No union and forget staff toilet breaks, but hey, at least Bezos can buy Venice for his wedding | Catherine Bennett

In a triumph of bling over restraint, the bride will get a hen do in space and a party on a super-yacht

Well done us. It can’t be long before Jeff Bezos personally extends his thanks, as he did when we – Amazon employees and Amazon customers – paid for his flight to sub-orbital space, but let’s not wait. As soon as Monday, when his fiancee, Lauren Sánchez, is due with five friends on a rocket trip, Amazon givers could be witness, again, to the kind of unfettered excess that is only possible if everyone, at every level, contributes, even if it’s only via permanent surveillance and a surrendered toilet break.

But no one puts it better than Jeff, the founder and chief executive of Amazon, did himself, after he took his inaugural Blue Origin space trip in 2021. “You guys paid for all this.” More recently, we provided funds – that might not exist without the company’s pitiless working conditions – for Sánchez’s pink diamond engagement ring, proudly exhibited, estimated value, $3m. The billionaire delivered it, an enchanted Vogue writer reported, in the sweetest way, on his massive new yacht, “hiding the ring under her pillow after a starlit dinner à deux”. Few passions have been as exhaustively documented as that between these seasoned lovebirds. (Favourite saying: “Love you to space and back.”) And this week, prior to funding the solemnisation of that love – a June wedding in Venice – it will duly be our privilege to watch Lauren’s hen flight slip the surly bonds of Earth.

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