Wednesday 25 January 2012

There is no reason to despair

I go away for a few weeks. Freed from the internet, I lose track of events. What has happened to our fair kingdom in my absence?

Nothing good, it seems. The kingdom is on the verge of breaking up. Scotland wants its independence. It wants to free itself from the oppressive, brutal but democratically elected tyrants in London. Instead, it would rather sleep under the warm blanket of Euro-domination. I will freely admit it. I just don't understand why Scotland would want to trade London for Brussels.

Back in London, opinion polls hint that Boris might lose. I should be happy but I am not. There is something worse than Boris and that is Ken. Why can't they both lose? Because it would mean a Lib-dem victory. Who should Londoners vote for when all the options are so dreadful? I have no advice to offer on this question.

Economic news remains unrelentingly bad. The UK just added a digit to its debt stock. Her Majesty's government now owes over a trillion quid. As far as I can tell, Londoners seem rather nonplussed by that shocking aggregate. It is as if public debt was an abstraction. We know it is there, but we don't really need to worry about it, do we?

I was also surprised to read that British warships are in the Gulf ready to keep the sea lanes open should the Iranians be daft enough to try to close them. Again, my reaction was surprise. I thought we had abolished the Navy in the last round of defence cuts. Military matters usually bore me, but even I know that we need ships to bomb the Iranians. Do we have some kind of secret yet extremely cheap weapon that we can fire from London?

However, the headline of the day has to be a quote from that old fool from the Bank of England - Mervyn King. There is no reason to despair he counselled. All crises come to an end. So the country is about to break up; the capital can't decide which idiot to have as a mayor, public sector debt is rising out of control, and our government is threatening to go to war for the third time in a decade.

Despair? I am well beyond despair. I need to get back on the Costa Concordia.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Don't worry about Iran, I think we are forming the yoof of croydon into a parachute brigade....look what they did to croydon, what chance Tehran

Stevie b. said...

You're dead right about good old Mervyn - the guy who admitted 3 months ago on channel 4 news that he was "sorry" for those on a fixed income (so that's ok then) whilst he bailed the bankers and allowed them to maintain their undeserved lifestyle. He admitted at the time that he hadn't a clue what the consequences of his actions would be (but that's ok too apparently).

As a dedicated contrarian, the only light on the horizon for me is that everything does indeed look unremittingly gloomy and virtually everyone knows it. It should be time to be bullish, but any bullishness should - and I make no apology for repeating this - be hedged with at least a wee bit of gold.

Davidb said...

Welcome home.

dearieme said...

Here's a measure of how bad things are. Private Eye's cover carries a pretty good Costa Concordia joke. Then they spoil it by explaining the joke to us - the sort of thing that's done for Americans. That's how bad things are.

Antipholus Papps said...

Fourth war surely?

Anonymous said...

Fourth war? Did I miss a war?