Welcome to Declassified, a weekly humor column.
As a fully paid-up member of the metropolitan liberal elite, I often sit around the villa sipping a glass of Veuve Clicquot deciding what to do with all the money burning a hole in my pocket and wondering what all this cost-of-living crisis talk is all about.
If you’re in a similar bind, let’s look at some ways to spend your cash, a bit like the FT’s “How To Spend It” supplement but with fewer Bugattis and yachts and more dick jokes. (“How To Spend It” has, richer readers may have noticed, been rebranded as HTSI — and if you do have an HTSI, I recommend a visit to a clinic for some soothing balm).
Anyway, there are plenty of ways to spend your cash if you really want to. One, er, lucky person donated a cool £120,000 to the U.K. Conservative Party this week in order to go for dinner with Boris Johnson and his two predecessors, Theresa May and David Cameron.
The punishment — sorry, prize — was auctioned off at a swanky Tory bash at London’s V&A museum. That dinner could be awkward for a variety of reasons, chiefly being that Johnson and Cameron have clashed repeatedly, and that Johnson (metaphorically) knifed May in the front when she was prime minister.
Of course, £120,000 is a drop in the ocean when it comes to giving cash to political parties or election candidates. In the U.S. last month, the Democrat-backing Sam Bankman-Fried said he could spend $1 billion or more on the 2024 election, which would make him the biggest-ever political donor in a single U.S. election. Although as Bankman-Fried made his money in cryptocurrency, he might want to wait before writing any checks just in case he’s worth about $1.28 by then.
Another way to spend all that extra cash is to delve into the property market. As POLITICO revealed, the EU’s diplomatic wing is planning to purchase a New York mansion for more than €20 million.
Perhaps the most striking thing about the recently renovated Upper East Side house, which would be the base for the head of the EU’s delegation to the United Nations in New York, is the purple and brown Union Jack carpet in one room. However, also in that room is a sign that says “Dead end,” which begs the question: Is this a Brexit-themed room? Is a framed blue passport just out of shot? And on a nearby coffee table, is there a hardback (and unread) version of the Withdrawal Agreement?
CAPTION COMPETITION
“Seriously! We agreed we’d all wear the colors of Ukraine. Now I look foolish.”
Can you do better? Email pdallison@politico.eu or on Twitter @pdallisonesque
Last week we gave you this photo:
Thanks for all the entries. Here’s the best from our postbag — there’s no prize except for the gift of laughter, which I think we can all agree is far more valuable than cash or booze.
“He holds up the world with his hands! What a coincidence!” by Giovanni Cellini.
Paul Dallison is POLITICO‘s slot news editor.
