Great little potted history Nicholas. I'm looking forward to reading your book on economic reform.

The older I get and the more I read of history the more I see that there has always been a 'plundering class' of dominating self serving types of human beings for whom enough is always 'a little bit more'.

It's worth noting that first class jet passengers are responsible for at least 3 times the carbon emissions of standard passengers due to the extra room they take up. These people are a plague on the planet in more ways than that - their pollution from vehicles, huge homes etc makes their footprint many times that of normal 'modern western man'.

This class had brought on 25% unemployment in Spain and Greece and 10% in the US with millions more on meal tickets. It all started with the 'economic heroes' Reagan and Thatcher (they were of course really puppets).

So what is the solution now that deregulation and neo-conservatism have run their plundering path? It think bring back the good old word SOCIALISM and damn the lying mainstream press with their propaganda against it. People are already seeing through them and moving to independent internet news sites.

Yes a new socialism that maintains a fairly regulated capitalism with incentives to earn fair rewards for PRODUCTION, not wheeling dealing and speculating. France has come close but never quite achieved it. Viva la revolution!

Leaving aside the unlikely return of the dead and fundamentally corrupt ideology of socialism in either upper or lower case, I ask: why is all this bad? If an old man in his late sixties, to wit me, chooses to fly internationally in business class because my back, legs and general demeanour are likely to arrive in better condition than if I flew economy, why is this bad? Is it because I am a white male and therefore by definition responsible for every ill facing the modern world?

I generally like reading your stuff, Nicholas. I think you're better than this.

Thanks for your comment Senior Victorian. If you want to travel in business class and pay for it, good luck to you.

It's true that there's a tone of regret that things are as stratified as they are in my piece, but I'm not arguing that all business class is bad. I AM suggesting that there's something unhealthy about the way in which elites of long ago - of wealth and power - are subtly reassembling themselves, quite a lot of it behind closed doors.

Then again, perhaps (from my point of view) the middle years of the 20th century were a golden age of egalitarianism that were an aberration. Who knows. I personally value a more equal society even though it's against my (material) interests.

It's all a bit thin, though, isn't it Mr Gruen.

>>I AM suggesting that there's something unhealthy about the way in which elites of long ago - of wealth and power - are subtly reassembling themselves, quite a lot of it behind closed doors.<<

Using the example of different classes of business travel to argue that the "elites" are once again on the move lacks some depth, I feel. Perhaps in your mind today's "turn left" brigade equate to the starched-collar plutocrats travelling First Class in James Cameron's Titanic, but that hardly bespeaks the arrival of a new world order conspiracy of the rich, surely?

(Sorry Arjay, that should of course be New World Order)

>>Then again, perhaps (from my point of view) the middle years of the 20th century were a golden age of egalitarianism that were an aberration.<<

For much of that period the world was recovering from a massive and destructive World War. Hardly a "golden age" of anything, bar grinding poverty for many millions of Europeans. Widespread application of capitalist and free-trade philosophies has since done much to rectify this.

Perhaps if you were to switch your focus for a moment away from putative social divisions in the aeroplane's cabin and onto Qantas' management, you might ask yourself whether the ability to soak those who have benefitted most from capitalism's success is not merely a marketing ploy to maximise returns, but indeed a fundamental moral imperative.

Furthermore, on the back of a (very small) envelope, you might be able to calculate the this approach also has the essentially desirable effect of reducing the fares for the hoi polloi "down the back".

However, I do agree that public servants should be banned from all but the cheapest seats. They don't even have the excuse "I made it, I can spend it" that those who have enriched themselves "in trade", are liable to employ.