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Just back from 3 (vidiprinter says - three) weeks holiday. Refreshed but am now paying the price of doing some uni work, where I came across this about the privatisation of public space in Britain, with in particular shopping malls and business areas (see 'MoreLondon') looking to attract the wealthy and get rid of the poor, the implications of which are pretty scary.

This relates to/is illogically fueled by a couple of interesting books I read on holiday. The first was 'Who runs Britain' by Robert Peston about the rise of private equity and the super-mega rich, many of whom live in London Whilst Peston seems to have a constant hard on for rich people and the fact that he has their number on his blackberry, he sets out clearly how private equity works (basically its not rocket science), whether they are fairly taxed (of course fucking not), how deprive our pension funds of capital, and have a significant influence over our politics.

The other book was 'Blackwater' by Jeremy Scahill about the rise of private security contractors/mercenaries many of whom are in Iraq and Afganistan (where they are immune from prosecution and are not counted on the death statistics), but also in domestic situations such as hurricane katrina (where they evacuated and guarded the homes of the super rich).

Given the rise of the super-mega rich, their ability to influence policy and perhaps hire their own army, I would not be entirely surprised to see them, in a world of increasing 'terror', set out to create their own independent 'state(s)' in my lifetime. Or maybe I am just very jetlagged.

Tags — Society