Thursday 24 April 2008

Tears Before Bedtime

Take out a mortgage you can't afford by self certifying your income, then default on your payments. Overdraw your current account without authorisation. Max out as many credit cards as you can get hold of and then default on those too. Declare yourself to be self-employed for social face but really register for benefits. Save nothing, least of all for a pension.

I've got it all wrong and brought the children up wrongly too. I never thought of the New Labour state taking on all and every debt and reproving the slightest gesture towards rewarding or enforcing financial responsibility either on the part of the Bank of England or on the part of the high street banks.

And inflation will wipe away the debt, but will it wipe away the tears?

6 comments:

Electro-Kevin said...

As though inflation doesn't bring its own problems.

It's not personal. The big fry have clever lawyers and accountants; the chavs can't be contained without a fight and in any case containment goes against liberal instincts.

That leaves only you and me to pay for the mess.

hatfield girl said...

What I feel about it is personal EK. It makes me worried and cross and at times afraid. Afraid for my children and everbody else's children too.
Not all the time, by no means all the time. But why should I feel like this at all so that a truly contemptible mind set and its holders can practise social engineering and socialist theory already proven wrong and discarded by most of the world? And grossly enrich themselves while they're at it. And suborn an honourable and beneficial political movement. And...

I'm going to work in the garden, looking wonderful and in full flower (the garden, not me). Today is festa, the overthrow of fascism and the ending of the Second war. So I shall cook a particularly fine dinner as well. Silver linings, as you say.

Sackerson said...

"And grossly enrich themselves while they're at it."

The elite of the Me Generation wanted to do well out of doing good, and when forced to choose, would opt (have opted) for the first. Probably the last ever generation to Have It All (including a phony moral cachet) had its apotheosis in Tony Blair. My wife said he does air podium. How they must laugh at us hicks.

Anonymous said...

Mr Sackerson: Being an inveterate traveller, may I just enquire if one has to pay for one's ticket on Air Podium?

Sackerson said...

I think Tony thinks he's got his own wings, no need for a ticket - and no passengers. This is a one-customer operation: no return to the back benches for him - rob the system blind and move on.

But "air podium" does describe how he posed rock-guitar-style at the lectern, gripping the edge in a suitable manly way, as his advisers will have counselled. The Resistible Rise Of Arturo Ui.

lilith said...

"Air podium" I LOVE IT