"The Independent" Columnists: Slash And Burn Now!

I note with barely concealed uninterested dismay that more and more citizens of this formerly noble country are becoming millionaires. Faster than I AM able to say, “Confident? Final answer!” the legions are swelling from the BACK. Yet at the same time EVERYONE I know within my modest circle of friends and acquaintances – who are scarcely noteworthy, only moderately famous, only falling just within the boundaries of millionairehood and boast of only two CBEs between the lot of them – complain that, despite their seemingly stratospheric and limitless salaries, they find it virtually impossible to make any sort of ends meet. This frankly strained thread – together, need I barely say, with the promise from this newspaper of a handsome cheque for what is frankly a pitiful sum which would keep council tenants in Towers Hamlet fed for an absurdly brief sojourn of two years, but would scarcely satisfy MY WIFE who IS NOW VERY WELL versed and dedicated to the consumer ideal, THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR KIND WISHES AND CONCERN – has led me to muse upon the asinine fantasy that gaining one million pounds will provide anything resembling a proper and honourable life.

Consider the everyday needs of expenditure. Once one has invested in the necessary suits for the week – and frankly, although the public services in this country are hurtling back towards the sort of standards with which Tom Becket would have been horribly familiar, one does feel that quality is crucial, and it is criminally absurd to spend anything less than a minimum three-figure sum on shirts which will last for as long as I need to wear them – and paid for Persephone’s school fees and Pony Club fellowship, not forgetting the wearingly obligatory £600-a-head dinners at Belgos and/or Wiltons four out of every five nights, and the standing order at HMV for every CD single and album to enter the Top 75 each week in order to keep up with social trends, not to mention a minimum consumption of 150 new hardbacks from the local Waterstones – then one really has very little left for the things in life which matter. And what about complete cultural knowledge? What about the limited edition of 12 gossamer/platinum definitive catalogues on the criminally neglected 11th-century mural idiot savant Dordrecht painter Masson Picothakj, the lack of possession of which tome should be an automatic disqualification from ever receiving a degree in art history or allowing entry into a gallery, as one’s laughable “art knowledge” is irrecoverably crippled by this criminal lack?

No, a minimum income of, say, £25 million per month post-tax would be required in order to fulfil even the minimum needs of millionaireship. Some recalcitrant, emotionally antiquated commentators may wonder why an increasingly right-wing newspaper seems to take such a pleasure in rubbing people’s noses in the gaudy glumness of conspicuous consumption undertaken by its columnists. But they are criminally unaware of the obscure 4th-century Byzantine proto-Kant philosopher Sankrum, whose wise words I do not need to quote to you, versed reader, as you are doubtless word perfect in his criminally underrated treatise “Oh Yes, Behold Mock-God Panic, Oh Yea.” Otherwise I’m afraid you’re simply not allowed to read this. Vacate the desert which is your mind inst.