Everyone is going on about the economy. Apparently, it’s all gone a bit off piste and despite all the ideas and analyses being bounded around by people in the know, no one seems to have a clue what is happening.
Here is the basic understanding I have on the matter…
- There were billionaires. They are now millionaires
- Entire nations are sliding into disarray
- Some people have been fiddling their taxes
- Debt is worth lots of money, but it is risky
- Piranhas are eating all the bank notes
- The metal in a five pence coin is set to change in order for their manufacture to be cheaper
- When a footsy goes up a stocking market comes down
- Tights are more expensive than ever so everyone is getting cold feet and this means that the markets aren’t growing up
I might have gotten a few of my facts wrong but in general I’d say I'm bang on the mark.
Back in the day we used to swap, say, a cart of carrots for a pig's leg and everyone would be happy with that. If you didn’t want carrots, then you could ask someone else to give you something else for your pig’s leg.
Other people started to interfere. They decided that there needed to be a SCALE against which we could value things. They decided upon GOLD.
So then everything was measured against GOLD. But it turned out that gold was too valuable to be glibly passed around amongst common folk in return for pigs and carrots. And anyway, people were starting to get tricky… filing their golden coins, keeping the gold dust and pretending to swap more gold that they actually were. And then they all wanted flat screen tellies. People, it seemed, were not to be trusted…
So a substitute arrived. Coins made of less valuable metals. They looked like gold. Then of course, somehow it ended up that you needed more and more coins for less and less pig’s leg, and then we had to have notes.
And of course people then started to nick notes off each other. So we decided to keep the notes safe. Henceforth, banks started up. Putting your notes in a bank was safer than hoarding them under the mattress.
But it then turned out that if you have lots of notes, they give birth to more notes… so the banks wanted to “look after” as many notes as possible. That way, they could keep all the note babies themselves.
But the banks got all confused by all their notes. They decided that could just let people know how many notes they had by representing the notes in the form of a number. They gave everyone a card, and these cards acted like keys with which to access this valuable information.
Now then, it is more complicated nowadays. If you owe the bank a big number, but then manage to give them back that big number… and you do this regularly… then they decide that you are good with numbers and if you want to borrow any numbers off them then they would probably like to lend you some numbers because this means that in the end all the numbers will be happy. But numbers are worth different amounts according to the way the wind is blowing.
As you can see, I have much light to shed upon this subject.
However, whilst all of this has been going on, there are a lot of people who have no pig’s leg OR carrots - and they are starving.
So why don’t we all agree that this thing has gotten ahead of us. Why can’t we just admit that it’s all become rather stupid. Let’s wipe the slate clean and get back to zero.
All human beings are equal. It’s simplistic but it is an unequivocal fact which we so often lose sight of.
Look, I don’t often get political. I like to let them get on with it and watch them making a mess of it from the sidelines. I feel sorry for them… there’s a lot of pressure in a job like that, and they get all the blame. In fact, I don’t blame them. This is why I stay out of it.
Regarding politicians, I would say one thing. I hope that at least one person with a genuine wish for the wellbeing of other people, the integrity to see it through and the strength of character to remain undefeated will decided to pursue a career in politics. This is my hope.
(I've also got large hopes for the music industry but that's a whole blog in itself... that's my field, you see)
Our lives are finite. We might have 80 years is we are lucky. I feel it is wrong that someone should struggle for food, water and basic comfort because of the greed and stupidity that have, up until now, been the defining aspects of this age.
And while we’re at it, do we really need those nuclear missiles? It’s a f*cking embarrassment.
So, with grating insomnia buzzing in my brain, I sit here and I ask myself ‘what am I doing with my 80 or so years?’ I’m probably well more than a third of the way through it already.
Anyway, I should probably try and sleep before I do anything else.
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