A work of non-fiction investigating the role that money has in London in terms of shaping the city's geography.

Diggers

The mini diggers that are used to excavate basements in London cost around £5000. The cost of hiring a crane to extract them from the excavation is more than their value so when they are done they a buried in the foundations of the build.

It is shocking to think about the kind of abundance we have for certain people that we can afford to just discard this kind of machinery.

I also wonder about what meaning hypothetical archaeologists would ascribe to these buried machines if they were to find them. Would it be clear that it was purely a cost-saving in projects costing almost incomprehensible amounts for most members of society or would it be assumed that there was some sacred or mystical reason for the embedding of the machines in the foundations?

Diggers

Education

This is not specifically about private versus public education in the UK, it is about a kind of class indoctrination and embedding privilege generationally.

... privilege means learning to be at home, how to be at ease, knowing how to carry oneself in any number of situations.

The education system is designed to make the participant feel as if they deserve the benefits not of education but their parent's class and associated wealth and privileges.

Eton prepares its pupils to make their way in a competitive world

... it is not who pupils are, but what they do

Competition is the gauze that suggests meritocracy.

Private education

Quotes

from Roman times London was 'invented to make money'

All girls exist on the thin edge of a moral boundary separating them from sex workers - Ashley Mears

serious money's constant testing of loyalty and confidence potentially corrodes relationships

Quotes

Lobbying

The seriously rich can afford to employ both public relationships and straight-up lobbyists to fight for their interests. A favoured tactic is to threaten to leave but their activity is often ruthlessly separated from the cities they live in by the layer of security they employ and the exclusivity of their preferred haunts which allows them to signal their wealth.

It is also unclear whether wealth is capable of delivering all the elements of a functioning nation state despite Randian fantasies of withdrawal to private societies. While isolated currently all basic provisions of services and goods come from the regular nation state. Wealth is used to differentiate within that system rather run it parallel.

Take the law for example, this is typically the friend and commonly used tool of the rich but in disputes between sovereign plutocrats who will have the authority to regulate disputes without people toppling out of windows.

Lobbying

Virgina Water

A virtually gated community in Surrey where the Haves have been displaced by the Have Yachts. The quest for property rights has extended to access roads creating situations where the rich control how their peers can navigate the community.

Virginia Water

Entourage

The seriously rich are surrounded by people who are essentially strangers who live in their homes. The relationship is transactional and results in a paranoid regard between the employer and their employees who are surrogate family and friends.

Entourage

Wealth and imagination

Whatever else it does, the fun-time Chelsea playground cultivates ultra-conservative versions of wealthy adult life in the young. Their money provides them with so many opportunities , and yet they seem incapable of imagining different ways of being.

I imagined that wealth and security would free people to be more creative and experiment with living in different ways.

Being rich means consuming and displaying items to demonstrate wealth. This is strictly gendered: clothes and manicures for women; cars and watches for men. Performative wealth is not just constricted to a shopping list that is not just conservative but gendered as well. Conforming to these patterns is seen as important for demonstrating that you belong.

Wealth and imagination

Serious Money

Posts

Diggers

Education

Quotes

Lobbying

Virgina Water

Entourage

Wealth and imagination

All posts