Why did the English equivalent of Occupy Wallstreet pick St Paul’s as the place to protest?
[update: Links fixed 11/30.]
by Stormy
Why did the English equivalent of Occupy Wallstreet pick St Paul’s as the place to protest?
Because St. Paul’s is hand in glove with the City of London Corporation, the place where democracy and light “goes to die,” the place where there is no accountability or transparency for the powerful 1%.
A comment by the protesters: Why are they there, in that spot of London?
An attempt to shed light on the dark heart of capitalism, the City of London Corporation.
Watch the events in London carefully. I am surprised that economists have not commented on what the City of London Corporation. Our banks are there…unfettered by any regulation, any oversight. Goldman and Sachs? You betcha.
The priests and clergy that have resigned have resigned because they know the truth of what this place is—and how St. Paul’s is complicit.
Anyway, this will whet your conspiracy bug…and it is true.
stormy:
Good to see you here again. This sounds like the TIF in Chicago which has the Chicago FED located within it.
Sadly the links don’t seem to go anywhere, or two of them anyway.
The one you do go to, well, that’s Nick Shaxson and Maurice Glasman: both sadly are loons on the subject of the City Corporation.
“Watch the events in London carefully. I am surprised that economists have not commented on what the City of London Corporation. Our banks are there…unfettered by any regulation, any oversight.”
For example, that is entire and complete nonsense. Regulation in the City is exactly the same as it is anywhere else in the UK.The laws are the same (actually, the legal system is England and Wales, Scotland has its own) for all, everywhere.
I will fix the links and try to get Nick Shaxon to come by,,,we communicate on some occasions like you and I do Tim.
As do Nick and I. I’ve shown several times that’s he’s wildly inaccurate about the City. And Glasman is even worse.
For example, Glasman was recently made a peer, a Life Baron (we have different grades of Lords, Baron, Viscount, Earl, Marquess, Duke, in ascending order, the first can be for life or inheritable, the others are all inheritable).
You get to chose your title. So Glasman asked to be made “Lord Glasman of the City of London”. He was told he couldn’t be called that. So he’s charged off into hte most amazing rant (it is published, somehwere) about how this shows that the City is out of control, they won’t let anyone be appointed into a position of power over them and in general starts comparing them to the Rosicrucians and the Illuminati combined.
All of which is most amusing except for two things: firstly, you title as a Baron doesn’t give you power over anyone or anything. Being Baron of the City of London gets you a seat in hte House of Lords and that’s it, just like being Baron of Tooting or Lower Twerton would.
The second is that he didn’t stop to listen to the reason why he can’t be Baron of The City. Because, as a piece of historical detritus, The City has the same ceremonial rank as a county.
This means that there are Barons in the City….there’s one for Shoreditch I’m sure and I know there are several others. Because, you see, a county is a very grand thing and you can only take as your title such a grand thing if you are a very grand peer: an Earl at least. So as a mere Baron you can only have as part of your title a part of The City….
As I say, Glasman’s a nutter on this point.
Shaxson, well, in his book and online he’s gone after the City Cash. At one point he says they own 20% of the City and thus they must be getting billions in rents and where does all the money go?
He failes to note that The City owns the freehold of 20% of the City……and thus they get groundrent on 20% of the City. But they don’t own the buildings, those are privately owned and the rent goes to those who own them.
I have pointed this out to him and he’s mumbled about well, maybe, but he hasn’t really bothered to make public that correction……nor the others I’ve pointed out to him.
Dan,
I haven’t actually seen Worstall’s piece on my book, I will take look out for it. He should send it to me, that would be a good way to ‘point it out’ – he has my email address. I only occasionally read his stuff.
OK. So. Much that I disagree with Worstall on many points, and much that I am annoyed by his love of the Straw Man argument and by his favoured Let’s Distort a Fact and Blow It Up Into a Great Big Misleading Story tactic, and his general unpleasantness, he’s right that the City of London Corporation isn’t a place where you can simply locate and then escape all financial regulation. It isn’t the financial regulator, and that’s not something that I claim in Treasure Islands – though I’ve noticed that a couple of people seem to have inferred it from what I wrote. (I think Monbiot went slightly over the top in his article, though only slightly.) I have made this point about financial regulation quite clear and explicit several times, on my website and elsewhere – here, for instance. http://www.newstatesman.com/economy/2011/11/london-corporation-city
I also have a section on my website that is mostly dedicated to the Corporation of London, where I row back on a couple of significant but not central statements about the Corporatin of London that appeared in early editions of Treasure Islands. http://treasureislands.org/updates-and-errors/ A couple were statements attributed to Glasman where he went a little too far.
Having said all that, the thrust of the story I tell about the Corporation in Treasure Islands is absolutely right. It is this extremely peculiar thousand year old organisation, somewhat separate from the British nation state (and in important ways, quite contrary to what Worstall asserts – perhaps he could point out where corporations effectively get the vote in other parts of the UK, alongside ordinary citizens) with an official (yes, official) and well-financed mandate to support financial liberalisation around the world, all lubricated with the most outrageously over-the-top ceremonial. For centuries it has had an official representative in parliament called the Remembrancer, a lobbyist and intelligence-gatherer, who looks after the City of London’s interets to the modern day (I’ve met him, the current Remembrancer is a very pleasant fellow called Paul Double); and then there are the livery companies. Try this, for instance http://treasureislands.org/the-city-of-london-corporation-questions-questions/ (with a response, via the Tax Journal, here http://treasureislands.org/worshipful-company-of-tax-advisers-tax-journal-responds/ ) It’s hard to write about this stuff without sounding a little odd and conspiratorial – but there is no way around it: this is a very, very peculiar institution indeed, totally unique in the world. And it’s a powerful one. You are quite right to flag it up.
and one other thing – ‘unfettered by regulation’ in the City – well that is certainly true, to a very large degree – though that ain’t technically or directly a City of London Corporation thing, it’s a UK financial services thing . . .
I see from looking back that he did indeed send me an email. The entry is updated.
“For centuries it has had an official representative in parliament called the Remembrancer,”
A useful example of the failure to attend to detail. There are three Remembrancers. Only one of which is the City Remembrancer.
“(and in important ways, quite contrary to what Worstall asserts – perhaps he could point out where corporations effectively get the vote in other parts of the UK, alongside ordinary citizens)”
The business vote. Yes, it is odd. Something that was extremely common historically and now only happens in The City. But then in a place where hundreds of thousands work and only 9,000 live seems a sensible enough holdover from past practices.