London Galling: How My Once-Great City Became a Cesspool Called "Londongrad"

[Demovictory9]

London Galling: How My Once-Great City Became a Cesspool Called “Londongrad”
Putin’s oligarchs didn’t force their way in. We begged them to come, Labourites and Tories alike.

----------------------

But what the game will be remembered for more than the score was that a good number of Chelsea fans had made the 120-mile journey from west London to the Carrow Road stadium, where they chanted “Abramovich,” the name of their hero. Roman Abramovich is one of the more notable Russian “oligarchs” (and who ever thought up that name? As in “Ali Baba and the Forty Oligarchs”).

That is, he’s one of the group of Russians who together and in blatantly corrupt fashion looted their country in the 1990s amid the wreckage of the Soviet Union, making colossal fortunes by acquiring monopolistic control of oil, gas, iron, and the other natural resources that are just about all the Russian economy consists of. And following the assault on Ukraine by Abramovich’s friend Vladimir Putin, the Chelsea fans’ hero had just been sanctioned by the British government, along with several of his compatriots whose international assets are now frozen.

Who these people were and how they had made their money came into the category coined by the Irish writer Fintan O’Toole. Riffing on Donald Rumsfeld’s “known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns,” O’Toole has added that there are also “unknown knowns.” He means disgraceful things that are hiding in plain sight, obvious to anyone who looked hard. In his own country that included the facts that Ireland had the greediest bankers and the most corrupt politicians in western Europe, not to mention the most powerful and repressive Catholic church.

In the same way, we in England could know very well who and what the oligarchs were, but we chose to unknow it while they swarmed into “Londongrad,” as our capital has been sardonically named. They didn’t force their way in. We begged them to come; we fawned and groveled. While we slammed the door on tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free, up to and including desperate refugees from Ukraine this month, both Conservative and Labour governments offered “golden visas” to anyone who would invest enough of his somehow-gotten gains in England and buy the place up.

https://newrepublic.com/article/165726/chelsea-roman-banner-london-russian-oligarchs

[OAITW r.2.0]

1. Loose money from Russia has made a whole class of capitalists unencumbered by political

considerations. When you invest Russian roubles, you reap the benefits....but, hopefully, the losses when they come due.

[OnDoutside]

4. It constantly surprises me how little it appears to take, to get

politicians in your pocket. And that's the same with the GOP.

[uponit7771]

2. Instead of investing in updated tanks Putrid updated in pols and media, lets see how that pays off

... I don't think it will

[dalton99a]

3. Russian oligarchs should be deported to Russia, and their assets seized

[lostnfound]

5. The sad death on Florida beach of an prosecutor who worked on visa and passport cases

“Beranton Whisenant worked in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Miami in its major crimes unit. The office prosecutes criminal and civil cases from Fort Pierce to Key West. He was reportedly working on visa and passport fraud cases prior to his death.”

That was 2017. Story buried in rightwing conspiracies. But a region crawling with Russian mob.

Guy had everything to live for, eventually ruled a suicide. But some family were skeptical and other family got quiet.

[BSdetect]

6. London was also the filthiest city in Europe in the eighties and probably later.

I saw the mess all over London then after traveling thru Europe for 5 months when I returned it was still a shock.

Littering was endemic. The air was foul.

Perhaps they cleaned it up?

[Demovictory9]

7. It was clean when i visited 20 years ago

[moondust]

8. Guess who else

wanted a ride on that gravy train.

[Demovictory9]

10. Orange.guy?

[moondust]

11. Absolutely.

And probably some others not so infamous for their international scheming.

[Cherokee100]

9. Mar-A-Lago

Mar-A-Lago-grad, sounds a lot better to me, for Bennedit Donald's Florida kingdom.