There was a glossy full colour pull-out from the Financial Times sitting on the kitchen table at work today, and I was leafing through it as I ate my lunch. It was beyond parody.

The supplement was called ‘How to Spend It’, and it was subtitled ‘Christmas bonus edition’ or something like that. It was full of grotesquely overpriced tat: £3,600 mobile phones; £80,000 watches; diamond encrusted dog tags for manly plutocrats. In some respects, it was amusing: the reviewer’s cognitive dissonance as he tried to justify the heavy, slow, and unattractive Vertu phone by comparing it to a Bentley, for example, was obvious. Mostly, though, it was a glimpse into a lifestyle of unrestrained conspicuous consumption.

I’m sure that it’s the opposite of what the FT intended, but I’ve never seen a better justification of socialism in my life.