luka
Well-known member
Cut to the memorial citadel of Britain’s office age, east London’s Canary Wharf. I can remember when it was on its way to being the Shoreditch of the East End, its warehouses colonised by film-makers and artists. It would today be dancing all night. Instead, it was transformed by Margaret Thatcher’s infatuation with the developer Paul Reichmann’s plan to build a European Wall Street. She made the wharf the biggest state-funded project in UK history. She and her environment secretary, Michael Heseltine, hurled money at it. They declared Canary Wharf’s entire building programme a tradable tax dodge, costing taxpayers billions. They freed it of property taxes. They built it two new railways – the DLR and Jubilee line – a spaghetti junction of motorways and the most expensive road scheme in Britain per mile, the Limehouse Link.
