"massive overpayments for menial services"

Links Because sometimes I've not much more to add:

Paul Mason notices the parallels in Shakespeare and Middleton's Timon of Athens with contemporary finances:
"Timon – like Lehman Brothers – goes bust because of what appears as a liquidity crisis. But, as with Lehman, this masks a deeper collapse. Once Timon can no longer supply his social network with gallery openings, soft-porn ballet and massive overpayments for menial services, his social value is zero. Which makes the play's revival as a satire on London in 2012 all the more relevant. Shakespeare had grasped something about the crisis of his time that some politicians and economists are still not prepared to confront about ours."

Andrew Collins on idealism and the death of the working classes:
"This is a government who has nothing but contempt for what used to be called – by sixth formers – the “proletariat.” I’m glad that the phrase “working class” is now being replaced in common parlance by “working people”, as you don’t need to work in a mine or a factory to qualify for the stratum of society least cared for by the government, and it’s nothing to do with class any more. What they’re pulling off here is something underhand and insidious, whose subtleties of method are gradually wearing away. This is the Prolocaust."

Photos from inside the desolate Fortress Wapping:
"Up the sixth floor via one of the remaining working lifts to where The Sun was put together and potentially the most garish wallpaper ever invented. Understandable, but imagine walking along a corridor like this every day. [...] The executive offices where Rebekah Brooks worked. She had her walk-in wardrobe in the corner. James Murdoch worked next door in a slightly posher office – more notable for having a load of coving added to the ceiling."