https://tomklingenstein.com/the-uk-is-a-window-to-our-dystopian-future/
Take a walk down my street. There aren’t enough warehouse venues and gang-related killings to warrant the label of “edgy,” and there are far too many two-parents-kids-and-a-dog residences for the “up and coming” label to make any sense. It’s suburban London — those “invincible suburbs” — and predictably predictable.
But look closer. How could there be four solicitors’ offices on a single road? Clearly, they aren’t wanting for customers. Queues of men (only men) spill out onto the pavement. You can see them at all times of day, smoking and shuffling and checking their cracked phone screens incessantly. The buildings they loiter outside all seem to have the same branding. The services advertised are certainly the same: “Immigration law, visa services, overstayers, failed asylum.” You’ll notice that “Rashid & Rashid Solicitors,” the office with the distinctively garish green lettering, has been shuttered. A note on the door tells you it has been closed on orders of the Solicitors Regulation Authority. Googling it takes you to a news article, suggesting it was part of a “visa scam.” A brick has been thrown through the glass window.
Travel further. Visit Oxford, the seat of English advanced education — and site of a notoriously prolific child grooming ring. Go north to Bradford, which has its own university. Like so many others, it has fallen on hard times. School graduates feel that the fees just aren’t worth it anymore, turned off by a depressed job market and post-Covid learning “modernizations” that somehow manage to make a bachelor’s degree an even bigger waste of time. The one year master’s course is still popular, though. It’s relatively cheap, but the university has still set up two recruitment offices in South Asia. It brings students, some of whom don’t seem to ever turn up to class. But they pay. If the university closes, the town will lose a quarter of its jobs.
