He added, on Sky News' Murnaghan programme, that voting in the general election would not be "an indulgence" as it was for some voters in local elections - it would be a choice of who was going to run the country.

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This type of indulgence is fun, but not always possible or even necessary.

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Of course, not all the spending increases are sheer indulgence.

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For them however, the allure was not the economy of their meal but the indulgence of supping on local fare.

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Foreigners, who currently hold around half of US Treasury debt, up from 18% in 1990, will not finance Uncle Sam's self-indulgence for ever.

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This was not the case, but Wadsworth indulged this indulgence of him and smiled as the boy turned cartwheels, stole up behind the cook while she bent to the bake oven, or played a guessing game with acorns hidden in his fists.

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Greed, self-indulgence, and even treason are of course not new to the international banking and multi-national corporate worlds.

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And it is a discipline not to permit himself the fantasy that he will survive to claim his small patch of ordinary happiness (perhaps too that the husband will not), when fantasising about surviving to next week seems an indulgence.

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"Like a lot of people, I thought that an NFL franchise was the ultimate indulgence for men who had made enough money in other pursuits not to care how much it cost, " says Fisher.

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Moreover, Britain does not waste billions of pounds each year on dubious defence projects and militaristic self-indulgence, and is better able to spend the money elsewhere.

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