THE RICH ARE DIFFERENT

"Let them eat cake!"

A new independent report this month revealed that more than one in five Britons are now living in poverty. But one person who isn't worrying about paying for the groceries is Meghan Markle. In newly released engagement photos she can be seen in a gown that cost 55,000 pounds...

THIS MONTH a new report from the independent Joseph Rowntree Foundation revealed that some 14 million British people are now living in poverty - that's more than one in five of the population.

The report says that nearly 400,000 more children and 300,000 more pensioners are now living in poverty than five years ago.

Labour's spokesperson on welfare and pensions, Debbie Abrahams, commented that the 700,000 increase in the number of children and older people in poverty was “totally unacceptable”, adding: “The past seven years of flat-lining wages and austerity cuts, now combined with sharply rising costs of household essentials, is a truly terrifying prospect for millions trying to make ends meet."

Against this background of grinding and deepening  poverty, the newly engaged couple, Harry and Meghan, stepped up this week to rub the noses of the poor in the dirt.

Markle is wearing a frock that cost an eye watering 55,000 pounds. The dress was designed by British label Ralph & Russo - a favourite with celebrities who can afford to cough up this kind of money and not blink an eye.

The words of the great F. Scott Fitzgerald spring to mind. In his short story 'The Rich Boy,' published in 1926, we read:

 "Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different."