I would like to say I don’t get irritated very often – no honestly, I would – BUT I am sure my nearest and dearest would disagree, yet, really, things have got beyond Zen-like comprehension.
It’s not just that the banks and the government have managed to tip us into a collective financial disaster , then has tried to distract us with a folksy ‘greed is bad, lets knit our own presents and embrace home grown vegetables’ mentality, but they really don’t appear to understand how quite irresponsible their behaviour is.
May I say now, as a true child of the eighties, that I will be damned before I grow carrots as a response to this financial crisis. Frankly, my dear, I want to grow money. Sound, solid, honest, cash. In my experience, you need sound, solid, ground rules for flourishing money trees.
However people, we can be safe in our financial beds as the prime minister has a most lovely allotment plot in the ample gardens of No.10 and is happy for us to know all his flowers are bearing fruit. Well actually, he doesn’t let us know about his green figures (SORRY fingers): his lovely wife is twittering on about the joys of of vegetable production in an 18th Century Town House in the heart of London, provided & gardened for at the tax-payers expense. Apparently, the good fruit and veg is up FOR SALE, no surprises there then. Any chance of charity finding a home and the food given away to appropriate soup kitchens…just a thought.
I do have to lie down and breathe now – can you tell? 
At the core of this financial crisis is the cold, hard fact that something, valuable and precious -i.e money, was made to appear cheap and plentiful. So much so that Prime Minister Brown, when Chancellor, sold off our gold reserves at a knock down price, in the terrible, mistaken belief that it wasn’t worth the cost of storing.
What do we have for the cost of that gold.
- Sufficient Helicopters for our armies?
- Sufficient Social Workers to work with the abused elderly and young?
- A transparent as possible government that can justify its existence and expenditures?
- Hospitals that don’t have to put up notices to say its ok for patients to check whether staff have washed their hands?
- Government open about commercial interests?
- The absolute right to a trial in front of a jury with all the known evidence in open court?
- Responsible and achievable national computer systems?
- Respect for our private data?
- Secure energy supplies – no need for nuclear power stations?
- Well built, environmentally efficient housing for all?
- World order after the collapse of the iron curtain?
- add as required.
Sadly, no, well no surprise really. But the government and, I believe, the opposition continues to live in a state of denial about the true damage that has occurred to the heart of the community; business, social and familial. There is a real anger in that community that can only bode ill to the people who are trying to lead us. Who is it that we can trust?
Politicians? Religions? The Law? The Media? Welfare State?
The response by politicians has been to consistently deny how bad things are. We all know how it feels to know a subject inside out. When we have complete possession of the facts, one of the most scary things in life is to have someone rock up, deny the facts and you your right to truth.
Yet daily, we are subject to people who are in denial about the consequences of their actions, whether Bankers, Politicians or Civil Servants. In their world, facts are pretty irrelevent.
The response of the Government has been to spin: as usual when the going gets tough in the UK, the spirit of the blitz is raised. We are urged to dig for victory (beat the crunch)- hence home grown stuff. Folksy home spun values are not environmentally friendly and they won’t get us out of this mess. We are being sold a nonsensical solution
Remind me, how many houses have been built in the last ten years.(163.8K in 2003 – as a starter according to government’s own figures).
How many gardens and brown or green field sites have been lost to flats and teeny houses? Look how tiny the gardens are in these new properties. Many don’t have any at all and stand in carparks.
This is a labour government is it not? How has it engineered a zietgeist that only those of us with land can survive?
Please, please don’t succumb; we can’t survive this recession on salad via window boxes. We need protected farm land, enviromentally friendly EU policies and strong governance, so we can go to the shops and be confident about the food we buy and the bank accounts from which we pay. We need, in short, accountability.
It is strong governance that is crucial to our future economic success. Good governance should not be cynically ‘ got around, got over or spun out’ for short term gains. If we abandon this principle, we embrace the corrupt and live – as Jesus put it, in whited sepulchres; looks lovely, smells very bad…
We have to have faith in the structures that support our daily lives and believe me Mr. Government, that faith is gone. The trouble is, as someone said about God, when we stop believing in something we believe in anything. My fear is that our fear, truly alive and well in our society will cause it to clutch at straws. We will learn once more that the root of a garden is the verb ‘to guard’ That because the Government has failed to protect our long term interests we will be seduced into believing that only we can protect ourselves; the stranger must be kept out, might is right and we should protect, at all costs, our individual, little patches of bare earth.
But Mr. Government, you are spinning, you say things are not that bad, no new taxes (er probably) , its not the economy stupid. No, uhm, it is all someone else’s fault, somewhere else. Look, Mr Government’s lovely wife is wittering on at twitter. com.
‘Such lovely strawberries, so sorry to hear about your bad foot, I hope you feel better soon. Such a charming garden party, please visit my charity websites, yes I am an ordinary person’
No, she is not an ordinary person, that Mrs Brown. She is a very clever and possibly a very desperate housewife. For soon her ept husband will be spending a lot more time with his family. (One can only imagine the gloom.) She is doing what any resourceful and thrifty wife will do. She is spinning for her family – such domestic bliss could not possibly be married/associated or hooked up with anything so nasty as complete economic failure and social dis-orientation. Vote for Mr B. keep him out of the domestic sphere for a little longer… please…dear lord, he will most likely sell the family silver else.
So she sits like the good wife in a fairytale, but its gold into straw Mrs. Brown and its the rest of us that are spinning in our whitened graves.
Dear Reader,
Thank you for reading this article.
