So what if Angelina Jolie objects to the mansion tax?
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Version 0 of 1. Angelina Jolie, who has reportedly been eyeing up a £25m penthouse in Marylebone, as well as a West End development with a cellar containing more than £100,000 of wine, has confided to Channel 4 News that the mansion tax could act as a deterrent. “I’m quite responsible about money – that could put me off,” she told Jon Snow. Are the people of Britain supposed to be bothered by her disapproval? In the face of an affordable housing crisis, Jolie’s presence (or not, as the case may be) in the capital is of limited concern to a public who are still wondering just what kind of genius sold Myleene Klass a garage for £2m. Newspaper columns indicate that the mansion tax has become a common media whinge – another sign that the industry is dominated by wealthy upper middle-class boomers far removed from the realities of life in austerity Britain. As I write this to the metronomic sound of rainwater falling into the saucepan on my bedroom carpet, I’m struggling to think of anything I could care less about than Jolie’s living arrangements. As far as I’m concerned, you can’t get more luxurious than a watertight home. Coca Cola’s cash cow Actually, there is something that leaves me even more nonplussed: Coca Cola’s recently announced entry into the dairy market. Fairlife, a dystopian-sounding brand name that conjures images of a futuristic people farm run by sadistic robots in milking gloves, will be launched in the United States next month and contains 50% more protein and 30% less sugar than normal milk. According to Sandy Douglas, Coke’s chief customer officer and meaningless corporate-speak expert, Fairlife is “a milk that’s premiumised and tastes better and we’ll charge twice as much for it as the milk we’re used to buying”. In a sign that Coca Cola’s profiteering knows no bounds, Fairlife will, he assured a conference, “rain money”. I can’t see this “premiumised” lactose-free milk taking off in Britain, a country that loves its fresh milk like no other (my stomach still turns when I picture how my dad used to skim the cream off the top of the milk bottle and pop it in his mouth). On the quiet, I’m a champion of the UHT widely available on the continent. The less milk tastes like milk, the better. Cold comfort An NHS report into the scandal of 2,600 people with learning disabilities who remain trapped in hospitals miles from home has said that there is no alternative but to shut all the institutions down and offer treatment in the community. As anyone with a disabled relative will know, being deprived of regular contact is a wrench for both parties. My severely autistic brother lives more than 200 miles away and will cry if we leave it too long between visits. I think about him every day and cannot imagine how it would feel were he not where he is (a brilliant specialist care unit for young adults with autism who are looked after by a kind and enthusiastic team of care workers), but in a secure hospital ward, all alone. As Stephen Bubb, chief executive of charity leaders body Acevo, pointed out yesterday, history will not judge us kindly for our cruelties. “I think in a decade’s time we will look back and think, ‘How did we do that?’,” he said. The health of a society is determined by how it treats its vulnerable people. Coming in the same week in which it was revealed that a third of families with a disabled child cannot afford central heating, Britain in 2014 is looking shamefully deficient. |