For its sheer fuck-off-flaunti-ness, I secretly admire the Financial Times on Saturday’s glossy supplement, How To Spend It. I only get to see it because I occasionally like to check up on the price of the gas shares Sid sold me and to establish whether buying those get-rich-quick penny shares circa Bananarama was bananas. Currently quoted at 4.5p per share, there's still scant prospect of that infinity pool and villa in the Var, sadly. For those who have better use for the FT’s £2.80 cover price, it goes like this. Worst economic crisis since the Depression, be damned! How to spend it now, apparently, is like a modern Marie Antoinette on terrific teal Dior slip dresses, a snip at £11,450 (£950 heels included) - roughly the same as the annual wage for many nurses. And so the call to conspicuous consumption goes on:’tanzanite’ (me neither) earrings, £22,600; ‘racing machine‘ wristwatches that cost more than some houses; ‘spa junkie’ fixes in ’billionaires’ playground’ Cap-Ferrat; a Duesenberg coupe set to fetch $4.5 plus million at auction. No mention of the cost of a tube of cream to apply to noses grazed from being rubbed in it. This, at a time when some are figuring how not to spend it - e.g. smashing Comet’s windows and grabbing a £10.99 kettle or something equally sad. ‘Let them eat (Fortnum’s) cake’ and dream, eh?
