Why Ben and Chloe moved to Buckinghamshire

The more I read that Herald Tribune article,  the more thoughts it provokes.  This paragraph is interesting:

While the educated and much-traveled often revel in the surface manifestations of new music, cuisines, religious practices and lifestyles, it is the poorer members of the native working class who have to live and work alongside immigrants, without anyone even asking them if this was the way they would chose their country to change.

It brings to mind one of the archetypes used by marketing companies, as reported by The Guardian.

Ben and Chloe, the "urban intelligence" archetypes, who represent 7.2% of UK households. Young, well-educated, cosmopolitan in their tastes, liberal in their outlooks and unlikely to have children, many Bens and Chloes live in inner-city areas and have high levels of disposable income.

What follows is a typical story of some Bens and Chloes that I have known. 

Ben and Chloe are politically left-ish and they like to live in multi-cultural areas.  They enjoy the diversity around them,  especially the choice of restaurants and variety of ethnic music.  A salsa class during the week followed by a meal at an Indonesian restaurant.  Dinner in a South Indian cafe,  then on to a club to see an Algerian Rai band.  Ben and Chloe go culture-shopping.  They take what they want from the ethnic melting pot and ignore the rest.  When they have had enough,  they can always retreat behind the door of their comfortable apartment and shut the rest of the world out.  This wonderful lifestyle goes on for some years.  Ben and Chloe love to tell their boring suburban friends and relatives just how stimulating it is to live in vibrant multi-cultural London and how they could never move out to the provinces.  Then something happens.  Ben and Chloe have children.

Suddenly,  they can't just take what they want from their locality and leave the rest.  They experience their local hospital for the first time.  They are forced to queue up at the local health centre for the baby's check up with everyone else.  Now the reality of their urban surroundings hits them in the face.  As one of my friends commented:  "It was like Somalia in there.  We were the only white faces.  There were all these women with veils and loads of kids."  Then they start to look at the local schools and they don't like what they see.  Poor results,  behavioural problems and a large percentage of pupils who do not speak English as their first language.  The multi-cultural urban idyll begins to lose some of its appeal.  Ben and Chloe decide it is time to move to Buckinghamshire.

Of course,  they will give any number of reasons for this.  A bigger house,  quieter roads,  better schools,  less crime.  A few will be honest enough to admit that the multi-cultural environment is also a factor but most will not.  They will continue to protest their anti-racist credentials,  even as they abandon the inner city for the posh, white areas that they sneered at for so long.  You can see this happening all over London.  Many Bens and Chloes grew up outside London,  so they have no real attachment to the inner city.  They enjoy it while they are young and then abandon it when it no longer works for them.  Off they go,  out along the arterial roads.  From West London,  out to Berkshire and Bucks.  From North London,  out to Hertfordshire, from East London to Essex.  From South London to Surrey and Kent.

You see,  Ben and Chloe are affluent so they have a choice.  They can afford the luxury of being multi-cultural and then can give it up when it is no longer convenient.  Working class people of whatever ethnic background don't have this choice.  They can't go "a la carte",  they have to take the whole package;  crime,  crap schools and the lot.  So, all you Bens and Chloes,  please don't poke fun at the "racist" attitudes of working class people as you watch them being interviewed on the news.  Remember,  you had a choice,  they didn't.

Comments

[Snafu]

Don't forget that South Bucks also offers selective education, not a single comprehensive for miles!!

[James]

Yes, my wife and I did a dash to Worthing (but pretty working class nonetheless; second highest teen pregnancy rate in the UK, that for being something like 96% white. Sheesh! I say that like I'm proud.)

London is easy with no kids. It's not just a racial thing though. Try getting around London with a baby and no car...Heck, try getting around London in a car! It's a pain in the kiester if you have a kid anywhere in London. Glad I do have the choice to move out.

I have been saying for the past couple of years, though, if the government keeps saying that there is no problem with immigrant assimilation, it's not "disaffected young Muslims", (as the Guardian calls them), we will have to worry about. The BNP and their ilk will continue to gain momentum if the traditional working class party ignores the realities of life on the ground for the traditional working class...

Maybe not in London, which has always been cosmopolitan to an extent, but certainly up North.