Dosh, glorious dosh!

One of the books I found in Albemarle Street the other week, in the margins of a discourse at the Royal Institution, was a magazine called Spear's.

The cover suggests that one might pay £25 for the thing, but I suspect it is rarely bought, rather browsed while waiting in the better class of hotels, estate agents and dentists. A magazine for those who either are rich or who like to think themselves rich. One up from reading 'Country Life' in the sort of dentist that I might go to - although, as it happens, the dentist I do go to is a bit weak on magazines.

This magazine is the usual mixture of articles and advertisements, with some of the articles being more or less advertisements and with my not managing to read any of the articles, finding browsing the advertisements easier going. I suppose that is the idea.

So we have the advertisement for kaiser (illustrated) offering to salt my dosh away where the tax man can't see it.

There are quite a few pages given over to advertisements for accountants who specialise in the affairs of those with lots of dosh and with hourly rates mostly around £500 but with some a lot more. And then lots of rates were undisclosed, so perhaps they charge what they think they can get away with when they have taken a peek at you and your affairs. And I dare say there are even more special rates for those whose dosh is of uncertain or undeclared provenance, but who still want the 'privacy in a world of transparency' otherwise offered by kaiser.

We have Maserati telling me about their latest engine, cunningly reverse engineered so as to reproduce the full throated roar of a much loved engine of yore.

There are luxury cruises running at £1,000 a day rather than those at £1,000 a week offered by the DT.

There are investment opportunities which appear to be fancy forms of timeshare, directed at those with a few hundreds of thousands of pounds at a loose end, rather than just a few thousands.

One or two pictures of scantily clad young ladies. Which reminded me of what they used to say about sports cars: once you were old enough to be able to afford one, you were probably too old to enjoy it. Not the same with race horses, where it is OK, encouraged even, to hire someone to ride the thing for you.

Pretty much all of it either about managing my money or about its conspicuous consumption. All rather unsavoury.

Reference 1: http://www.spearswms.com/.

Reference 2: not to be confused with http://www.britney.com/us/home. Although maybe Spear's the company do provide advice to Spears the lady, which would be neat. Although I am not sure what Spear's really is. Are they just a magazine or do they do stuff?