Dr Johnson famously said: “When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life, for there is in London all that life can afford.”
Well, don’t tell Donald Trump for he seems to hate London, reserving especial contempt for its mayor, Sir Sadiq Khan.
On his recent golfing jolly to Scotland, the US President took time out to lay into ‘windmills’ – and into Mr Khan.
When a man is tired of hearing Trump blather on about everything, he is perhaps tired of life as it is presently being played out, for there is in Trump all that life can ill afford.
When a man is tired of Trump – well, you get the picture, one fuzzy with contempt and corruption (how else do you describe a sitting President using US taxpayer dollars to fund a five-day business trip to promote his own golf clubs?).
Those windmills tilted at by the orange Don Quixote are in fact wind turbines. Trump hates them in an unhinged manner, but then he does most things without calling on a hinge.
At one of his audiences with the press, Trump said wind turbines compared unfavourably to a small hole in the ground. He didn’t elaborate, but he was talking oil, and that ‘small hole’ would need to have a massive oil rig built on top.
To Trump the turbines spoil the view from his golf courses. I’d say Trump spoils the view of every horizon along which he shambles and halters, but there you go.
Anyway, isn’t there something beautiful about a line of wind turbines, touching the sky, and generating power only from what blows by.
Nigel Farage, that Trump Mini-Me, is turning Reform UK against all eco-energy, but then his party is said to be funded by big oil (small man, big oil; small man, big noise).
But let’s return to London. I love our capital city and earlier this year spent a great weekend there with our eldest son, as written up in a blog published on March 10.
There is so much to see and do in London; so much culture; and it is a fully multicultural city. All that culture, all those diverse people – that must be why Trump so often disparages London. The city is the opposite of his low-culture, fools-gold glistering world of tasteless glitz.
And while Trump’s behaviour is killing tourism to the US, London has just been named the world’s top destination for 2025 by Tripadvisor. Maybe he just can’t stomach that.
Why he hates Mr Khan isn’t clear, but it’s a long-time antipathy. No-one would be surprised if race came into it, and Trump last week called Mr Khan “a nasty person” who has “done a terrible job”. He previously called Mr Khan a “stone cold loser who should focus on crime in London”, proving once again that Trump insults are schoolboy slights spat from an old man’s mouth.
Nigel Farage is always talking down London by exaggerating crime in the capital. He does this by referring to his favoured statistical measure: the department of things he just made up or wildly exaggerated.
It’s an odd sort of patriot who so often talks down the country he is supposed to love. Wearing Union Jack socks is no defence either and probably should be recorded in the crime statistics Farage chooses to ignore.
In the far-right conspiracy world – also known, sadly, as ‘the world’ – just saying that London is ridden with crime is enough for that to be true. No dry statistical heckle will silence those who shout.
Sadiq Khan and his team conducted ‘social listening’ research after Trump’s verbal assault in Scotland. This concluded that 94 per cent of those commenting online posted from outside London: 94 per cent as opposed to 6 per cent of Londoners. Maybe it’s because I’m not a Londoner, as the old song almost has it.
Not sure what Dr Johnson would have made of all this. When a man is tired of social media he is probably just tired. I’ll plead guilty to that.
Johnson, by the way, was born in Lichfield, Staffordshire, and later moved to London where he struggled to support himself through journalism. Well, echo me that one, if you replace Lichfield with Cheadle Hulme.
Despite his travails, he remains known today mostly for his Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1755.
“The task took eight years, and Johnson employed six assistants, all of them working in his house off Fleet Street,” according to BBC History.
His quotation about London took less time and is surely remembered by more people. By literary law, those words are also dug up every time Dr Johnson is mentioned.
As for London today, here to close are wise words on Threads from a woman called Jenna Chowdhury. I know nothing about Jenna but like what she has to say:
“London thrives BECAUSE of its diversity, not despite it. It’s not perfect. Racism exists. Inequality is real. But Londoners show up —for protests, pride, for each other. We don’t just talk diversity — we fight for it! Next time someone says multiculturalism has failed tell them: It’s alive & thriving. It’s called London.”