With a rich history like that there was nothing to be done except flatten it and replace it with a shopping arcade designed in the who-the-fuck-cares… - Ben Aaronovitch

I want assurances," said Zach.
"You can have my word," I said.
"No disrespect, Peter," he said, "but I don't want a promise from the monkey, I want it from the organ grinder.

The old days," said Smith. "Isn't that what you're asking about? Because I was a respectable businessman."
"But Smithy," said Stephanopoulis. "I don't believe in respectable businessmen. I've been a copper for more than five minutes. And the constable here doesn't think you're respectable either, because it happens he is a card-carrying member of the Workers' Revolutionary Party and so regards all forms of property as a crime against the proletariat."
That one caught me by surprise and the best I could manage was "Power to the people.

Given that he was writing in the late eighteenth century, I like to cut him slack.