Tuesday 9th June

One of the headlines on the BBC news today was that a divorced woman, originally given a ten million pounds (yes, that’s right £10,000,000) divorce settlement is challenging this as it now transpires that her ex-husband was actually worth a lot more than that.  Now, I do not know the details or the merits or otherwise of her case and as Errol Flynn once said “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn”.  It just amazes me that the courts are wasting their time on this nonsense.  There was another case recently where a couple spilt when they both had next to nothing and he later made a fortune and his ex-wife is now sueing him for half his assets even though he earned them all long after they were divorced.  Again I am no lawyer, but I wonder if we have all gone quite mad.  I have been divorced twice and both times we both had next to nothing so there was no real splitting of assets.  Do I now owe either or indeed both of my long ago ex-wives half of the assets which I earned by paying off a rather large mortgage completely out of my own wages?  Or do these rules only apply to the super-rich?

It just amazes me that anyone, had it been the husband I would have been just as amazed, should think that £10 million was insufficient for their needs.  But then I am not, and never want to be, one of the super-rich. When food banks and payday loan sharks are the fastest growing industries in Britain it is a bit rich (no pun intended) that this is even news.  And yet we are all still obsessed by the antics of the rich.  Another headline today “Kate Moss escorted off an EasyJet plane at Luton for disruptive behavior” again shows up both our obsession with Celebrity and the sad state of affairs where once Celebrity and Wealth are draped over their shoulders some people still behave like arseholes. And the far more serious question “Why, with all her money was she flying EasyJet in the first place?  Obviously Ryanair didn’t fly that route.