Thursday, 18 September 2008

Sunrise 06:54, sunset 19:26

And all is well - the goats seem happier, Ailsa is thoroughly enjoying school and we don't work in the financial sector. What more could you ask for?

I'm aghast at the scale of this collapse. Like many (maybe even, like everyone who looks at these things) I'd been predicting it for years - but I don't think I imagined anything as big as this. I still don't understand how it will pan out - how far reaching is the skulduggery and how we'll dig ourselves out.

One thing is clear to me though - it is the poor that will suffer. So bankers have insured each other to protect high risk loans in some bizarre magic circle and then paid themselves vast bonuses for creating the illusory business. When it's collapsed Governments have injected millions to try and shore up the moral and financial bankruptcy. Those millions would have been used to build schools and hospitals, fund social services - so those things will have to stop for a while, making thousands unemployed and putting a further strain in Govt finances - to be recouped only through taxes taxes taxes.

We are all going to pay for this shit but it will, as ever, be the poor that shoulder the brunt of the burden. Only of course they wont shoulder it, they'll collapse to be swallowed by societies squalid swollen underbelly. Will anyone pay any attention?

In the UK the vast network of CCTV cameras will notice. They'll watch. If anyone chooses to protest against the hardship and the injustice of it, CCTV will be there to 'protect us'.

3 comments:

Lulu Stader said...

hear, hear, Simon!

Petra said...

just wanted to say thanks for the No Impact Man and Marguerite links! Love them, although they reinforce the nagging feeling I have of being a miserable,wasteful sloth. If only I was paying as much attention to my energy consumption as I do to my food... but am somehow stumped by the seeming absurdity of worrying about switching off lights at home evry time I leave a room, and then spending the better part of the day in a major airconditioned office tower. Ahrgh.

The Speaking Goat said...

I sympathise. But please don't beat yourself up - just do what you can. And remember that all those light bulbs add up.