davywavy | I can't see how rich people ever get bored [2]

There's an old Dilbert strip in which Dogbert, having become immensely wealthy, wanders around paying people large sums of money to roll round in muddy puddles for his entertainment whilst wondering how rich people can ever get bored. The power of paying people to humiliate themselves for my own entertainment is one I've dabbled in before now, such as the time I tried to pay

token_limey and

baloobas to spend most of the rest of their lives with their hands down a toilet, but I was pleased to see in the news the other day that an actual billionnaire has set about doing it on a large scale.
Alki David, Britain's 45th richest man, has set up a website called "Battlecam", on which he posts challenges like "Pour a bottle of water over your head", and "Shave off all your hair and dye your body blue", and then pays people who post up videos of themselves doing just that. He's recently hit the headlines by offering US$1m to the first person to streak in front of Barack Obama.

It's nice to see someone spending their money wisely.

Anyway, I was on the way to work yesterday when I saw a headline which I immediately assumed was another of of Mr. David's challenges; it was "£60,000 to listen to Gordon Brown speak". My reaction was to think "Sixty Grand? That's bit on the low side", but reading further I discovered it wasn't yet another whacky stunt of personal humiliation, but it was in fact a story that apparently Gordon Brown is asking for a £60,000 fee for speaking engagements.
That's right - he's expecting other people to pay him.

It explains a lot about the reasons for the deficit if Gordon Brown seriously thinks anyone will cough up sixty grand for the pleasure of hearing him drone on for an hour. The man plainly doesn't know the value of a pound. However, thinking further it struck me that I would pay sixty thousand to hear Brown speak if only I could decide what he'd be saying. If he was giving his usual witless prattle about "Post Neoclassical Endogenous Growth Theory" and "Prudence", then it'd be a shocking waste of perfectly good moolah. On the other hand, if he was saying "God, please, no, not the pliers again", and "Aaaaaaaaaaaargh, my bottom!", then it'd certainly be money well spent.