{"id":39377,"date":"2019-09-03T01:00:59","date_gmt":"2019-09-03T05:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=39377"},"modified":"2019-09-02T09:48:33","modified_gmt":"2019-09-02T13:48:33","slug":"qotd-fencing-out-the-london-poor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2019\/09\/03\/qotd-fencing-out-the-london-poor\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Fencing out the London poor"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>

Orwell’s press card portrait, 1943<\/p><\/div>
\nI see that the railings are returning \u2014 only wooden ones, it is true, but still railings \u2014 in one London square after another. So the lawful denizens of the squares can make use of their treasured keys again, and the children of the poor can be kept out.<\/p>\n

When the railings round the parks and squares were removed, the object was partly to accumulate scrap-iron, but the removal was also felt to be a democratic gesture. Many more green spaces were now open to the public, and you could stay in the parks till all hours instead of being hounded out at closing times by grim-faced keepers. It was also discovered that these railings were not only unnecessary but hideously ugly. The parks were improved out of recognition by being laid open, acquiring a friendly, almost rural look that they had never had before. And had the railings vanished permanently, another improvement would probably have followed. The dreary shrubberies of laurel and privet \u2014 plants not suited to England and always dusty, at any rate in London \u2014 would probably have been grubbed up and replaced by flower beds. Like the railings, they were merely put there to keep the populace out. However, the higher-ups managed to avert this reform, like so many others, and everywhere the wooden palisades are going up, regardless of the wastage of labour and timber. <\/p>\n

George Orwell, “As I Please” Tribune<\/em><\/a>, 1944-08-04.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I see that the railings are returning \u2014 only wooden ones, it is true, but still railings \u2014 in one London square after another. So the lawful denizens of the squares can make use of their treasured keys again, and the children of the poor can be kept out. When the railings round the parks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7,41,230],"tags":[374,354,350,91,907],"class_list":["post-39377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-history","category-quotations","category-ww2","tag-children","tag-georgeorwell","tag-london","tag-poverty","tag-snobbery"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-af7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39377"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50761,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39377\/revisions\/50761"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}