Peter Rhodes on the Rich List, a poor law and the problem of comedy in a woke world
The new Sunday Times Rich List supplement is stuffed, as you'd expect, with adverts for the sort of things the super-rich love to snap up: supercars, superyachts, superwatches , superwhisky and super investment portfolios. My, how those billionaires live. So chic, so beautiful, so self-assured, so infinitely superior to the rest of us in, oh, so many ways.
But you can't help noticing that the biggest advert in the Rich List supplement is a glossy double-spread for an exclusive Swiss clinic specialising in “the treatment of mental health and issues of substance and behavioural dependency.” Money may bring you happiness but it has never guaranteed sanity.
A report commissioned by the Government suggests that protest groups should be forced to pay compensation to those whose lives they disrupt. So if a Just Stop Oil activist blocks your road and makes you late, you could claim damages. Just so long as you can prove, with appropriate witnesses, that an identifiable person, at a provable time, hampered the journey of another identifiable person who can prove they suffered a precise amount of financial loss. That's how our legal system works. Which is why this report looks like just another useless piece of legislation which enriches only one group of people. A clue: sometimes they wear wigs.
