This report on the BBC really demonstrates how messed up the world is nowadays.

In 1938 a Jewish family living in Germany sold a painting (Woman Ironing) to pay for their escape from Nazi Germany. The painting is now in the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. The heirs of the Adler family want the painting back; they say that the family were forced to sell it, which they feel was unfair.

I am sorry, but Karl and Rosi Adler chose to sell the painting. The heirs claim that it was sold at below market value (which seems to be true, but not by a huge amount), so I don't see why they feel entitled to have it returned. I understand that the family only sold it because of the Nazi persecution of Jews, and I have sympathy with their plight, but the sale probably saved their lives; the loss of the painting seems a small price to pay for that. The Picasso was not stolen, confiscated or looted, but voluntarily sold by the owners.

I wonder where this tide of entitlement will end. Will someone who lost their job sue for the return of the car that they sold in order to pay their rent and grocery bills? Apparently some people missed the memo about choices and consequences.

Do people really want to live their whole lives swaddled in cotton wool, or only when it suits them?

The disease of entitlement is reaching epidemic proportions.

The cases mentioned below were all on airlines, but we meet entitled people making unreasonable demands in all situations.

In this report on The Gate a first class passenger is outraged that the cabin crew serve other passengers their meals, because she is allergic to nuts. The report makes it clear that expert opinion is that she would not be at risk from other passengers eating nuts in her vicinity, but she honestly expected the airline (American Airlines) to accommodate her request, and because they refused "She is never flying AA again because she says all other airlines honor her request.” Does her expectation extend to a type-1 diabetic not being fed, because of her paranoia about her nut allergy, when that could put the diabetic's life at risk?

Recently there has been a rash of stories about passengers demanding that other passengers swap seats so that, for example, the family could sit together, for example:

• Here, on Live And Let's Fly;
• Here, on Narcity;
• And here, on Bored Panda.

The good thing, in all of these examples, is that the request was refused, and social media is backing that refusal.

I understand that air travel is difficult with young children, and if kids can't sit with their parents, everyone's flight can be spoiled. Nevertheless, the bottom line for me is "choices and consequences": these people made the choice to have children, to fly with their children, to not check-in early enough to get seated together and to not pay the fee to choose their seats; there are consequences from all of these choices, and those consequences should not be on fellow passengers.

Other symptoms of entitlement on flights include "manspreading" (reported here on Live And Let's Fly), failure to share armrests and selfish reclining of seat-backs. Most of us have experienced examples of these.

We all need to stand against the spread of these entitled attitudes.