No gain in peddling pain

Swamped by new year predictions of complete and utter economic meltdown in 2009, it was intriguing to read a batch of articles in The Sunday Times with a more positive take on our crunched state. How 2009 is going to rebuild us all by Bryan Appleyard set the tone in the main section of the newspaper with a subhead that read:

After extraordinary turmoil in the economy, everyone is facing uncertainty and change - but it's not all for the worse. Career changes, healthier living and cheaper new technology will refashion us for the better.

A cynic might respond with: "Yes, I here what you're saying Bryan: redundancy, depression diets and canceling the Sky subscription". It's certainly a tempting reply. But does he have a point? Are we going to be forced to jettison stuff we don't need and therefore lighten the load of the globalloon we all travel in? [The globalloon is simply globalised society as conceived by environmentalists with a sustainable development agenda. The globalloon is earth and the sum of its social relations conceived as an air balloon with finite space and resources. I made it up - but I notice someone has already bought the url!]. I digress. Appleyard is clearly chucking a lot of stuff out of the globalloon and never wants to see it again. We've had 16 years of boom (with a little dotcom bubble burst in 2001) and now is the time for a clearout.

Appleyard's Jetsam

• celebrity chefs
• reality TV
• insanely expensive and ugly handbags
• TV shows telling you how to do up your own house and sell it
• Gordon Brown claiming an end to boom and bust
• the death of Diana (the shoppers' princess)
• the rise and fall of Tony Blair (the spinners' prince)
• the rise of Britart
• the continued failure of the England football team
• the Millennium Dome
• Jade Goody
• City boys drinking £24,000 methuselahs of champagne at Movida nightclub
• Bentleys everywhere
• obesity

This is a rant list. It's saying look in the mirror you ugly, greedy, wasteful, consumerist, tasteless, polluting saddo. It oozes disgust and self-hate and is not my picture of the UK today. A lot of us have just been getting by and now we've got to face the music because capitalism is choking on its inability to serve our 21st century needs and desires. People want great food and nice things and why shouldn't we have them? Don't turn necessity into a virtue. We're human and we'll get through the recssion but the driving down of our living standards is going to be a bitter pill.

Apply The Johnny Nash test to Appleyard's "the future's bright theory" and it just doesn't stack up. You know the song: I Can See Clearly Now.

I can see clearly now the rain has gone
I can see all obstacles in my way
Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind
It's gonna be a bright, bright, bright sun-shiny day
It's gonna be a bright, bright, bright sun-shiny day

It's a simple test. All you do is substitute "the rain" from the first line of the song with anything you could possibly lose in 2009. I dunno, try these for starters:

• "my job"
• "my house"
• "my 4x4"
• "my wife"
• "my husband"

Now, if you get to the 5th line of the song and you are still singing "bright sun-shiny day" without a wee tear in your eye, then you are clearly in the Appleyard camp. If however, your a bit miffed, then you're in my camp. Happy to have you on board! There will be a time when we are uncrunched and freer to enjoy and indulge our love of wealth and materialism but first we have to lock horns with the nutters who are trying to throw Nigella Lawson out of the globalloon. Her American Pancakes with Wafer Bacon and Maple Syrup are a good enough reason to live as I have found recently.

Melt the butter and set aside to cool slightly while you get on with the rest of the batter and the bacon...