England has an incredible density of history and historical characters. And the English do a good job of playing this up by affixing blue plaques to buildings associated with famous people.

I can remember getting off the plane in 1980 and walking through Chelsea and the first blue plaque I saw was doomed polar explorer Robert Scott’s.

It would be fun to have these blue plaques in a historic personage-rich section of SoCal, such as West Hollywood: Igor Stravinsky lived here, Arnold Schoenberg lived there. As Alexander Payne has pointed out, by this point Los Angeles has a surprising density of cultural history locations.

But the blue plaque idea wouldn’t work as well in L.A. as it does in London because most celebrities have lived hidden away up in the canyons.

There hasn’t been much of an ideological test to getting a blue plaque. Here’s Karl Marx’s in Soho.

My feeling is: “Oh, sorry about the millions dead, but, hey, look Karl Marx lived here!”

And you don’t even have to be a very important personage. For example, cartoonist Ralph Steadman, best known for illustrating Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, has a blue plaque.

But while Karl Marx is fine, Enoch Powell is, apparently, not good enough for a blue plaque. From the Daily Mail:

Row erupts over plan to commemorate Enoch Powell’s life with a blue plaque in his former constituency amid flurry of threats to rip it down or deface it

By Amanda Cashmore For Mailonline and Daily Mail Reporter

PUBLISHED: 04:20 EST, 3 February 2018

… Powell, who became one of the 20th century’s most divisive British politicians after his ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech on immigration in 1968, served Wolverhampton South West from 1950 to 1974.

This is the speech that begins, “The supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils.”

Being an immigration restrictionist is unforgivable, especially if you turn out right.

[Comment at Unz.com]