This is just part of the UK focus on being mean to people who may in some way be deemed foreign despite the economic cost of driving working age people out of the country.

If I were an ambitious Scottish general encouraged to violence by my wife, I would simply distinguish myself by killing the king and ascending to the throne.

Right so I meant the sense of "conscious" in "class conscious" under which the OP sentence would be true of 19th century Great Britain, rather than false.

Say what you will about the royalty and nobility, but they were generally very good at class consciousness!

It’s a weird mix of penny-pinching and pointless extravagance

You can be class conscious and endorse the hierarchy.

If I were a mysterious yet handsome young gentleman raised in a deeply class conscious society and desperately in want of a wife I would simply distinguish myself by having £10,000 a year.

And come to think of it I don't know how to judge that particular factoid; it'd be shocking if labour and land wasn't far more expensive in London than Delhi, and I would bet good money that updating an older transport infrastructure introduces costly and time consuming issues.