eroding whatever is left of the middle class and the already underfunded social services.
> To some extend Istanbul was culturally not part of Turkey (something like London and UK).
This is a bit off topic, but I don't think it's right to say that London is not culturally part of the UK. As the only very large city London has its own identity, but I don't think you can usefully assign an identity to the UK or England minus London. The bigger divide lies along age, class, and education.
So Manchester, Bristol, and many of the university cities end up being more culturally similar to inner London. They are all places younger people with degrees move for education and employment and many spend a decade in London starting their careers after finishing their degrees elsewhere, before moving on again to find more space for a family.
Then on the other side of the divide you have parts of outer east London like Dagenham which are perhaps more culturally similar to other struggling post-industrial places like Stoke or Middlesborough.
As a UK citizen I'm not sure that's such a good thing for the average Brit.
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