Welcome to Tower Hamlets

You step down at Limehouse, feet immediately sinking in to an optimal mixture of pigeon shit, chewing gum and old fried chicken boxes. The pavements haven't had any attention for about ten years, let alone any kind of deep clean. The walls are dirty and dripping with water, happily a tree grows half-way up one of them, nature's contribution to the absent borough ecology agenda. Eco-what? Is that like fried chicken?

There are steel railings everywhere, creating ugly mugger-friendly corridors and carrying the council neo-Stalinist [via genetic engineering performed on NuLab] message to the subjects 'do what we say, go where we say', don't develop initiative or educate yourselves, you will always be poor and stupid [and vote for us, for the handouts!].

In the dim light [if you have arrived at night, brave soul] there is a litter of contradictory signage everywhere, do this, do that, the word comes down. Denizens of this distressed realm stare at you with suspicion, compare Hackney, this is not the cheery [but romanticised] East End of old. It is 'vibrant' [newspeak for poor, noisy and polluted] and 'diverse' [newspeak for the infantilising, divisive, censorious multiculturalism of the 1980s, abandoned elsewhere].

At least there is something to eat, if you like fried chicken. You will pay for it later, healthwise, so have a cigarette as well. Healthwise [and, of course, this is linked to education and literacy] this is one of the worst parts of the UK. The council is determined that it should remain so, too, they understand clientelism and tribalism and don't understand democracy.

Welcome to Tower Hamlets! Or 'frown, you are now entering Tower Hamlets'.