::::::::
Admittedly as a pre-war-born doddering OAP I currently worry about dead brain cells on my pillow each morning so let's see if I've got this right. On a truly international scale a lot of smart Porsche-driving people, bankers, investors, financial wheeler-dealers etc made fortunes by providing huge mortgages and unlimited credit to millions of people who should have known they couldn't possibly afford to borrow such amounts. The clever lenders then sold this vast accumulation of toxic debt to any financial enterprise that was mug enough to buy it. The clever lenders are not to be punished nor expected to pay back the vast sums of money they made on these shady, fraudulent deals. Instead we the UK public have been elected to cough up money continuously for the indefinite future to fill this black hole, all of this whilst we continue to pay in money and our sons' and daughters' lives to bring ex-President Bush's dubious shade of democracy into the messy aftermath of his illegal pre-emptive war on Iraq. Mr Bush no doubt will follow Mr Blair's lead in making money hand over fist on the international lecture circuits, and yet each day the BBC TV news nightly announcements of our soldiers' deaths in Afghanistan have almost become for viewers an un-endurable way of life. Meanwhile that American Boadicea (apparently now pronounced by the cognoscenti "Bodekka') Hilary Clinton is intent upon keeping the sound of war drums throbbing in the international terror-filled ears, this time against Iran and now North Korea. This of course would stretch our battle-weary troops to the limit and beyond, especially if, as conjectured recently in the Media, our UK military might be required to enforce our dubious seabed oil-drilling rights around the Falkland Isles.
Here on the UK home front, noticeably lacking in good old WW2 camaraderie, we are regularly warned by the elite; who have never been or ever will be reduced to sharing a tin of baked beans for dinner, that we all face times of austerity and that we are all in this together. Many UK manufacturers, business enterprises, and even customer service help lines, have already fled abroad out-sourcing countless UK job opportunities to oriental souls who gratefully accept rock-bottom wages. Meanwhile the latest joyless idea bandied about is to cut benefits to anyone who refuses to accept employment. Whether this idea extends to the unemployed astronomer, scientist, or unemployed architect who refuses a sewer-scraping or super-market shelf filling job remains to be disclosed. Currently as a sop to deflect public ongoing indignation in this job-denuded Sceptred Isle we hear earnest debates on TV about whether a salary of one, one and a half, or even two million pounds of tax-payers money plus obscenely high bonus and pension benefits is too high for top people employed into public office even during these belt-tightening times. This salary level is justified by the beneficiaries; we are assured, by the fierce competition of commercial head-hunters. Curiously I seem to recall that just a few years ago when times got tough countless unemployed ex-business executives promptly sought employment with council and social welfare organisations. These few years later could these be some of the same people? I could go on and on but it's all so dreary with the growing awareness of being regarded like a dairy herd existing only to be milked.
In spite
of the above, keep smiling folks"Cos we're British, and it's bad taste to complain.
David Brittain
22 Thorns Way
Walton on the Naze
Essex CO14 8SB
