This old-fashioned restraint is dwindling, and it can sometimes seem that ostentation is the guiding principle of the modern world - the bigger the bank balance, the more flamboyant the toys, the showier the bling-bling, the more column inches. There are whole industries of publicists, PR execs, agents, managers and spokespeople who live to show off; whole rafts of the media whose sole aim in life is to report such ostentation; and whole sections of society who enjoy nothing more than reading all about the yachts, the parties, the million-dollar-necklaces.
Despite this new interest in the trappings of material wealth, there is a strong feeling in British society that ostentation is vulgar. The wealthy aristocrat, secure in his stately home and thousands of acres, who wears ancient tweeds and drives a battered land rover, is a British cliche. There is an underlying suspicion that being flash with the cash is a terrible give-away; what it reveals is that the cash is a newly-acquired novelty, not a birthright.
Written by Victoria Overton
Native English Spain is dedicated to make learning English simple, fun and affordable for Spanish people.
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It's a great post!
ReplyDeleteI think it was a fashion that thousand of spanish people followed years ago. But this has been forgotten. The economic crisis has returned Spain to the reality and has showed us that ostentation is not the better way to our personal and goverment economic.