Guardian/Observer UK: Sorry, Richard Branson – we didn't care about your blaze

[marmar]

Sorry, Richard Branson – we didn't care about your blaze
The British, at long last, are showing a healthy indifference to the ways of the super-rich

Barbara Ellen
The Observer, Sunday 28 August 2011


Did anyone feel for Richard Branson and his Necker Island inferno – sympathy, empathy, anything? If not, why not? The story had all the compelling ingredients. Lightning striking the £60m private island, fire raging through the Agatha Christie-sounding Great House. Guest Kate Winslet carrying Branson's 90-year-old mother to safety. Branson racing towards the burning house, stark naked. Perhaps too much information with that last one. I hope his hot-air balloons weren't damaged.

Here was a story with everything. By "everything", I mean, billionaires and Oscar winners in peril! We'd have lapped this up in decades gone by. Fabulous, brave Kate, and her soot-smudged cheeks, carrying Granny Branson through the flames to safety – wow, it's like Titanic, only hotter.

And yet no one I've come across seems that fussed about the Necker fire. Which seems surprising, even cold. Don't the rich burn like the rest of us? Moreover, this story was akin to a 1970s disaster movie. One almost expected the late Liz Taylor to waft on to "set" in mink and pearls, until becoming engulfed in flames and falling off a balcony, still clutching a martini glass. Indeed, maybe this (the feeling of fictional characters playing movie scenes) was part of the problem. Times are hard and getting harder. These people who are richer, bigger, "better" than us – it's as if we don't have the energy for them anymore.

It seems to me that we're sick of them – "them" being the super-rich and/or mega-famous. After all this time, the penny has finally dropped that most of them wouldn't, well, piss on us if we were on fire. All that escapism was a con, a sedation of the masses. This is interesting on several levels. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/28/richard-branson-rihanna-alex-ferguson

[Firebrand Gary]

1. I did, Sir Branson has done many things for many people.

I am joyed to hear that his mother made it out safely. We should all recognize that money cannot replace all things. I hope that copies of important photographs, documents, etc. But again, most importantly at least he, his family and his friends were all safe.

[roguevalley]

2. I'm glad they are safe but its nice to know that stuff like this also

isn't relegated to the little people.