London. When is a city a City?
To shed ‘some light on the subject’, I offer an article, written by George Monbiot, that appeared in the British newspaper The Guardian over 10 years ago.
“Anyone coming to the UK capital may be confused to hear that the City of London and London are not the same thing. Essentially, there are two Londons: Greater London and the City of London, otherwise known as the City, or the Square Mile. Here is everything you need to know about the difference between London and the City of London.
First let’s talk about the London everyone knows: Greater London, or London, as it’s more commonly known. It’s not only the capital city of the United Kingdom, it’s also a county that covers a total area of 607 square miles and incorporates 32 boroughs, as well as the City of London – we’ll come to that in a second.
Presiding over London and its eight and a half million strong population – including the City of London – is the Greater London Authority (GLA), which is based in City Hall and consists of the Greater London Assembly and the Mayor of London, currently Sadiq Khan.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s move on to the City of London. It has its origins in the fortified Roman settlement of Londinium, which was erected roughly two thousand years ago on the northern bank of the River Thames and came to encompass one square mile within its walls. It is for this reason that despite the City of London actually covering an area of two square miles, Londoners still affectionately refer to it as ‘the Square Mile’.
Marked with cast iron dragons in the street, the boundaries of the City of London stretch north from Temple and the Tower of London on the River Thames to Chancery Lane in the west and Liverpool Street in the east. While the City only has 10,000 residents, 400,000 daily commuters – who work in buildings like the Gherkin, the Cheesegrater and the Walkie-Talkie – and 10 million annual tourists help to keep the Square Mile alive and thriving.
Although it falls under the jurisdiction of Greater London and the GLA, the City of London has a special status: it has its own government, its own mayor and its own independent police force. The City of London Corporation operates from the Guildhall and is composed of the Lord Mayor of London, the Court of Aldermen and the Court of Common Council. While the Lord Mayor of London may have a fancier title – and outfit – the Mayor of London wields significantly more political power.
One of the main functions of the City of London, is representing the interests of Britain’s financial services. The City is home to the Bank of England and has traditionally been considered the financial heart of the UK. However, it has lost its place as the biggest employer of bankers in Europe to East London’s Canary Wharf in recent years. Despite Brexit and the threat it poses to the capital’s financial preeminence, the financial crown of Europe still rests dubiously on London’s head.”
Another article from The Guardian is more direct in describing the City of London.
“…It’s the dark heart of Britain, the place where democracy goes to die, immensely powerful, equally unaccountable. But I doubt the one in 10 British people has any idea of what the Corporation of the City of London is and how it works. This could be about to change. Alongside the Church of England, the Corporation is seeking to evict the protesters camped outside St. Paul’s Cathedral. The protestors, in turn, have demanded that it submit to national oversight and control.
What is this thing? Ostensibly it’s the equivalent of a local council, responsible for a small area of London known as the Square Mile. But as its website boasts, “among local authorities the City of London is unique”. You bet it is. There are 25 electoral wards in the Square Mile. In four of them, the 9,000 people who live within its boundaries are permitted to vote. In the remaining 21, the votes are controlled by corporations, mostly banks and other financial companies. The bigger the business, the bigger the vote: a company with 10 workers gets two votes, the biggest employers, 79. It’s not the workers who decide how the votes are cast, but the bosses, who “appoint” the voters. Plutocracy, pure and simple.
As Nicholas Shaxson explains in his fascination book Treasure Islands, the Corporation exists outside many of the laws and democratic controls, which govern the rest of the United Kingdom. The City of London is the only part of Britain over which parliament has no authority. In one respect at least the Corporation acts as the superior body: it imposes on the House of Commons a figure called the remembrancer: an official lobbyist who sits behind the Speaker’s chair and ensures that, whatever our elected representatives might think, the City’s rights and privileges are protected. The mayor of London’s mandate stops at the boundaries of the Square Mile. There are, as if in a novel by China Mieville, two cities, one of which must unsee the other.
Several governments have tried to democratise the City of London but all, threatened by its financial might, have failed. As Clement Attlee lamented, “over and over again we have seen that there is in this country another power than that which has its seat at Westminster.” The City has exploited this remarkable position to establish itself as a kind of offshore state, a secrecy jurisdiction which controls the network of tax havens housed in the UK’s crown dependencies and oversea territories. This autonomous state within our borders is in a position to launder the ill-gotten cash of oligarchs, kleptocrats, gangsters and drug barons. As the French investigating magistrate Eva Joly remarked, it “has never transmitter even the smallest of piece of usable evidence to a foreign magistrate”. It deprives the United Kingdom and other nations of their rightful tax receipts
It has also made the effective regulation of global finance almost impossible.
Shaxson shows how the absence of proper regulation in London allowed American banks to evade the rules set by their own government. AIG’s wild trading might have taken place in the US, but the unit responsible was regulated in the City. Lehman Brothers couldn’t get legal approval for its off-balance sheet transactions in Wall Street, so it used a London law firm instead. No wonder priests are resigning over the plans to evict the camper. The Church of England is not just working with Mammon; it’s colluding with Babylon.
If you ever dithered over the question of whether the UK needs a written constitution, dither no longer. Imagine the clauses required to preserve the statue of the Corporation. ‘ The City of London will remain outside the authority of parliament. Domestic and Foreign banks will be permitted to vote as if they were human beings, and their votes will outnumber those cast by real people. Its elected officials will be chosen from people deemed acceptable by a group of medieval guilds’.
The Corporation’s privileges could not withstand such a public scrutiny. This, perhaps, is one of the reasons why a written constitution in the United Kingdom remains a distant dream. Its power also helps to explain why regulation of the banks is scarcely better than it was before the crash, why where are no effective curbs on executive pay and bonuses and why successive governments fail act against the UK’s tax havens.”
Why is this important? It is important to know that the financial capital of the world functions without government oversight. And to top it off, the United Kingdom has no written constitution. The Bank of England is headquartered on privately owned land, managed by a privately owned corporation. “The City of London is the only part of Britain over which parliament has no authority…”
The City of London is home to the Bank of England, The London Stock Exchange, and Lloyd’s of London; along with 500 other banks; as well as major global corporations (multi-Nationals) and the largest law firms in England. And I am talking about the two square mile City (1280 acres), not the city of London. If that isn’t a conspiracy, it is the greatest coincidence in world history. For every reason you can muster to justify your response that it isn’t a conspiracy, I will offer two reasons why it is a conspiracy, please give me a moment.
First, I think it is important to deal with a few definitions, so that we are on the same page. My son Zaki’s first response to the initial draft of this piece would be accusatory, “here you go again dad, dealing with conspiracy theories.” What does it mean to conspire? One definition is:
“To act in harmony toward a common end.” – Merriam-Webster Dictionary
That is not a bad thing. That is something all humans should do, but only a few actually do. Even though our unconscious mind instinctively seeks to enable a law basic to human nature (‘self-preservation’), it is countered by the ‘modern day educational system’ that mixes fact and fiction, resulting in human ignorance, a huge factor causing our present dystopia.
A synonym for conspire is collude.
The Latin prefix col-, meaning “together,” and the verb ludere, “to play,” come together to form collude. “Together, to play.” (The very nature of humanity)
The related noun collusion has the specific meaning “secret agreement or cooperation.” Despite their playful history, collude and collusion have always suggested deceit or trickery rather than good-natured fun. And to drive the point further, another synonym for conspire is scheme, which means, “a plan or program of action, especially a crafty or secret one; a systematic or organized configuration; a concise statement or table; a graphic sketch or outline.” Just because something is crafty or secret, doesn’t mean that it has to be bad.
Now don’t get me wrong, I am clear most conspiracies are bad, and only benefit the perpetrators, not the victims. Unfortunately Western Civilization (European culture) has given the word and the world it’s present meaning of “bad.”
When I am discussing the presented material, I do so with the clear understanding that, “it is human nature to conspire, together to play; and act in harmony toward a common end.” but I am also clear that 99% of humanity has been deliberately divided for the past 2,300 years; and does not presently act in its own best interest.
The City of London was a great concept that went bad as it aided and abetted the European conquest of the planet Earth.
If you already knew this information, and believe it to be true, please offer your thoughts and opinions. If you didn’t know this info, and believe it to be of import, please offer your thoughts and opinions as well. And if you think I am a ‘conspiracy nut’, please enjoy your day, and click off.
I await all responses.
