WOW ‘‘Britain is ready to betray the United States to protect the City of London’s hold on dirty Russian money. And forget about Ukraine... The Russians also understand this. They know that London is a center of Russian corruption, that their loot plunges into Britain’s empire of tax havens — from Gibraltar to Jersey, from the Cayman Islands to the British Virgin Islands — on which the sun never sets... The planning regulations have been scrapped, and along the Thames, up and up go spires of steel and glass for the hedge-funding class... Britain’s bright young things now become consultants, art dealers, private bankers and hedge funders. Or, to put it another way, the oligarchs’ valets... The Shard encapsulates the new hierarchy of the city. On the top floors, “ultra high net worth individuals” entertain escorts in luxury apartments. By day, on floors below, investment bankers trade incomprehensible derivatives... Come nightfall, the elevators are full of African cleaners, paid next to nothing and treated as nonexistent. The acres of glass windows are scrubbed by Polish laborers, who sleep four to a room in bedsit slums. And near the Shard are the immigrants from Lithuania and Romania, who broke their backs on construction sites, but are now destitute and whiling away their hours along the banks of the Thames... The Shard is London, a symbol of a city where oligarchs are celebrated and migrants are exploited but that pretends to be a multicultural utopia. Here, in their capital city, the English are no longer the ones calling the shots. They are hirelings.’’ nytimes/2014/03/08/opinion/londons-laundry-business.html?_r=0
Posted on: Fri, 07 Mar 2014 21:30:50 +0000
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