Briton slagging off this wonderful city

I think British academic Oliver Hartwich is being a bit harsh on London, slagging it as the world's "rip-off capital". Because from the Australian perspective, it's not just the country's capital that's trying to do visitors in.



Take Stonehenge the other day. Take Westminster, which charged £12 to enter parliament and £12 to enter the Abbey, and then wouldn't let you take photographs. I can understand Parliament, where I suppose it's a bit of a security risk - although not really, since the terrorists could just buy a postcard if they wanted to know what the place was like, and that still wouldn't really help them get through the extensive police presence - but the Abbey? Not where people are worshipping, of course, but the ancient artifacts? The ones which, like Stonehenge, they didn't make themselves and just found lying there where their ancestors left them?

And the Tower of London - £16.50 to get in, and although the big fuss is over "the Crown Jewels" (although all they mean by that is "some Crown Jewels", since the current ones aren't there and most of what is there appears to have been leant to them for advertising purposes out of the extreme kindness of the hearts of the benevolent De Beers company), you can't photograph them because they think you'll somehow "damage" them. Like they have a soul which is stolen by cameras, or like a flash will somehow melt them. (In which case the Queen is in great danger whenever she attends any public gathering at which professional photographers are present, I imagine. OMG SHE MIGHT MELT!)

It's obvious that the point is just to force you to buy postcards, and it's insulting that they expect us to buy all these pissweak excuses as well.


If they could figure out how to stop me taking a photograph of this without buying a postcard, I'm certain they would.

Talking of bargains, I was also highly amused to see them trying to sell packs of two playing card decks for FOURTEEN POUNDS NINETY FIVE. As in, 106 pieces of cardboard manufactured in China for ten cents and then onsold for the total of approximately forty Australian dollars.

However, my real problem with London - and the UK as a whole - is not the expense of tourist venues, or of buying a simply bloody fridge magnet.


This photograph has nothing to do with the post, I just thought it turned out nicely.

It's the fact they can't make chips. Nowhere in this land, that supposedly* invented the potato chip, have we been able to find chips to even the most basic Australian standard. I kid you not. They're all soggy. They're clearly made with ancient oil, so they're a dull brown. Even their KFC chips aren't seasoned. I don't understand how a nation that relies on one particular simple food as their main contribution to the culinary arts can botch it so badly.

It's mystifying. Why are they so completely flummoxed by the concept? Please, someone, for the sake of their constantly brutalised taste buds, teach our antipodean cousins how to make a chip, I beg you.

That aside, we've loved being here. Rome next... I wonder if they can do pasta?

UPDATE 19/8: They can DEFINITELY do gelati.

*According to my vague memory, and I'm not bothering to check Wikipedia. Let's just assume I'm right.

A travellogue? Oh, this blog, how far you have fallen.

Still in London. Tried to touch Big Ben, but since the base is actually not reachable without a ladder and some serious security-fence busting equipment, it was spared my lascivious fondling.


I'll get you somehow, Westminster.

Tried to photograph Number 10 Downing St, but a new layer of fencing and roadworks prevents the plebs from getting to the iron gate in front of the policemen in front of the barriers in front of the impenetrable fortress of scaffolding that protects the bomb-proof front door of the Prime Minister's residence from being assaulted by the harsh eyes of the citizenry. So this is the only photo I could take:


Downing St, according to the sign and absolutely no other available visual clues.

We sat around in St James Park for a bit, which would have been the highlight of the day if we were not ruthlessly assaulted by gangs of impossibly cute squirrels that took our repeated offerings of food and pleadings with them to come and play with us as some kind of an invitation to savagely molest our hands with THEIR RIDICULOUSLY ADORABLE LITTLE PAWS.


No! No! God no! Did you get the photo?

It was absolutely horrible, so we stayed for an hour.

Then we went to Leicester Square and were ripped off handsomely by everyone.

All in all, it was an excellent day, and more (and better) photos from it can be found on my Flickr page.

Next stop: Cambridge, where academic elitists will corrupt our traditional conservative values with their extravagantly magnificent ancient buildings.

London calling

If a young person asks you for your empty coke bottle on the non-airconditioned and rather muggy London "tube", they want to urinate in it. (Why, what did you think they wanted it for? Silly tourist.) I suggest changing carriages - surely they deserve a little privacy. They have to go. Now.

Of course, because the English are a polite and reserved people, the young person will probably turn around so you don't need to see the act you're hearing and smelling. And it's undoubtedly better for the carriage and future travellers than the alternative. In fact, the incident, if it even deserves the name, was barely noteworthy and I probably wouldn't mention it at all if I weren't planning to shamelessly strip-mine this trip for blogging fodder and yesterday had involved anything more blogworthy than the repeated observation that the planet is freaking huge and it takes an unbelievably long time to get to the other side of it. Which you've already tolerated.

I expect the denizens of this ancient city to provide us with some higher-quality anecdotes today, however. That is, after all, their job as carnival attractions on this "Europe" thing the airlines have set up. Hopefully we'll get to see the loveable cockney character before nightfall and he'll charm us with his disarmingly quaint way of looking at the world. Guv'nor!

So, if you will excuse me, it is time to spend the day objectifying Londoners and gratuitously fondling their landmarks. "Big Ben" has a disturbing morning ahead of it.