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My wife and I visit London quite often to see our son who is a Guardsman there. When we do, we stay with his family in their Army accommodation about seven minutes walk from his workplace at Buckingham Palace. They occupy a ground floor flat comprising of a kitchen-diner and three small bedrooms. It's somewhat cramped and rather basic, but typifies how Britain's Socialist government values its military, although to hear our previous Prime Minister Tony Blair's grandstanding support for George Bush, you could be forgiven for supposing otherwise.

In Labour's Britain, lavish living and profligate expenses are the prerogative of its burgeoning political class whose chief aim appears to be to amply reward themselves in a manner that would shame Marie Antoinette. Soldiers and others who risk their lives to defend those same politicians' way of life and impress their friends abroad are considerably less well rewarded.

When travelling into London the observant visitor begins to notice an eery familiarity to many place names, resulting from decades of exposure to television, literature, films - and even the humble Monopoly board with its Marylebone, Piccadilly, Pall Mall and Mayfair. Places like Lord's cricket ground are famous through sport, while others have been made famous by fictional association; like Baker Street the real address of the fictitious Sherlock Holmes or Eaton Square, the ostensible address of Hudson, Rose and the Bellamy family, characters from the iconic 70s series, 'Upstairs Downstairs'.

Chelsea, King's Road, Sloan Square; Hyde Park, Speaker's Corner, Oxford Street; almost everywhere lurks a locale that conjures some familiar association. However, what distinguishes London from every other city is not its familiarity but its peculiarity, because London is no ordinary city but an imperial metropolis. Let me explain.

I was born in Robroyston in Glasgow and, apart from business and vacation, have never resided more than a few miles from my place of birth. That makes me not only a Glaswegian but a fairly typical Glaswegian. In fact Glasgow is full of Glaswegians, a native bias that is typical of most cites.

Similarly, Edinburgh is full of Edinburgers, as Liverpool is replete with Liverpudlians; while Manchester is where you'll find most Mancunians. And so it is the world over. Paris filled with Parisiennes, Boston full of Bostonians, and Moscow the predominant habitat of Muscovites.

But visit London and what do you find? You might expect to find a city full

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