I'm sorry to say that I haven't been to London for many years, but I am pleased to hear that the wages of conservato-neoliberalism Thatcher-Blairism is dearth, quality of public ambience-wise. The Guardian's Madeleine Bunting reported earlier this year:
"What's slowly dawning on middle England is that they've been duped: they were sold a line - a 'fair deal for hard-working families'; meanwhile, another very different scenario was unfolding. Britain became the world's billionaire playground, attracting the super-rich with such a generous tax regime that in April the IMF went so far as to define the City of London as effectively a tax haven. The wealth of Britain's top 1,000 has quadrupled since 1997 and the rate of growth is now spiralling out of control - a massive 20% jump in the past year. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have happily presided over an unprecedented golden age of wealth accumulation in this country - on a par with the US in Gatsby's Roaring Twenties. ... The super-rich are poison to the body politic, racheting up social tensions - most acutely in London, the global capital of Richistan." <http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2110550,00.html>
But it's amusing that however shabby London may get, I suspect the UK will always have sufficient public funds to fart around the globe chasing past imperial splendors, whether tagging after Uncle Sam engaging in world-historical fiascos like Iraq or indulging in unilateral comic-opera gambits like the Falklands War.
At least Portugal, another onetime maritime power, had the good sense to call it a day when its empire shriveled. Not Britain. The UK would clearly prefer to see every public amenity in London turn to dust rather that deny its military establishment the money needed to, say, allow the Royal Navy to make a fool of itself plying the Persian Gulf in rubber dinghies, getting its personnel arrested and forced into ill-fitting Iranian suits.
Carl
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