Butler to the World is both a brilliant and depressing blast at decades of malign financial cosiness and the politicians who let it happen . So now when I look at a map of the world, I’ll be saying to myself offshore bank haven, gambling hot spot, and so forth.

In other words, how Britain, including its overseas territories, has become a ‘butler to the world’ and how successive governments have been good on rhetoric but poor on action when it comes to tackling global financial corruption. Even some instances where the NCA won’t prosecute as they can’t afford to complete against top law firms.

It transcends any one jurisdiction and derives its power and its resilience from the fact it does not rely on any one place: if one jurisdiction becomes hostile, money effortlessly relocates to somewhere that isn’t. Another example comes from today’s news, where Russian troops invading Ukraine find themselves poorly armed and without food, so that they have to scavenge. We are experiencing delays with deliveries to many countries, but in most cases local services have now resumed. The country’s public image is as the home of Harry Potter, Queen Elizabeth II, top flight soccer, and socialized healthcare; as an exporter of whiskey, Hollywood baddies, late-night television personalities, and endless costume dramas.

If you like books where you learn a lot - which we certainly do - then we commend it to you wholeheartedly. Eventually, in response to his interlocutor’s bafflement, he blurted: “We’re not a policeman, like you guys, we’re a butler, the butler to the world… If someone is rich, whether they are Chinese or Russian or whatever, and they need something done, or something hidden, or something bought, then Britain sorts that out for them… – that’s what a butler does.

Subtitled ‘How Britain became the servant of tycoons, tax dodgers, kleptocrats and criminals’, the author’s view of the UK’s approach over the decades can probably be summed up as ‘Take the money and look the other way’. But it also raises a question - what else can these small countries do to build their economies when they don't really have any advantage other than a non-existent legal system? For more details, please consult the latest information provided by Royal Mail's International Incident Bulletin. Prawda jest taka, że grupka uprzywilejowanych Anglików ma nas w garści, a organy ścigania zwalczające korupcję mają niedostatek zasobów - to walka z wiatrakami. Andrew had come well prepared for the meeting and had a checklist to work through, which was clearly designed to generate a list of names of other people he could speak to.

Over time our biggest growth industry, the new source of the City’s wealth and power, was as 10% fixers for fraudsters and worse. With the brilliant concept of Britain as the butler, Bullough lifts the lid and explains in a very clear and intelligible way why and how Britain is facilitating illicit finance across the world. Eurodollar trading allows vast pools of money to transit all over the world, instantly, and the taxman can’t touch them, no matter where they land – or they just change labels and move on again.

I never cease to be staggered by the bilge spewed up by our politicians about, say, restrictions being placed on Russian oligarchs because of Ukraine, knowing that they still have massive access to their ill-gotten gains and are unlikely to starve any time soon.

On top of that, it has even encouraged Gibraltar to become the world centre for online gambling, then whimpers about the damage that does. Rozkwit hazardu i Gibraltar, który stał się bezpiecznym portem dla bezlitosnych spółek hazardowych żerujących na ludziach. In the immortal words of former US Secretary of State Dean Acheson, ‘Britain has lost an empire and not yet found a role.

It was a phony bank branch in a gleaming office tower in Hong Kong, as elaborate as anything in the film The Sting.