West India Quay

A couple of hundred years ago this area would have been teeming with workers loading and unloading ships.  Spices and tea from the far east  coming in and British goods going abroad.  This century during the week the area is teeming with bankers entering the high rise buildings either side of the dock.

Memorial to Bankers

I stumbled upon this new art work in the city, a testament to banking in the past few years.  I wonder how many of the city lads will look at it and absorb it.  Mis-selling of insurance is the latest in the banking scandals to be in the news.

A close up of one of the posts below:

Some Days are Just Grey

The London of its reputation. Some days are just like this so find a nice museum. Not a bad view though. Taken from the (grey) Lloyds building. The one that looks like giant cork screws and houses (or used to) loads of city bankers.

Bankers take Note!

What has an effigy of a knight Templar got to do with modern day bankers? You are asking.

Well once upon a time there was a group of knights, yes the ones that became known as the knights Templar. They weren't very wealthy. In fact they often had to share a horse, and they wore funny tin helmets. However, they were very good at fund raising and securing large donations from those who wanted a good place in heaven.

After about 100 years they built a lovely stone temple (known as the inner temple) in London, where 10 effigies now lay. By the 14th century these knights had become so wealthy they were in control of most of the money.

Now bankers take note of what happened next. People were rather unhappy with this state of affairs especially as many were struggling. The knights were charged with heresy, blasphemy and sodomy and chucked into the Tower of London.

What happened to all the assets? The lawyers took it all.

July Theme - Empty

The coffers are empty.
Here at Treasury the pot is more than empty. There is a shortfall of something like £17.5 billion.

No worries though Gordon (he's the unelected bloke in charge of the country at the moment) has got a few ideas to fix the problem. A big spend up next year, cos it's election year and to just print more of the stuff.

Meanwhile at the other end of this street lives Liz (she's the one who wears a crown every now and then), seems Gordon wont give her any of this printed stuff to fix up her house.

I figure that as we (that is you and I who pay a wee bit of the tax) seeing as we are in debt for the payout to the bankers of £19 each and Liz costs us a mere .69p each we should fix up her house. I also figured that if every tourist that visits her pad donated £3 each that would be enough to cover the amount she needs.

Otherwise it seems her purse is going to be empty in 2012.

That's my empty today. Visit all the other versions of empty here:
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