Thursday, September 25, 2008

Back to the Future

One topic of conversation that's cropped up with friends and family in recent days is the corrupting influence of the economic boom of the last 10-20 years on ordinary people and whether or not those people are mentally prepared for the possibly very hard times ahead

And that corruption is evident is so many trivial, yet irritating ways

Having moved a few months ago from central South London to the suburbs of North London I rapidly developed vehement contempt for a particular breed of dickhead who drives something like this...




and lives somewhere like this...




Fellow inhabitants of Suburban Hell UK will understand

I was with the other 1/2's father in a North London shopping centre the other day and, being from New Zealand, and not understanding how things are done here, he asked us...

'Do people here actually deliberately try and walk into you?'

Silly man

Of course they do

There really are an awful lot of people in this country who, after 20 years of unparalleled economic expansion, have been rendered incapable of aspiring to anything more than being arseholes in public places and living in a Mock Tudor plastic mansionette with a BMW X3 parked outside

And that, sadly, is the high water mark

The economic tide is now turning

-

A couple of friends of mine from 'Up North are of the firm opinion that the majority of British people will simply revert back, and be capable of reverting back, to a 1950s-paced lifestyle - lots of brown clothing, tinned food and having nothing better, or cheaper, to do than chatting with your neighbours





Some other friends of mine are, I think, holding out for a regression slightly further back in British history to something like 1926





Me, I reckon something like 1381 is nearer the mark...


Need a peasant in a hurry? Call Rent A Peasant


Come to think of it, what am I doing nicking images from Rent A Peasant when I've got a hard drive filled with pictures of my own family...




Actually, my old folks owned enough land to grow enough food to feed themselves, which puts them light years ahead of the supposedly much wealthier people who live in the UK in 2008

A few posts back someone left a comment along the lines of

'A truly wealthy country is one with abundant natural resources and a well-educated, hard working population which makes things people need' .


I could qualify that a little but I think it's pretty close to the mark

So, how does the UK, or the US, score these days?

.

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is that Dawkins dubbing over at the end of the bread advert?

Anonymous said...

Excellent post Stef.

You may have seen this before but it really is essential - http://www.energybulletin.net/node/23259

Goes into how much better prepared the USSR were for collapse in the early 90s than we are now. We are frighteningly ill prepared for even a harsh recession, never mind a full scale economic collapse.

Stef said...

Is that Dawkins dubbing over at the end of the bread advert?

Actually I think it is the bloke who played the killer android in that other Ridley Scott masterpiece Alien

which goes some way to explaining why I was always creeped out by that Hovis ad

Stef said...

... I know exactly where you're coming from though

Anonymous said...

Good stuff, but we're probably going to be suffering some more inflation before the "big hit". Although in a lot of cases the credit is already drying up, which is really how these "recessions" start - a retraction of cash (credit, since money is issued as debt) which causes some businesses to go under.

Anonymous said...

Personally I foresee the return of the classic mockney beanie and donkey jacket look.

Anonymous said...

The question I'm wondering is... will the people keep sitting on their arses dong nothing about it, or will they take up torches and pitchforks? And then, who will be leading them?

Anonymous said...

I moved from the UK (Scotland ) to Germany 13 years ago.Best move I ever made.N0 intention of ever going back.Never had anyone bug me or walk in front me once in the 13 years.

When my folks visit they always remark how clean and tidy everything is.Not one scrap of rubbish to be seen on the streets.People young and old greet you with "guten tag"if you pass them on the street,,totally different.

paul said...

The question I'm wondering is... will the people keep sitting on their arses dong nothing about it, or will they take up torches and pitchforks? And then, who will be leading them?

That is indeed the question, while I am as drawn to the collapsarian mode of thought (one which the hated MSM are now promoting with a subtle diligence that loons can only envy), it's something of a dead end, the idea of its inevitability is pretty spurious.
Plus the vision of a society based around people coshing each other with socks full of gold coin in order the steal vegetables is rather unrealistic. A look at true,deliberately collapsed societies reveals how much humanity persists.
We're hardly heading for a truly collapsed existence like modern iraq or gaza, just a little discipline. After all, someone's got to pay tax and interest, so maybe we should count our blessings?
Our predecessors have been through worse, and repair and improvements have been made (although taken back), so it must be possible if collective memory is restored, in place of the juvenile dementia of the neoliberal era.
Argentina 'collapsed', shrugged off its debts and improved its lot, Russian government reasserted itself to a certain extent.
A climate of fear, hopelessness and, most importantly, chaos is exactly what the criminals want to continue their reign. Like in Bullitt, they're setting off diversionary explosions while they make their getaway.

It is the capture and complicity of our current leadership that guarantees the bleakest outcomes.
A few years from now it will probably look like a much better place to have started from...but then...
<ramble over/>

paul said...

It wasn't bullitt, it was 'the getaway' and, in this version, the police escort the crooks from the crime scene 'to prevent further disruption and loss of life'
Sorry, filmfanz

Stef said...

ramble over

good ramble

inexcusable film gaffe

paul said...

inexcusable film gaffe
I know
<wraps lianna round neck and commits simian style autocide/>

Anonymous said...

'A truly wealthy country is one with abundant natural resources and a well-educated, hard working population which makes things people need' .


yep I wrote that,,,i should have added "honest" as a prefix to hardworking,,,I think almost 6 million people in the UK work in the public sector,,

I think people are beginning to catch on to the banking scam and to question the "reality" of money.

Money is at the end of the day an exchange mechanism for your talents and resources,,,if you aint got any of those then you are fckued,capital F,,,I note the French run the UK nuclear industry now.

Anonymous said...

Speaking of material things, Somali pirates have stolen a shipment of T-72 tanks:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7637257.stm

Could be quite a headache for the Ethiopians, since their armoured vehicles are dated in comparison..

Anonymous said...

There are about 7 million working poor in the UK, who knows how many underground in the cash-in-hand economy, and a shtload of people in debt living on the razor's edge.
So if the economy goes tits up, we'll end up with millions of total poor living off garbage dumps, and electrical fences around the aforementioned fake tudor crapholes.

Stef said...

/ 'Fake Tudor craphole' now updated to 'Mock Tudor plastic mansionette' because some people think they're lush

Stef said...

I think people are beginning to catch on to the banking scam and to question the "reality" of money.

On this week's Panorama 'How safe is our money' crack BBC reporter and one of the world's 'foremost commentators' on Al-CIAda Jane Corbin made extensive reference to banks' reserves held 'in their vaults'

which came as news to me as I thought banks' reserves consisted of nothing more than bullshit IOUs from other banks and their vaults had been converted to wine cellars years ago

Stef said...

yep I wrote that,,,i should have added "honest" as a prefix to hardworking,,,I think almost 6 million people in the UK work in the public sector,,

with rise of elegantly fascistic corporate-state hybrids like Crapita and Rothschild controlled Veolia I'm personally not sure what the 'public' sector is supposed to be comprised of any more...

Anonymous said...

Apparently central banks, and the IMF\World Bank exist to help economies. This was from an economics graduate, I wonder if he was indoctrinated at LSE...