to think the World has gone completely mad........

London is the home of the 1%, Marmight. Per head, there are more people with more than £21m in assets (apart from their main house) than anywhere else on the planet. That includes the largest concentration of Russian millionaires outside of Moscow. They probably all shop in Harrods. Somehow I do not think the plight of the malnourished comes on their radar.

I agree these people live in a whole world different world - thank heaven there are so few of them I suppose. Someone once said 'The Rich are Different' yeh and how!!

There are very few of them, but they are the ones in possession of most of the wealth unfortunately.

There was a woman on This Morning yesterday who spends £2000 a month on her dogs. Her money I know but it seems obscene to me.

You are right, Eloethan.
Apparently the top 1% in Britain grab more than their counterparts anywhere else in Europe. Fortunately, Marmight, it might change soon.
There are not enough people in London able to buy property at such grossly inflated prices. Banks can no longer make enough profit to justify paying over 2000 bankers more than a million a year. Your chocolates might have to come down to £500 per box!

I bet they're no better than Lidl's though of course they may be adorned with edible gold leaf!

Conspicuous consumerism at this level is simply nauseating. And Harrods is a tacky, flashy nauseating store too. I used to take Mum there for lunch when she was visiting in the early 70's and it was very posh but elegant and glam. I went back a few years ago and found it quite appalling - if everything hadn't been so extortionately expensive I would have said cheap and tacky - but as it was - just tacky. God knows why it is heaving with tourists.

Actually, anno, my husband and I only ever went to Lidl's for the chocolate and the chocolate biscuits.
I have a friend who goes to London quite often. Her son takes her to Harrods, and she often brings me back a pen or a notebook. I do not know why.

I haven't been to Harrods for a while. Have they still got the horrid plasticky looking 'shrine' to Diana and Dodi on one of the staircases?

Al Fayed sold his business interest in Harrods in 2010. I'd imagine the new owners got rid of that pretty sharpish - although I could be wrong of course!

The total amount spent on cat food in the USA would cover the cost of providing clean water for everyone in the world. The world has always been "mad" in this respect but I would be inclined to use a different adjective.

I`ve never been inside Harrods, walked past once, in April 1972, but that`s the nearest I ever got.

I went a few years ago jus to see what it was like and I never got past the tourist basement, I saw a bar of chocolate for £10 and was horrified, however' I managed a cute teddy with 'harrods' on his jersey for DD which is now in bed with DGD so it was worth the money but this is not a store I would go in again.

I bought a blue box with a teddy bear dressed as a policeman on, but I can't for the life of me remember what was in it. It was a Xmas present for someone. In the food department I think.

The last (and, I think, only) time I was in Harrods, was nearly 50 years ago. I was 24 and buying a silver wedding gift for my parents!

I bought hand towels in Harrods almost forty years ago - Jan1976 - and they are still going strong! - one side is velvety soft and the other quite a nice roughness.

absent the price of the handbags that some of my former colleagues would come back with after a casual shopping trip during their lunch hour, would feed everyone in many an African village for a month or longer. My colleagues could never really understand why I couldn't get excited about their latest purchase.

People are never going to have the same viewpoint about value, but it isn't as simple as a straight opposition between haves and have nots. In fact, I rather suspect, but without any real evidence, that it's those who have recently acquired substantial sums of money who are the most likely to splash out on so-called designer labels and stupidly priced chocolate.

I do remember some years ago being told by a new acquaintance that she couldn't make up her mind between the carpet she really wanted for the family room that would cost 30,000 pounds or the "cheap" one at 11,000 pounds because the dogs would pee on it. There was no meeting of minds there.

No, the 'shrine to Diana' is long gone. Last time I went there was an opera singer half way up the stairs.

My in-laws loved Harrods! They were in no way rich (council house tenants, an electrician and sales assistant) but believed in buying the most expensive you can afford and it will save you money! They bought my DD1 a wooden treble recorder , when she was seven and learning to play in school, from the Harrods music department. She still sounded awful!

My DH had a student 'holiday job' in Harrods when it was still considered a 'classy' shop in the early 70s. He was on the electrical department. A TV was stolen by two guys in brown overalls..just walked out of the shop with it. I used to go and meet him from work at Saturday lunchtime after a wander round the pet department.

Last year a friend of ours was one of the 6 Santa's! It is worth a visit at Christmas!

I went to Harrods a few years ago and like Soutra I was appalled at how down market and vulgar it had become. Back in the 70's it was much more classy and yet sold all sorts of every day stuff at normal prices as well. I remember buying a white rat in the pet department.

Did you actually expect these comments, Marmight?

Ha! Wasn't sure which way the discussion was going to go although I didn't think it would lead to the pros and cons of shopping in Harrods .
I still have the article beside the laptop, and still can't quite believe my eyes. I suppose it's all relative to how much you have in the first place and how educated and aware you are on the general state of the world and those around you. Probably many of those with an infinite amount wealth don't even consider the rest. I know a few people who spend a fortune on handbags, houses, jewellery, general stuff, sometimes just for the sake of it.
As Absent says, the 'nouveau riche' tend to flaunt their wealth and spend ridiculous amounts with gay abandon, while those who have had it for years tend to safeguard it and spend more wisely - even if to the rest of us it is a huge amount. I suppose wealth and its use has always been disproportionate and always will be.

Harrods is the showcase for how ghastly London has become since the vulgar Russian money moved in. I wonder what the London Boroughs are going to do when they can't recruit any teachers, or nurses or policemen anymore?