Thursday, May 08, 2008



Aristocratic self-indulgence

While Tonga's people struggle to cope with rising food and fuel prices, Tonga's monarch is set to splash out more than NZ$4 million on his coronation - and it could climb as high as NZ$6 million. To give some perspective, that's around 0.5% of Tonga's GDP, on pure aristocratic self-indulgence.

That's the sort of ostentatious display which saw Marie Antoinette guillotined. But hopefully it won't come to that in Tonga.