Of course, anyone with even a passing interest in social media will have been told — by Russian bots pretending to be normal people “who are just concerned and definitely not racist,” and with at least two English flags in their bio — that London is not in the slightest bit sexy and is in fact a hellhole populated by ghastly foreigners. Not only that, but if you complain about the conditions there, you’ll be attacked by the “Woke Leftist Brigade” — incidentally, also the name of my university indie band.
This gap between left and right is growing by the day. This is even the case in liberal America (have you read the news this year? — ed), where staff at Vanity Fair magazine were reportedly furious at the suggestion that model-turned-hostage Melania Trump grace the cover.
“I will walk out the motherfucking door, and half my staff will follow me,” one editor told the Daily Mail, presumably in between such woke activities as reading and drinking coffee (and also vastly overestimating reporters’ loyalty to editors).
You know who’d have no truck with all this sensitivity and hand-wringing? Silvio Berlusconi, that’s who. If only the former Italian prime minister weren’t dead.
But his wealth lives on. Villa Certosa, Berlusconi’s sprawling Sardinian estate, is officially on the market (despite repeated emails, my request that POLITICO buy it and turn it into my office have gone unanswered). The 4,500-square-meter seafront residence was the scene of infamous “bunga bunga” parties, the sex-fueled soirées that dogged Berlusconi’s political career — and that means it will need the deepest of deep cleans.
However, it’ll cost a lot to live in Berlusconi’s former palace of sin. According to Mansion Global, which sells houses to rich folk, Brendan Blumer, the American founder of Block.one — apparently a cryptocurrency firm and not a plumber’s as I originally thought — splashed out €160 million on a Sardinian villa, and Villa Certosa could sell for double that amount.