Down at Canary Wharf it seems that some City boy banksters are happy to pay £925 a pop for the UK's most expensive kebab. The Hazev turkish restaurant tries to justify the price by sating that its donner is made from the finest Japanese Wagyu beef, fresh morel mushrooms and 25-year-old Italian vinegar. Whatever. Is it really worth 190 times what you'd pay for a kebab on the back streets of Poplar just a mile up the road? I doubt it.
So who is buying? Largely it will be City folks putting it on expenses. Ultimately those folks who pay for those expenses,m as the costs are passed along the system, are ordinary consumers of financial services, you and I. While we make do with the £4.95 donner from Commercial Road, the City boys dine at our expense.
Most aspects of financial services, the buying and selling of shares, are commodityesque. The winning of business for brokers, fund managers, financiers is thus in large part down to charm and client entertainment. And so to help Henry pinch business from Charlie we, the end user, have to subsidise Henry buying a £925 kebab for himself and another for Teddy as well. As the banksters tuck into these kebabs it is you and I who are paying.
Just occassionally a bankster might actually pay for a £925 kebab himself if only to capture an image of the bill on his cell phone to use for bragging rights. Outside the City such antics would be seen as vulgar but the City operates on a different level.
As a capitalist I have no problems with hard work and talent being rewarded. But in the City success is oft driven by the ability to charm but to charm with money that ultimately belongs to you and I, mere peasants on the outside. And the banksters wonder why they are not exactly universally loved? They really don't generate very good PR for themselves do they?
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