Unlike the swine flu hysteria currently gripping the globe, the affluenza pandemic of the Nineties and early Noughties (first identified by the clinical psychologist Oliver James) was a virulent, socially transmitted disease most of us subliminally hankered to catch. ‘
Unlike the swine flu hysteria currently gripping the globe, the affluenza pandemic of the Nineties and early Noughties (first identified by the clinical psychologist Oliver James) was a virulent, socially transmitted disease most of us subliminally hankered to catch. ‘Bring it on’, was the nation’s great battle cry as we loaded the guns of avarice with alacrity; conveniently forgetting that the bullets of greed have a nasty habit of ricocheting back into society.
We self-harmed with abandon; fast finding ourselves addicted to life’s little luxuries. Nouveau Labour’s manifesto was very clear: it encouraged free-market capitalism thus turning us all — to a greater or lesser extent — into nouveau-riche wannabes.
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