I have nothing against rich people - BUT - "A Parthenon For Chickens Is Just Clucking Offensive.

The fowl extravagance of Crispin Odey's chicken house
The hedge fund manager's plans to house his hens in a galline Parthenon are not just tasteless – they're clucking offensive



In theory, what a private individual chooses to do with his or her money is nobody else's business. We live in a country where you may dispose of it however you see fit, so long as you break no laws. You are free to indulge silly fantasies, to treat yourself, to spend on things others might perceive as having no value.

In practice, this isn't always the case, and with good reason. We are a society, not simply a collection of individuals, and our behaviour has ramifications. We participate in an economy, where our decisions about money affect others. Just ask hedge fund manager Crispin Odey, who paid himself £28m in 2008, after successfully betting that shares in British banks would fall through the floor. He's decided to spend a much more modest sum on a home for his chickens: media reports estimate the stone alone will cost more than £100,000.

The stone, you say? Yes, the Odey chickens will be housed in style – no coop for them. Nothing as déclassé as chicken wire hems them in. And yet, if visions of Sir Peter Viggers' notorious duck house have been conjured, dismiss them and think bigger, much bigger. Odey's gaff is a galline Parthenon.

We know this because detailed plans for the chicken house, which surfaced yesterday, are available on the local council's website. Odey may have the money to realise his wildest dreams (I hope for his sake that these extend beyond luxurious accommodation for domestic fowl), but he has to submit to the law of the land, which requires public scrutiny of building projects. Before I return to the moral case for exposing Odey to opprobrium, it's worth analysing these on aesthetic grounds. Whatever the conscious reasons for his choices, they reveal much about what contemporary City money admires.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/26/fowl-extravagance-crispin-odey-chicken-house?CMP=twt_gu