Yes John,

The House of Common in pommyland is a House of small Privilege...  And this does not include the House of Lords and the tin-shack of the Garter Gang... where privileges are traditionally huge.

Miranda wrote a piece in the Herald this week about house renovation, and, although she alluded to it, she did not seem to grasp the obscene power of the privilege and of the exclusivity for the elite — especially those who pay 60 million bucks for a Van Mock. A bargain price. There was a great opportunity to challenge or even open wide the debate between the rich and the democratically minded people, but it did not rise beyond a few steps towards bland-dom.

As if exclusivity was related to vast sums of money in the necessity to be different. Sure every Noo Woman and most Huffnerian magazines laud exclusive differences by selling the most common to all. The democratisation of style has meant that most people get their designer furniture at the local "Knock-it Yourself" joint from bits drafted in Sweden and manufactured with precision, and without lead paint, in China. Cheap but functional but common. The others get it made to measure.

In my early days in this country, I achieved some exclusivity by making bookshelves out of planks on stacks of bricks. Since every poor bastard around  was doing the same thing, exclusivity was achieve by painting the planks with exclusive colours and where the bricks had been found, usually during council clean ups, where old fridges in need of a new seal but perfectly functional could be acquired as well, if you had a wheelbarrow — or took a shopping trolley for extended trips beyond their fictitious boundaries...

For someone who has renovated at least two houses and built the equivalent of one from scratch, mostly from my own hands, I had a bit of sympathy for Miranda who seemed to be suffering from house-reno although she did not mention she was in the middle of one... It's hard yakka especially if you employ builders to do the heavy bits. Some builders are reliable some are not. I tend to favour the self-handyman method. It's faster. But searching for bits is not easy. These days even harder. Back then, there were some reliable demolition junk yard where one could find doors and windows of vintage times for reasonable prices. Nothing above ten bucks. Some of the stuff they gave away, nearly. But even in these junkyards the scourge of exclusivity came and bumped the prices beyond the average handy-person —specially those like me who always live day to day. Some lovely pieces were bought at huge prices by antique shops who resold the stuff to exclusive clientele for ten times the price, in exclusive suburbia.

Thus the problem faced by democracy. We aim to universalise the rights of everyone who walks the earth, but behind the scene, the new kings — the grocers of common goods, cannons merchants and mob advertising, privilegiously collect the unique and the priceless, all for a price we mere mortal cannot comprehend due to the number of zeros in the figures. But some of these exclusive gatherers are so in debt singularly, that their banks can't afford calling the cash back without foreclosing themselves...

As a side issue, one has to admire the art hung on the walls of exclusive penthouses of the semi-loaded. Nothing threatening or demanding, just expensive bits of unique hand painted wallpapers in nice frames, or to be daring with no frame at all... Welcome to the super-exclusive bland at that level, with views from heights.

Then, there is the mega-rich... Democracy? An illusion designed to let us swim in our own mediocre comfort that would have appeared fantastic for the super rich in 1920. Our desire to get the same has only made the rich super-richer and more exclusive. They've got guards and dogs keeping an eye on their exclusive loot. The House of Common included.