Karl indicates how many major
banking corporations this week alone
could have benefitted from having a
large grey beard.
I’m so glad that things are finally settling down and becoming normal again. There was, for a time, the pervading feeling of impending doom, that not even the politicians in the highest positions of authority knew how we as a developed world would pull together and see out this tumultuous time. But rest ye worried minds, for all is well. The world’s biggest superpower is due to implement a new regime, and will draft its unbridled genius and vision from either a corpse assisted by a crazed Alaskan armed with a hockey stick used for smashing the brains from polar bears, or a thin man with little experience but a smile that transcends his face, taking his financial advice from an unqualified, tax dodging plumber. Phew, that’s America sorted then.
And fret not either, for another major player, everyone’s favourite vodka swilling racists Russia, remains fronted by a man who is capable, if not liable, as his recent instructional video shows, to judo chop his way through the entire United Nations security council. Meanwhile, back home, British level headedness and calm resolve prevails, with the new head of the British armed forces doing the sensible thing in the current economic downturn, and pledging 30,000 fresh troops to various suicide missions across the globe whilst we devise a new sub zero graph to chart the demise of the FukTSE share index.
It would seem then, if I were to obey the countless posters in London’s subways and on boarded-up shops that the only realistic option left open to us in this current climate of disarray and uncertainness is to grow a beard and become a socialist. Fine, I like beards, and I hear the Marx look is very in right now. There is a problem however; the slight niggling drawback that Socialism could never work here in the UK in 2008.
If we were all at university, then it would work like a dream. It is in some way admirable that students are the only demographic that seem to actually want to change the world. I have regularly been accosted in the street by shabby politics students who, having entreated me to become a socialist and subsequently received my polite declination, have each launched into a tirade of righteous dogma and suggested that my decision is obviously based on my ignorance to their ideals and could not possibly be a result of my own independent thinking.
Their activism is largely due to youth, enthusiasm and a fresh perspective on the world, as well as having too much time on their hands, but the main reason for their relentless mission to alter the course of human civilisation lies in the fact that the majority have never stepped foot into the real world; that crushingly difficult, austere and soul destroying ocean that millions of us share, and in which it takes the maximum of effort just to maintain one’s heads above water. Spend a couple of years getting battered by its waves once the harbour wall of university has been removed, and one can be excused for getting less than feverishly excited about organising a revolution for a new world order.
Ironically, if these same politics student succeeded in their utterly futile mission, then life would probably be more pleasant for a large proportion of the population. Despite my cynicism, I would love to see a switch in western values with the introduction of a government attempting to break down class barriers and oversee the equal distribution of wealth for the people of Britain. Call it pessimism, pragmatism or just weary disbelief, but I can’t see it any anytime soon. Especially with the seemingly inevitable onset of a Conservative government to brighten the lives of everyone but the normal man. Still, stranger things have happened. Derby County won away from home the other week, for instance.
On a totally different note, I would like mention how wonderful I think it is for Guy Ritchie that he no longer has to take orders from the repressive and toothy old monster that has dogged him for the best part of a decade. It is no coincidence that the man has not been able to produce a decent movie since he married the cadaverous troll, as all the while he has had to endure the interminable embarrassment of seeing his elderly wife writhe around in a leotard on television with dancers whom she is old enough to have mothered in her late 30’s. It must also be hard to knuckle down to work when the other half, having ostensibly nipped out to get bread and milk, returns each week with another new child stolen from Africa. Get out Guy, get out, and whilst you deserve at least a few million quid for your troubles, you probably won’t get it, because you’re a man (and your wife is in league the devil).
