Well, I guess AART and CULCHAH are good for something....

[oursin]

I.e. keeping wealthy capitalists in this country (but for how long, we wonder, hmmmm, because there are not even cheap garrets going anymore): UK super-rich would be ‘bored to death’ in tax havens – survey: Interviews with top earners reveal many are too attached to UK’s cultural institutions:

“I wouldn’t go to a tax haven. Can you imagine anything worse than going to a tax haven?” one of the respondents, Leanne, who works in consulting, told the researchers. “Some tiny little place with just people with yachts and servants. So no, I wouldn’t leave for that kind of reason … I want to live in a vibrant economic climate where there’s room for innovation and, you know, people are inventing, and I think London is like that.”

Another respondent, Luke, who works in law, said: “I have a nice life here [in London]. My clients who moved to the Bahamas were bored to death. Sun, sea and sand. OK, it’s great for a couple of weeks to charge the batteries, but after a while you think, ‘Well, I’d quite like to go and watch an opera.’ Well, you can forget that – there’s not a theatre in the Bahamas.”

Bea and Peter, a couple who both work in finance, said that if they “move to the Middle East, [you] are in gated communities and stuff like that. I never found that attractive in any way.”

Marianne, who works in culture, said the suggestion that there would be a “big brain drain” if the government introduced higher taxes on the wealthy was “complete nonsense. And I will give you the answer why in two words, and that is National Gallery or National Theatre … that’s why people aren’t going to leave London.”

***

And another totally unrelated London thing (and it's not actually physically in London anymore): Wooden sauna from 1948 London Olympics gets Grade II listing.

Comments

[calimac]

I wouldn't go to the Bahamas for anything, even briefly. I can't think of anything I'd want to do there (relax and read, mostly) that I can't do at home, with cats.

[pameladean]

"There isn't a theatre in the Bahamas" really woke up my Nonsense Detector.

There are theaters in the Bahamas. There are also opera companies. And while I'm sure the person making dumb generalizations could pivot immediately to saying that no performance there can hold a candle to London ones, that is almost certainly wrong too.

P.

[silveradept]

I find it interesting the way that they say they don't want to go to tax havens, but also that they don't want to pay a proper amount of tax to keep supporting the things they say are keeping them here and not in the tax haven.

[lokifan]

QUITE.