The Saturday Financial Times is an unfailing pleasure. It offers all the pleasures of journalism: enlightenment, entertainment, and the occasional tingle of outrage all over. This normally comes from the How to Spend It section, apparently edited by the last Marxists in Europe, determined to sharpen the contradictions of the class struggle. How else to explain the feature on Page 95 this week?
“Chartering a jet for shopping in Paris, Milan, or even New York is not as extravagant as you think, says Avril Groom.
As recently as the turn of the millennium, the idea of taking a private plane to go shopping seemed nothing more than an outlandish indulgence of the super-rich.
Now such as trip would barely raise an eyebrow among the well heeled and busy.
Small groups of friends, who might previously have treated themselves to first- or business-class travel for a luxurious city break, are now doing the maths and discovering that for not much more they can fly in their own time, avoiding lengthy security check and, in these unpredictable days, the stress of travelling with a planeload of strangers.”
Stress, my dear. Such a scourge of modern life.