Author, journalist and blogger Cory Doctorow is leaving London and taking his family to Los Angeles:
The short version is, we want to live in a city whose priorities are around making a livable place to work, raise our family, and run our respective small businesses. But London is a city whose two priorities are turning itself into a playground for the most corrupt global elites who are turning neighbourhoods into soulless collections of empty, high-rise safe-deposit boxes in the sky; and continuing to encourage the feckless, reckless criminality of the finance industry (these two facts are not unrelated) …
… We’ve seen the writing on the wall: this is not a city for families. It’s not a city for people running small firms. It’s not a city for people who earn their living in the arts. We’ve given it the best we have, and we’re getting out because we can.
On Thursday (2nd July) Forest Gate North Labour party is hosting a public meeting at Coffee7 on ‘Changing London’. The city is in a turbo-capitalist induced death spiral. Unless we take action now London will become a hollowed out zombie city.
forestgatedotnet 
I can’t believe anyone would think LA a better place to live unless they were rich and privileged in the first place. The use of guns and the racism of the LA police force makes London look like Shangri La. As for it not being a city for those in the Arts, try living outside London. The subsidies the arts get in London are completely disproportionate to the rest of the UK. I think London will be well rid of corny Doctorow and the elitist views he has.
I find it extrordinary that [newish, it’s a fuzzy set] Labour who have done plenty to encourage this themselves are now ‘hosting a public meeting’ in a cutesy-pie white-chattering-classes rabbit hole in E7. I have no idea whatsover what this is meant to achieve except maybe some Guardian style sefl-righteousness?
Sorry, been racing in Dagenham last night, in the heat, legs very sore and blood sugar, electrolytes very, very low. Mega-grumpy, therefore.
Hugh, I had a similar feeling and this Doctorow chap comes across as an idiot. Not a Londoner, doesn’t understand London and LA is welcome to him and his whinging, whining attitude. Why the Labour Party is hosting such a stupid meeting is beyond me and confirms that my decision to quit the Labour Party after 34 years membership was the right one. White chattering classes just about sums them up.
To be clear – it was me that connected Cory Doctorow’s piece to the Changing London/Forest Gate North event, which had been arranged sometime before he wrote it. It’s simply a coincidence of timing.