Global Crisis Fatigue

The scary stuff in all the papers has been going on for so long it's hard to care any more. It's even harder to grasp these gigantic numbers. Another day, another hundred billion or, for the lesser failings, thirty or forty. A single thousand million pounds is neither here nor there, doesn't even get a look in.

Who cares if banks and institutions won't lend, or might suffer a run, there's so much money lying about we seem to be wading through swamps of the stuff. And all this gloom about contracting European central economies is not borne out by casual observation or anecdotal report. Germany purrs on in spotless splendour; Russia, at least the big, western cities, is a building site, and further east whole sectors of the former soviet economies are being revived and part-finished gargantuan projects of realised socialism brought on stream. The Italians continue their trench warfare against the despoliation of their towns and countryside and coasts by the usual developer suspects. Paris is looking particularly fine, as is the south of France and, no doubt, most places in between.

Manicured fields and vineyards stretch to the horizon, a picture from every window; getting in to see David, or for a gallop past the Uffizi's glories is as time-consuming as ever and the queues for lesser-known pleasures snake for hour-consuming lengths.

It seems the New Labour regime and its conceited Leader are as irrelevant to the things that matter as they are oppressive to those who don't matter much.

Kick down kiss up was ever their way of being.