Grumpy bastards R us
This week has been a bit of an interesting mix. Is it just me or is everyone a bit grumpy coming out of lockdown? I live on one of the main drags into town so there’s a fair bit of traffic noise. The one thing I’ve noticed is how much more often people are hooting at other motorists at the moment.
It seems that what most people have decided, during lock down, is that they’re ‘not going to take any shit from anybody’ and what that appears to mean, in practise, is more firmly entrenched views, an even deeper aversion to keeping an open mind and an even more frequent recourse to knee jerk anger about insubstantial crap, like whether or not they should wear a mask (seriously? WTF people find a REAL issue to get upset about) rather than … you know actually not taking any shit. I suppose nothing makes people intolerant more quickly than when the economy goes down the shitter. And all the pundits are telling us it has – although how on God’s green earth they think they know is a mystery to me – but presumably folks are believing them.
Oh my Gaaaaaaaad! We’re going into a recession! The economy has gone tits up and it’s all (insert name of political party of choice or group of ‘them’ you don’t really like)’s fault. Britain’s economy has shrunk by 20%.
Okaayyy.
Yes it’s a chandelier, to illustrate my point.
Hang on though, we’re only coming out of lock down and for the major part of lock down the economy has been switched off. No-one expects their car to carry on running after they’ve turned off the ignition do they? … Well, OK some old cars chug on a bit before they stop but that’s about fuel mixture and not generally a THING so let’s rule it out at this point shall we?
Seriously though, things are still not back to normal and surely any figures obtained while the economy is switched off are pretty much moot.
Here’s an analogy. Say you have a chandelier. Like a healthy economy, it has many bulbs (different types of businesses) and they are all burning brightly. If you cut off the power to the chandelier, obviously, you’re going to end up in the dark. This is not a surprise is it? Likewise, the economic statistics for March and April can do nothing more than illustrate that the economy was switched off and the country was, as it were, in economic darkness. Because no-one was allowed out and three quarters of businesses were closed.
Here’s another chandelier …
My point is. We’re not going to have a fucking clue what’s happened to the economy until we turn the bastard thing back on are we? And we haven’t. So when the papers and news channels gloomily tell us that the economy shrunk 20% in March, and tell us this is bigger than any shrinkage in the entire history of fucking time, it means absolutely bugger all.
Sure it’s true but is it the truth about our economy? Yes it is, but only in so far as it indicates that the economy was switched off at that time, just the same way that things get pretty dark when you turn out the lights and the figures might show that there is NO power going through to the bulbs at this time.
I really should stop taking pictures of people’s chandeliers.
Taking the chandelier analogy further. Say you live in a house with an annoying safety feature on the ring main like ours has, which cuts the power when just about anything happens. You want to go into your darkened room, so you stop in the doorway to flick the light switch and, ‘POP!’ a bulb has gone and in doing so, it’s tripped the on off switch on your fuse box. You’re in the dark and you know that switching on the chandelier did it. You know that, most likely one of the bulbs on the chandelier has blown, possibly more. Obviously, you don’t know the exact number of bulbs that have blown until you go to the fuse box to reset the trip, go back to your darkened room and turn the chandelier back on. Then, and ONLY then, when it’s actually switched on, can you assess the damage and see how many bulbs you’ve lost, or if it was more than a bulb, that you’ve lost the entire chandelier. My point is, you’re not going to fucking know until you turn the bastard thing back on. Are you?
While the chandelier is off, we have a number of choices. We could start on all that doom and gloom about how we’re screwed and condemned to sit in darkness for evermore because it’s broken now. Or we could say, ‘hmm, let’s go reset the trip (thus restoring the electricity supply to the chandelier) switch it on, and see if any of the fucking bulbs light up before we panic, shall we?’
Money is all arbitrary and illusory. The economy is about ‘confidence’ and to be frank, the last time we had a recession, I felt that we were almost talked into it by people who were trying to give the Conservative government a hard ride … or was it a Labour government then I’ve no idea. How many small business owners are going to give up after hearing that 20% statistic? How many small businesses are going to go into administration because their customers have read that and are saving every penny and not buying that thrombdimulator or whatever it is our lovely small local business sells?
But if the economy is about confidence then we need confidence right now. And that need should come before the need for sensationalism to gain a news service more adherents. We believe and we achieve, or at least, do a sod of a lot better than we will with all this doom and gloom shit. No wonder everyone out there is fucking miserable and standing on their hooters so long that those unfortunate enough to live nearby are beginning to think the ruddy things are stuck on.
In the Jewish faith, every 50 years they have a Jubilee, yes that’s where we get the word. And at that time, all debts are written off. So you’re never going to get a situation where someone is so far in debt that even their grandchildren haven’t a hope in hell of sorting it out. Coz … jubilee.
Why don’t we do that? Seriously though, why can’t we just reset the entire god forsaken thing and start again. Just write off everything. Let’s face it, France and Britain are practically bankrupt, they’re billions and billions in debt and the only reason they aren’t bankrupt is because they’re France and Britain rather than say, Liberia or the Cameroon … or Greece.
If we can stop the fucking world, surely a post lock-down jubilee is a piece of cake. No of course it isn’t because the people least affected couldn’t possibly forego the chance of supplementing to their billions.
It’s just mental.
And of course, by pedalling this 20% bell endery – rather than just admitting that they don’t know what’s going to happen so we’ll have to sit tight – the credible news sources erode people’s belief in them, and that’s how your bog-standard person in the street starts believing the ludicrous shite pedalled by the far right and left who, big news here, are NO different from one another, each as fucking awful. Worse this reduction of everything to generalist sound bites, with lots of NLP trigger words like disastrous, terrible, wicked etc means that people actually believe this shit. It’s how normal, kindly every day souls start to actually believe the kind of cartoon, absolutist bollocks pedalled as ‘news’ in papers like The Sun and the Daily Mail.
I remember when, as a kid, the BBC news would be different to all others. They would report a disaster as dispassionately and un-emotively as possible. I remember watching the BBC newscasters describing ‘substantial damage’ and a ‘major incident’ while their counterparts on ITV were referring to ‘absolute carnage’ and an ‘unprecidented disaster’. ITV was all NLP trigger words, BBC was, on the whole, an effort to establish the facts. Now the BBC have joined the race to the bottom and sealed their own doom.
There is so much good stuff we will lose.
Speaking of which, has anyone seen the programme with Professor Brian Cox about the planets. It’s really interesting. Stuffed to the gunwales with fabulous effects, photography and facts. Loads and loads of facts. Not ten minutes about how you’re going to learn some facts, another fact strung out for five minutes, an ad break followed by another five minutes to recap the fact you’ve discovered in the first half and explain what you’ll learn in the second half, followed by a second fact and another five minutes to sum up what you’ve learned before the credits roll.
Anyway, if you get a chance, have a look because it’s wonderful and incredibly interesting. Plus the way that all the diverse planetary bodies in the solar system are actually linked is kind of magical, and the stuff of another science fiction novel I think.
Talking of which …
Knock me down with a feather but Audible finally got their fingers out of their arses and published Few Are Chosen. So now the whole K’Barthan Series, is live. That’s sixty three hours, eight minutes and fifty seven seconds of meaty K’Barthan goodness … narrated by Gareth – the voice of K’Barth – Davies. And with Unlucky dip on top that’s sixty three hours, forty one minutes and seven seconds of meaty K’Barthan goodness.
It took me three hours to upload the box set to Audible and the. Entire. Battery. Life. Of my lap top. Please God let there not be any errors.
If you’re interested, you can find information about my audiobooks here: https://www.hamgee.co.uk/audio.html.
Spikes … Robert Smith and that bloke out of the Alarm eat your heart out! Mwwahahahahrgh
Another joy this week, in a bid to try and help McMini come to terms with his chances of sustaining anything approaching a proper Mohican with his curly hair I treated him to a demonstration of how I used to make my hair stick up. A lot. Yep, no gel, straighteners or anything else required, not even back combing, you just rub it with a towel in a gentle circular motion.
The ideal length for hair, if you are doing this, is anywhere from four to six inches. Mine currently stands at about a foot. I only did the front because I didn’t have all day but I reckon this isn’t too shabby. Note to self, do not play with spiking hair, try to take selfie in bathroom mirror, fail and take a second photo in the bathroom while wearing a sun top. It does look startlingly as if I’m in the all together there doesn’t it? Oops.
And there we are that’s it from sunny Bury St Edmunds this week. More crap next week including, why I can’t understand how people get all het up about gayness and how I intend to mend my broken kindle … A bientot.
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If you feel like something to escape into …
There’s always my new book. A big thank you to everyone who ordered Close Enough. Apologies the paperback isn’t out yet. That’s a whole other story.
If these books aren’t your thing but you want to help any other way, feel free to share the information page in my website with your friends: link below.
https://www.hamgee.co.uk/infoce.html
Here’s the blurb again, just in case you need it …
As recently appointed delivery man for Big Merv, one of Ning Dang Po’s most powerful crime bosses, The Pan of Hamgee is ordered to deliver a gift to Big Merv’s current girlfriend. With a pair of bespoke-made, sapphire and diamond earrings on board, and a trip across the city in the offing, what could possibly go wrong? Everything.
While you’re at it, this and all my other books in paperback, audio and ebook format should be available from your public library. Just check your library app or ask your librarian.