Richard Branson apparently went into space last week. Imagine having the amount of money he does, billions upon billions of pounds packed into his bank account, and he spends it on a glorified “rocket plane” to go into space.

He didn’t even make it into space though, he went 50 miles up in the air. About the same distance from Glasgow to Edinburgh. You get to space when you’re 62 miles up in the air, when you cross the Karman line, where the atmosphere is too thin to support aeronautical flight.

Mr Branson, I’m sure you will be devastated to hear this, but I do not recognise your credentials as an astronaut. You are no more a spaceman than I am. A fraud. All that money and he couldn’t even do it right.

This is the thing with billionaires, they’re all just wee guys. I have a theory that the more money a man has, the more he will regress into being a child again, and not in a good way.

They have the money and time to do anything they want. They don’t need to save up, they don’t need to cut back on one thing to be able to afford another, they don’t need to worry about a single thing. They ask and they receive.

They get to indulge in their wildest fantasies whenever they want. This causes them to adopt a childlike mindset and worldview as no one is able to tell them no and even if someone did, they simply wouldn’t listen. Every billionaire is a combination of Veruca Salt and Augustus Gloop.

“But they worked hard to get where they are!” I hear some of you cry. No they didn’t, and you know it. If they didn’t win the lottery of life by being born into ultra-wealth then they got to where they are by exploiting people, by being ruthless to the point of psychopathy and hoarding money which would be better off in the hands of the many.

Billionaires shouldn’t and wouldn’t exist in a just and fair society. For one individual to have so much money that they could effectively end homelessness, hunger, poverty, inequality around the world in terms of education and healthcare, but choose not to is just deplorable.

I read something where an economist said that billionaires cannot tackle the humanitarian crises facing the world as “the system” doesn’t allow for that to happen.

“The system” is in place to keep us at the bottom and the rich at the top. We get poorer and they get richer. A system designed to meet the needs of the richest human beings and forgetting about everyone else, leaving them to fend for themselves.

Not only that, but they’re also killing the planet. The carbon footprint of a billionaire, with their fleets of yachts, private jets, supercars and helicopters, is thousands of times bigger per year than the average person. While we fret about recycling, about not using plastic straws, they spew pollutants into the air we breathe, poisoning our earth, and tell us we’re not doing enough. Then Musk, Bezos and Branson decide they’re going on a wee jolly into space.

This capitalist system we live under holds us back from progressing in other ways. I’ve no doubt we’ve had the technological capabilities to have everyone using electric cars and the infrastructure to charge them for decades but that wouldn’t suit the oil and gas companies, would it?

Or, to be precise, their CEOs. We have to bleed the planet dry of its resources, extract every penny’s worth of anything they can sell, before they’ll let us have such a thing.

I wrote about UFO sightings last week in this column and about what it would mean for humanity if we got in contact with aliens. If aliens came here tomorrow and saw the system we live under and saw the massive inequality between human beings, they’d think we were the most bizarre, backwards species they’d come across.

I assume the goal of these billionaires pouring their money into space exploration is to try and further the progress of humanity as a species. I’m sure that’s the lie they’ve told themselves to make them feel better when the reality is they’re doing it to turn a massive profit and to stroke their planet-sized egos even more. If we want to further our progress in this universe, then it starts here on earth. Tackle the problems we’re facing at the moment.

Poverty, inequality and climate change. Access to the best healthcare on the planet, the best educations possible, access to the healthiest and most nutritious food, warm homes, the time and resources to devote your life pursuing your dreams – these are all things billionaires have that everyone else in the world, every single soul, should have as well.

According to Forbes, the billionaires of the world saw their combined wealth reach almost $2 trillion last year. A figure so big it’s hard to even get your brain around it. They could fix everything tomorrow if they wanted to, but they won’t.