London has been ranked as the richest city in the world, above New York in the list of top 15 richest cities. Mumbai is in as well, but down at second last. Even so, some things are constant. Diwali in Trafalgar Square has now been followed by Prime Minister Theresa May hosting a party at No 10, with a Diwali theme. Thus, she continues the practice former PM David Cameron had established.
The party was a rare happy moment for the Prime Minister. Her honeymoon period seems to be ending. They have unearthed a speech she made to Goldman Sachs before the referendum praising Europe and saying a vote to leave would cause considerable economic damage. Now she has to reverse direction. Brexit is becoming a personal test for her.
London’s worry is that if the British are out of Europe, the economic cost may be heavy. After all, London voted to remain in the EU by a large majority, our own borough of Lambeth by a 3/1 majority. But the country voted out and now has to face the consequences. So the UK has to show itself eager to do business with anyone and everyone. While Ms May’s visit to India this week will help, there is a need for much more. And frankly — after the Tata controversy (the one gold-plated company that the UK could bank on), future Indian investments are on not-so-sure grounds. So whilst Indians might be investing in the UK — there will be a lot of soul-searching also concerning all those who have taken refuge there: Lalit Modi and Vijay Mallya being the most high profile.
The biggest controversy right now in the UK concerns the expansion of Heathrow by adding a third runway. It would enable Heathrow to handle around 700,000 more flights. London as a business hub should welcome this. But Sadiq Khan, the mayor, is against this proposal as is Boris Johnson, the previous mayor and now foreign secretary. Boris has argued for a new airport in Kent for a long time. Zac Goldsmith, the Conservative MP for Richmond Park, which comes under the flight path, has resigned from his parliamentary seat and thus has caused a byelection. Zac will now run as an Independent candidate on an anti-expansion platform.
Meanwhile, it’s the royals who are expanding. Prince Charles has now set up a whole village though one is not quite sure what Poundbury is meant to be. It’s next to the Dorset town of Dorchester and it has everything: shops, cottages, commercial areas cheek by jowl — as Prince Charles, whose dream project this has been since 1993, had wanted to create a “walkable community”. One would have imagined that he has enough space to walk around in his various estates but this is meant to be, I suspect, for the general public. That is, the general public according to Prince Charles (which if you look at the houses with “classical architecture”) have to be fairly loaded.
The name might remind you of Poundland where every item costs less than a pound, but that it is emphatically not! Prince Charles, quite quaintly, has created this village in memory of his grandmother, to whom he was very close. He even unveiled a statue of her, on Poundbury’s Queen Mother Square, and the surrounding buildings are named after her horses! (Really ) And then there is a rather large property on the estate which looks like Buckingham Palace. Is this Prince Charles trying to get into a replica before he can actually shift into the real thing But what got the media very excited was the sight of the Queen, in her powder blue hat peering around at the cheese aisle at Waitrose, the onsite supermarket, while the Duchess of Cornwall got behind the bar at the (what else but ) “Duchess of Cornwall” Inn and poured a pint.
So now we have the first American winning the £50,000 Man Booker award after the rules were changed and Americans are allowed to compete. Paul Beatty’s novel, The Sellout, had been turned down by 18 UK publishers before Oneworld, a small Indie publisher, took a punt on it. Beatty’s book is being called lyrical and satirical and now, of course, all the accolades are being piled on. But he, as an author, has mentioned his sorrow when publishers rue that they sometimes have not been able to publish the books they really liked. He has found this reluctance puzzling. As indeed many authors would wonder: Should everything be measured by sales figures
No one should be surprised to learn that thanks to Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, having a perfectly shaped nose, women are asking plastic surgeons for a nose like hers. Kate has the most number of “copy Kates” among plastic surgery patients.
The writer is the Chair of the Arts and Cultural Heritage Trust, which has set up the Partition Museum at Town Hall, Amritsar
