Watch out for gold in the food

I know its lazy blogging Guardian comment pieces but was really struck by this piece by Jonathan Freedland today.

As he points out talking about the gap between the rich and poor is terribly passé these days but I couldn't help agreeing with his assessment that,

'If one man can spend £15,000 plying his pals with a syrupy cocktail, while another lays out blankets for his child to sleep in the kitchen then we know the system is broken. This is not some narrow criticism of the Labour government, but rather a challenge to our assumption that we are a civilised society at all.'

This isn't the 'politics of envy' - it's just an articulate expression of something most of us already know - that the widening gap between those who have and those who have-not; between the Global North and the Global South; between those who tell hard-working people they need to work longer and harder to get a decent pension while ensuring their own pensions are secure; and between those who tell workers to tighten their belts and prepare for the worst while feathering their own nests is barely tenable.

His description of corporate excesses reminded me of a comment made by Andrew Gordon - one of the guest lecturers at the HTUP which I attended earlier this year. He said he knew the Japanese economic bubble was about to well and truly burst in the early 90's when he saw that several top-end Japanese restaurants were serving food garnished with precious metals - their customers were so keen to conspicuously consume that they were literally eating gold.

Smoked egg and bacon ice-cream may not be quite as decadent as eating gold but at least you can wash it down with a decent Château Cheval Blanc at £1500 a bottle (yours for a mere eight weeks work on the minimum wage).

Watch out for those gold-shavings...