Camel greeting

Wednesday 27 March 2013

A New Pope for Easter


Turkish is a fascinating language, and a challenge for the well-meaning holidaymaker who thinks to pick up a little for the sake of international goodwill. One of its peculiarities is a feature known to linguists as agglutination, whereby grammatical functions are constructed by adding suffixes to a lexical root. There is in theory no limit to the number of suffixes that can be agglutinated, and Turks take pride in the following word: 'Çekoslovakyalılaştıramadıklarımızdanmısınız?' which has eleven suffixes, and can be rendered into English as 'Are you one of those whom we have been unable to make Czechoslovakian?'

Of course every country and culture likes to feel that it is the best at, or has the biggest, longest, whatever, of something - it's a natural human (or at least a male) thing. So as native speakers of English, we understandably dredge our memories for the longest word we know - and maybe come up with 'antidisestablishmentarianism'. It doesn't quite measure up, but it does at least have a useful and significant meaning (unlike its longer Turkish counterpart): ‘opposition to the disestablishment of the Church of England.' 

Why am I telling you this? Because ‘establishment’ in this context means that Anglicanism is the official state religion of England, which, in turn means that England is not strictly speaking a secular state. The main precedent for this is the adoption of Christianity as the state religion of the Roman Empire by the Emperor Theodosius I in 380 CE. You might think that the world has moved on a little in the intervening 1630 years, but the English Parliament (wherein twenty-six seats are reserved for senior bishops) is holding the line.

What got me thinking about this was the recent election of a new Pope to preside over the international community of Roman Catholics - more specifically, a couple of discussions that surfaced in a circle of history buffs I follow online. The first was prompted by someone asking the question: If Benedict XVI was not the most intelligent head of state ever, who was?” Now I have to confess, it’s not a question that would ever have occurred to me – not least because I never really think of high intelligence as being a major requirement for a head of state. Nevertheless, once the question was posed, it got me thinking. Is being highly intelligent compatible with being a Catholic? Is the Pope actually a head of state?

Pope Gregory XII, resigned 1415
Well, probably the second question is the easier of the two, so let’s look at that one first. It seems that international law gives diplomatic recognition to two institutions of the Catholic Church: the Holy See and Vatican City. The latter, I was interested to learn, was actually established as an independent state by an agreement, in 1929, between Pope Pius XI and Italy’s ‘Duce’, Benito Mussolini. According to Wikipedia, “Vatican City is an ecclesiastical or sacerdotal-monarchical state, ruled by the Bishop of Rome—the Pope. The highest state functionaries are all Catholic clergymen of various national origins. It is the sovereign territory of the Holy See (Sancta Sedes) and the location of the Pope's residence, referred to as the Apostolic Palace.” If that sounds positively archaic to you, it’s not surprising. A ‘See’ in RC parlance was originally the chair in which a bishop sat, but has come to mean the area over which the seated bishop has episcopal authority. Twelve of these gentlemen are said to derive their authority from an unbroken succession going back to Jesus’s twelve apostles. One of them, The Holy See, claims pre-eminence on the basis of direct descent from St Peter himself, and its official existence seems to date from some time in the 5th century.

Fine and dandy. I have no problem with Roman Catholics adhering to whatever beliefs give them comfort in the long dark teatime of their souls. Only I don’t quite understand why they get to have international recognition of statehood on the basis of their strange beliefs and their Pope's alliance with a fascist Italian dictator in the 1920s. If Catholics, why not Presbyterians? Which brings me to the question of intelligence – and I suppose you’d have to admit that people who can pull that kind of stunt on the international community must be pretty smart characters.

It’s self-evident that you do need some kind of smarts to get yourself elected or appointed to a leadership role at that level of society. After all, the Roman Church does claim to have 1.2 billion adherents, even if 1,199,999,880 of them don’t actually have any say in choosing the new fella. But as for intelligence, that’s a curly one. IQ (Intelligence Quotient) used to be thought of as a way of measuring human intellectual capacity, but has gone out of favour in recent years. Former world chess champion Bobby Fisher (IQ 187) probably contributed to that as his genius for chess descended into vitriolic diatribes against the United States and the Jewish people. These days most discussions of intelligence recognize nine different types, one of which, linguistic, may be what Benedict XVI had.

The big thing for me is that intelligence can’t exist in a vacuum. It manifests itself in outcomes, and from those we will judge the mental capabilities of the individual. So it seems to me we can look at the ex-Pope’s intelligence in three ways. First, the guy is undoubtedly smart, and, discounting Tony Blair’s miraculous conversion, I reckon it must be pretty tough to be intelligent and to believe all that stuff that Catholics are expected to believe. So full points to the ex-Holy Father for being able to compartmentalize knowledge, if that’s what he did. On the other hand, it may be that early in his academic life, Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger decided that he wanted power, and thought the Church was a good career path, so he mouthed the mumbo jumbo in order to get where he wanted to be – another sign of a certain kind of intelligence, for sure. Then there’s the fact that Benedict resigned – the first Pope to do so since Gregory XII in 1415. Undoubtedly, for believing Catholics it’s a disappointment, and not at all the done thing – but in the greater scheme of things, we may think Father Joseph finally saw the error of his ways – and being able to admit your mistakes may be a another indicator of intelligence.

That last comment may seem unduly harsh, but take a close look at the history of Roman Catholicism and you’ll see what I mean. Here I want to touch on the second topic being discussed by my online friends, which involved some scholarly debate on the definition of 'heresy', and whether it differed from 'dissent', in the context of Christianity. In the course of my Euro-centred Christian-oriented education, I learned that the early followers of Jesus were strong-minded innocent souls suffering terribly at the hands of Roman Emperors, who employed various methods, of which feeding to lions was a favourite, to discourage the spread of the new religion. What I didn't learn until much later was that, once those Roman Emperors, for reasons of their own, which may or may not have had much to do with actual spiritual experience, decided to 'establish' Christianity as the state religion, the apparatus of institutional persecution was turned on those who failed to toe the official Christian line.

The process, essentially was this: the emperor and his sacerdotal henchmen gathered together in various ecumenical councils, most of which were held within the territory of the Eastern or Byzantine Roman Empire (in modern Turkey) and formulated a doctrine, or set of articles which would thereafter be required beliefs for 'orthodox' Christians. These councils, by the way, were convened 300 years or more after the death of the church's namesake. The articles of 'faith' were designed to include elements which made it relatively easy for adherents of earlier pagan and folk religions to find points of contact with the new official system, while, at the same time, provided a basis for getting rid of troublesome parties who might foster dissent from within. The result was a creed, or creeds, containing 'truths' never claimed, as far as I am aware, by Jesus himself, and closing debate on matters that a reasonable human being might consider highly debatable, even irrelevant to the essence of the business.

As an illustration of this, let me include an excerpt from the Athanasian Creed, which came into use in the 6th century, and is apparently still, I understand, subscribed to by mainstream western Christian churches, though, perhaps understandably, no longer much used in everyday worship:

“Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the catholic faith; Which faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly. And the catholic faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; Neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance. For there is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Spirit. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit is all one, the glory equal, the majesty coeternal. Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Spirit. The Father uncreated, the Son uncreated, and the Holy Spirit uncreated. The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Spirit incomprehensible. The Father eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy Spirit eternal. And yet they are not three eternals but one eternal. As also there are not three uncreated nor three incomprehensible, but one uncreated and one incomprehensible .  . . . So that in all things, as aforesaid, the Unity in Trinity and the Trinity in Unity is to be worshipped. He therefore that will be saved must thus think of the Trinity.”

Says who? you may ask. Well, I have to agree, you need a certain kind of intelligence to get your head around that, or even to want to think about trying. You might also suppose the word 'incomprehensible', included five times in that text, and rightly applied to any entity worth worshipping as GOD by an intelligent human being, would let you off the hook - but not so. Those words were carefully and specifically chosen to allow authorities to weed out deviants from the true path. The Wikipedia entry on heresies lists fifty-four distinct ideas that have qualified as such over the years under 'established’ church law, the most recent of which involved a nonagenarian lady in Canada whose followers believed she was a reincarnation of the Virgin Mary, and were duly excommunicated by the Pope in 2007. Early heresies tended to focus on what Jesus actually was, given the church's insistence that his mother was a virgin and his father was the Lord God Almighty. Clearly an incomprehensible God would need an equally incomprehensible agent to carry out such worldly activities, hence the Holy Spirit (or Ghost, if you prefer). Then the debate tended to get entwined in arguments over whether Jesus's body was actually like yours and mine, or made of some less corporeal stuff; whether he had a normal soul like other mortal men; and whether there was some kind of divine substance in there too, setting him apart from the rest of us.

The consequence of all this was the establishment of a state religion with a very strict code of 'beliefs', and the expulsion, excommunication and persecution of dissenters from the party line (labeled heretics, which has a more resonant ring to it, the better to justify punitive action). The big winner was the Roman Empire, by this time, centred on the eastern capital of Constantinople, especially after the fall of western Rome to the barbarians in 476 CE. It's also pretty obvious that most of the early action in the birth and evolution of Christianity took place in eastern lands, with the West a relative latecomer on the scene.

Still, once they got going, Western Christians set about making up for lost time. Early convocations of bishops formulating the creeds of the established church took place in eastern cities, Nicaea, Chalcedon and Ephesus, and you couldn't really deny their conclusions without getting yourself out on an insecure limb. What you could do, however, was sneak an extra word or two into the text (in Latin so the ordinary Joe wouldn't notice), then, when the time was right, insist that your version was the correct one, thereby creating a doctrinal split, giving you grounds to excommunicate the other side and set yourself up as the true church. Which is more or less what the Romans did. It's known in theological circles as the 'filioque' controversy, and relates to a word inserted into the 4th century Nicene Creed in Spain some two centuries later. By the 11th century, Western Christendom felt itself strong enough to challenge Constantinople for supremacy, and that word provided doctrinal justification for the Great Schism of 1053.

Not long after, in 1071, Seljuk Turks defeated the Eastern Romans in battle and began serious incursions into territory long-considered part of the European sphere of influence. Pope Urban II's launching of the First Crusade in 1096, and subsequent Crusading invasions by armies from Western Europe may have been ostensibly aimed at freeing the so-called Holy Lands from the clutches of Muslim unbelievers; but subsequent events suggest that uniting Europe under Papal and Roman Imperial authority played a major part; as did a desire to expropriate and/or plunder wealthy eastern lands and cities; and to demonstrate to Eastern Christians where the real power in Christendom now lay.

Things didn't work out exactly according to Papal plans, of course. The Holy Roman Empire never really got off the ground. The   Byzantine Empire fell, but to the Ottoman Turks. It was another five centuries, nearly, before those Holy Places returned to Western control, by which time they had been in Muslim hands for most of the previous two thousand years, and continue to cause severe headaches for all concerned.

Nevertheless, the Roman Catholic Church had 'established' itself as a dominant player in European power games by the beginning of the second millennium, and the concept of heresy was the major tool in its box of tricks for ensuring compliance. It was obvious to many, even in those days, that the search for temporal power had resulted in an organizational structure that had more interest in matters material than spiritual. For four hundred years before the successful emergence of Protestantism in the 16th century, various groups (Cathars and Waldensians in France, for example) were challenging the materialism of the established Roman Church, and being viciously suppressed for their idealism.

The Inquisition was not a peculiarly Spanish invention, but it achieved notoriety during the 15th century as the mechanism whereby the Iberian Peninsula was ‘reclaimed’ for Christendom. Muslims and Jews were forced to convert or leave, and the backsliding converted were ruthlessly hunted out. Some modern Catholic sources suggest that there wasn’t as much burning at stakes as we had been led to believe – but the existence of the threat may have been enough to overcome the reluctance of some; and if not, there were less fatal but nonetheless exemplary methods of persuasion, among which foot-roasting was apparently popular.

An interesting concept I came across recently is something referred to in RC literature as ‘The Black Legend’, which argues that most of that Inquisitorial unpleasantness didn’t actually happen, and that stories about events in Spain and Spanish conquests in Central and South America were concocted and spread by Protestants keen to discredit their religious rivals. To me it sounds rather akin to Holocaust Denial. What was the reason for all those Spanish Jews uprooting themselves from their homeland of centuries and resettling thousands of kilometres away in the Ottoman Empire in the 1490s? Maybe they just felt like a change of scenery?

As we head into another Easter weekend, I find myself wondering again about the strangeness of that central event in the Christian calendar. As far as I can learn, the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea in 325 CE determined the date of Easter to be the first Sunday after the full moon following the March equinox, which is why the holiday moves around from one year to the next (a moveable feast, in technical parlance). But you’d want to ask, why would they do that? If you’re commemorating the date Jesus Christ was crucified, why not go for the actual date, or at least fix a date and run with that? Could it have been that a lot of the local populations were partying up large at spring fertility or seed-planting celebrations and the Jewish Passover at that time of year, and the machinery of state decided to make a virtue of necessity? If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, and then gradually shift the official emphasis. Makes a lot of sense.

Similar theories have been advanced as origins for the stories of Jesus’s virgin birth at the winter solstice, his crucifixion and resurrection at the spring equinox, and the cult of his mother, Mary. Just down the road from the supposed House of the Virgin Mary near the town of Selçuk in Aegean Turkey are the remains of the classical Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The Greek goddess Artemis is linked to the Phrygian female deity Cybele, and the generic Anatolian mother goddess. Virginity was one of their characteristics, as was, paradoxically, a quality of universal motherhood. Associated with Cybele was a young man, Attis, born to a virgin mother who may or may not have been Cybele. Whatever the case, week-long festivities in their honour were being conducted well into classical times, and may have inspired those early church authorities to add sympathetic embellishments to their own creeds.

Well, who knows? It’s all too long ago for anyone to be able to demonstrate sure proof of what actually went on. What we can say with some certainty is that a good deal of what passes for Christian ‘belief’ was determined by power-hungry gentlemen in days of old with very secular imperial aspirations, and a fair amount of rather nasty coercion was applied to ensure that dissidents were silenced or removed to a safe distance. That’s the reason that 'disestablishment' movements have constantly resurfaced over the centuries. In the end, the search for truth starts and ends in your own heart. If the new Pope's ok with that, then I'm ok with him.

Saturday 16 March 2013

The Obscenity of Extreme Wealth


“The gap between rich and poor in OECD countries has reached its highest level for over 30 years, and governments must act quickly to tackle inequality, according to a new OECD report.” Well, that report was released in December 2011. I haven’t seen a recent update, and I don’t know what’s happening in your particular part of the world – but from a purely empirical point-of-view, I’d say governments are dragging their feet on this one.

Take a look at the OECD graph. Now I have to confess I checked out the ‘Gini’ coefficient and gave up trying to understand the maths of it. Still, one thing is clear: the longer your blue line, the greater the inequality of income distribution in your country. So, we understand that, in 1985, Mexico and Turkey led the OECD countries in the extent of the gap between rich and poor; while Sweden and Finland, as we might expect, were tops for relative equality.

New Zealand, Sweden and Finland coming up fast
On the other hand, the little red diamond shows how matters stood by 2008, when the global financial crisis struck. Not surprisingly, the income gap had widened in eighteen of the twenty-two countries – something most of us felt intuitively, if we lacked hard statistical evidence to back up our gut feeling.

“OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría said, ‘This study dispels the assumptions that the benefits of economic growth will automatically trickle down to the disadvantaged and that greater inequality fosters greater social mobility.’

“The main driver behind rising income gaps has been greater inequality in wages and salaries, as the high-skilled have benefitted more from technological progress than the low-skilled. Reforms to boost competition and to make labour markets more adaptable, for example by promoting part-time work or more flexible hours, have promoted productivity and brought more people into work, especially women and low-paid workers. But the rise in part-time and low-paid work also extended the wage gap.


“Benefits levels fell in nearly all OECD countries, eligibility rules were tightened to contain spending on social protection, and transfers to the poorest failed to keep pace with earnings growth.


“Another factor has been a cut in top tax rates for high-earners. The OECD underlines the need for governments to review their tax systems to ensure that wealthier individuals contribute their fair share of the tax burden. This can be achieved by raising marginal tax rates on the rich but also improving tax compliance, eliminating tax deductions, and reassessing the role of taxes in all forms of property and wealth.”

Well, nothing very new or revolutionary there. The only really surprising thing is that those at the top-end of the income spectrum keep hogging an obscene share of the world’s wealth, and flaunting it with seeming impunity in the faces of the have-nots.

I recently came across a helpful website for those of you whose disposable income has grown to the embarrassing point where you don’t know what to do with it: howtospendit.ft.com

It's a kind of Lonely Planet guide to shopping for the ludicrously wealthy. If you’re looking for something smart in men’s shoes, you could do worse than check out JM Weston. Their Flore 529 in black lizard skin will help you get rid of £1,775. Still some slack in your shoe budget? What the hell, get a second pair. In need of a watch? Hard to go past the Christophe Claret Soprano Tourbillon with a price tag of £380,400. You’ll find useful links to specialised sites too, where you can pick up, for instance, a nice 750 ml bottle of Courvoisier L’Esprit Champagne cognac for $9,300. Included in the price, apparently, is a hand-cut Lalique crystal decanter. For those with a taste for jewellery and a sensitive conscience, Karen Ellison, founder of Jewels For Humanity, will be happy to help you out. You can relax as you attach your $6,600 cufflinks, clip on your $18,000 earrings, or slip that $185,000 Sea Treasure Octopus ring over your pinkie, knowing that twenty per cent of your dollars will go to a charity of your choice, Diamond-miners Without Borders, for example.

Perhaps your interests run more towards the masculine. Check out Swedish gun and rifle maker VO Vapen. Viggo Olsson, I’m told, constructs the world's most exclusive handmade hunting rifles. If money’s no object, there’s the H.H. Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan Mosque Rifle, priced at $825,000. If you don't need a rifle when you go to the mosque, a more economical purchase would be the "Big Papa," at $375,000; or something from the Viking Collection, inspired by Viking mythology and featuring engravings of Norse gods and 24-carat gold inlay at $275,000 apiece. If you’re a little hard up at present, you can pick up a gat from the Royal TD Collection, initially created for H.R.H. Prince Carl Philip Bernadotte of Sweden for a very reasonable $125,000.

To buy a car, though, you really need to get along to a good motor show, such as the one in Geneva, Switzerland. Top of the line this year was the Lamborghini Veneno with a price tag of $US3.9 million. Looking for something hot but just a little cheaper? The new beast from Ferrari may suit. Listed at €1.2 million ($1.62 million), the F150 has a top speed of 370 km/h, and will accelerate from 0-100 km/h in a little under three seconds. The word is that only five hundred will be manufactured and purchase will be by invitation only. Colour choice is Rosso Corsa, Giallo Modena or Nero, and if you have to ask what they are, you’re probably not on the list.

Obviously you can't consider yourself seriously wealthy without a cellar of vintage wine, and those in the know will send their buyer along to Harrods with the aim of picking up a 'vertical' of Chateau d’Yquem for around £1 million. Alternatively, folks with an eye for a bargain might chance on a privately assembled antique collection from Christie's for a similar outlay. I gather The Yquem people maintain their exclusivity by limiting their output, and in fact, in some years, 2012 for example, not producing a vintage at all. 2010, on the other hand, was apparently a good year. Expect to pay around £5000 for a case of 12 bottles.

Still, you can't be quaffing champagne cognac and vintage wine all the time. Sometimes you just need a coffee, right? No need to rub shoulders with the proles in Starbucks though. Black Ivory is said to be the world's most exclusive brew, and you can enjoy it, for around $US50 a cup, at the Anantara Dhigu Resort and a couple of other spas in the Maldives, as well as two hotels in Thailand and another pair in Abu Dhabi. If you prefer to brew your own at home, a kilo of the stuff sells for $1,100, hand-cut Lalique crystal coffee pot not included. What's the deal, you may ask. It's only coffee, right? Maybe so, but these beans have been passed lovingly through the digestive system of Thai elephants, collected (and carefully washed, we hope) by local women before being packaged and brought to your hotel.

Ah those Arabs! Seems the Muslims are getting the last laugh after all. And what are they doing with the money rolling in from elephant dung coffee and petro-dollars borrowed from China to maintain that non-negotiable American way-of-life? I don't want to burden you with unnecessary details, but, as a sample, take a look at the yacht 'Dubai' owned by Mohammed Rashid Al Maktoum, Prime Minister and Vice President of the United Arab Emirates, and 'constitutional monarch' of Dubai. That mother, at 162 metres, is the second largest privately owned yacht in the world (come on, Mo, only the second largest?).

Dubai’s luxurious interior design blends bold colours with fine fabrics and intricately detailed handmade mosaics. A spectacular staircase creates the yacht’s showpiece. Bathed in natural light from the top deck, this dramatic circular staircase features glass steps, which change colour. Dubai’s spacious decks offer a split-level owner’s deck; a large social area including the main lounge with its centrepiece red sofa; numerous VIP and guest suites, and a crew area to accommodate 115 people including crew and guest staff.

With seven decks, Dubai has a wealth of sunbathing areas; a striking mosaic swimming pool and several Jacuzzis. She can accommodate a helicopter of up to 9.5 tonnes and can carry two 10-metre long tenders. Dubai has a displacement of 9,150 tonnes, yet can reach an impressive 26 knots at maximum speed. She has exceptional worldwide capability with a range of 8,500 miles at 25 knots, powered by four MTU diesel engines.

According to superyachts.com, eight of the world’s nine largest private yachts are owned by Arabs.  But it's not just about yachts. Last summer in Bodrum we were honoured by a visit from Saudi Prince El Velid bin Abdülaziz bin Suud. Well, he didn’t actually stay at our place, of course. He had a yacht anchored offshore for him and his family while they were in town, but they flew in on their private plane, which, incidentally, is not one of your piffling Learjets, but a full-size Boeing 747. It’s a competitive business, being that rich – don’t think it’s all plain-sailing. Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah Mu’izaddin Wadaulah ibni Al-Marhum Sultan Haji Omar Ali Saifuddien Sa’adul Khairi Waddien, aka the Sultan, Prime Minister and Yang Di-Pertuan of Brunei, pretty much sets the standard here for others to follow, with his customised 747-400 and Airbus 340-200. Hassanal Bokiah (you can call him that if you’re short of time) is reputed to have a collection of over 7,000 high performance cars, including 600 Rolls Royces, 300 Ferraris, not to mention assorted Koenigseggs, McLarens, Porsches and other lesser makes.

You probably knew that London's premier department store Harrods is owned by the royal family of Qatar. Seems they bought it on spec a year or two ago, then a gang of them turned up to check it out in a Lamborghini Murcielago LP670-4 Super Veloce and a customised Koenigsegg CCXR, which they parked on the road outside. Apparently while they were in the store, the egalitarian London Constabulary had the vehicles clamped, so once again the Brits have cause to feel proud of their local bobbies.

Nevertheless, like me, you may be starting to feel a little ashamed of your Western Caucasian Anglo-Saxon Christian brothers and sisters, and to think that somebody, somewhere must be letting the side down. So it's heartening to know we have people like Petra Ecclestone going in to bat for our side. Ok, I know she's only the daughter of a rich guy, but you can't blame a girl for that. And besides, knowing that can give us a better appreciation of the league daddy himself is playing in. Bernie has one other daughter besides young Petra, and we must assume he is not leaving her penniless. Clearly, though, Petra is daddy's pet, which is why he bought her that mega-mansion in Los Angeles for $85,000,000, said to be the world's most expensive house. Petra and her husband Jim apparently find the 5700m2 chateau 'quite cosy', especially after two months of extensive renovations which, we may guess, added a few millions more to the original purchase price. My invitation to their wedding evidently got lost in the mail, but it must have been quite a bash, seeing as it cost daddy £5 million. Petra herself would have looked lovely too, I'm sure, in her £80,000 dress. Maybe she'll pass it on to her own daughter, when the time comes, for economy's sake.

But you don't have to be an heiress, an Arab Sheikh or a Grand Prix mogul to play in the big league. Wage and salary earners (some of them at least) are doing all right these days too. Take Muhtar Kent, for example, the Turkish CEO of the Coca Cola Company. His 'compensation' last year was a little under $26 million, down a couple of millions from the previous year, but still competitive. I have to say I never touch that black fizzy stuff, preferring, as I do, Courvoisier L'Esprit. And I avoid their Turkuaz brand bottled water - but I will confess I am partial to their 100% Cappy Orange Juice, so I feel I have, in some small measure, contributed to the maintenance of Mr Kent's life style.

And now that we have established a Turkish connection, I want to mention our very own construction magnate Ali Ağaoğlu, who dropped into the recent Istanbul Motor Show in his Rolls Royce Phantom Cabrio, reportedly the same model British Queen Elizabeth uses for her shopping expeditions. Strolling around the exhibits, Mr Ağaoğlu's eye was apparently caught by a bright yellow (or giallo diarrea, if you prefer) Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport, retailing locally for €4.3 million. Looking to fill a gap in his stable of fourteen luxury vehicles, Mr A remarked casually that he might buy one. Can't confirm whether he actually did or not.

Well, if you're not totally nauseated by now, glowing emerald green with envy, or filling out an application form to join your local chapter of Anarchist Bombers Incorporated, let me finish the job I have started. A recent news item under the heading 'Victoria's Dirty Secret' claimed that the billion dollar creator of up-market frillies imports much of its raw material from the impoverished African nation of Burkino Faso, where children as young as ten are picking cotton without pay, motivated mostly by fear of the beating they will get if they slacken their pace. Needless to say, a spokesperson (not actually Victoria herself) assured reporters that such practices were strictly contrary to company policy - though stopping short of outright denial. And this, it seems to me, is an aspect of the problem that the OECD commentator above touched on. Adaptable/flexible labour markets these days are lubricated by the outsourcing of factories and suppliers of raw materials to third world countries where labour costs are low because of less stringent (or non-existent) laws protecting worker pay and conditions. Implicit in this is the sad fact that companies using these methods of lowering costs do not care about the welfare of those doing the work – they merely want to know the price of the labour. Maybe Posh Spice truly doesn’t know about those kids in Burkino Faso – but if she really wanted to, she could surely find out.

The other effect of moving labour costs abroad is that you reduce the need for those jobs in your own country, creating a level of systemic unemployment which ensures that those workers with jobs, desperate to keep them, will accept lower pay and reduced conditions. Does anyone still believe in the trickle-down theory of wealth? How much do you think those Thai women earn for picking coffee beans out of elephant droppings so that the obscenely rich can sip their Black Ivory espresso at an exclusive desert resort in Abu Dhabi? Closer to the booming Dow Jones, my latest Time informs me that an average of 50,000 people a night slept in New York city’s shelters for the homeless in January this year. At least Turkey’s little red diamond is inside the blue line – which means the gap between rich and poor has shrunk since 1985. There’s still work to be done, but it’s a move in the right direction.