This last week has revealed new depths of the quality of UK
financial institutions, namely the revelations about the Co-op Bank and its fatuous chairman. This
news is hardly a surprise. When I was at school nobody of any intelligence
wanted a career in finance, and the only person I knew who became a banker
obtained one ‘O’-level at the second attempt, and that was in woodwork. He was,
as far as I know, basically honest, though, merely not very bright. We keep hearing how important it is that our
bankers don’t run off to Frankfurt or Hong Kong or somewhere, but really, who
needs them?
What is surprising, though, at least to someone of a sensitive aesthetic disposition, is the way that the City of London has been allowed to erupt with massive, bulky, bizarrely shaped excrescences of no recognisable geometry, containers for financiers, placed so as to cause maximum visual offence, as per the illustration above. Who has permitted this? Has Boris fallen down on the job (as it were)?
Where’s the Luftwaffe just when you need them? Frankfurt
and HK have hideous skylines already; let the bankers go there and let us have
our City back, free from shards and spikes, gherkins and gonads, cheesegraters and mutant mushrooms.
On other points – “Tourist
In Your Own Town” is delayed while I try to understand US tax requirements
(useless financial bureaucracy again), and the painting of Kensal Town,
referred to in the previous posting, is nearing completion, and will be
featured very soon.
