Okay, it has nothing really to do with the credit crunch. I just don't have any money. Result of taking a £3000 loan out to fix up the house I grew up in; I'm still paying £100 a month back on that on top of £510 a month rent, which has just been raised to £525 thanks to (I reluctantly surmise) the credit crunch and the Labour Government's general mishandling of everything. There are a bunch of other smaller debts that I have to pay off every month too. AND I live nine miles away from work and have to use public transport to get there. AND I've had to move house twice in four years, which isn't the best way for a man to start piling money up in the bank for bourgeois luxuries like holidays. The last time I moved I lost my deposit too. Shame I put the money down on my present property before the new regulations, ostensibly putting tenant's deposits in the hands of an objective third party, came into law.
Why am I telling you all this? Because I have two weeks off work and I can't afford to do anything. I certainly can't go abroad, though that would be impossible anyway, since the Passport people still have my passport (it's a long story). Thankfully, I do have enough money to move about a tiny bit in Old Blighty, but not much. Today I went to Wellingborough, Kettering and THEN Northampton, crazy bastard that I am. I was going to go to Leicester in the morning, but it was really pissing it down with rain. I mean, the skies were pouring vengefully. "That cloud says Noah, build me an Ark," as Kate Bush once said. I certainly didn't fancy walking around in Leicester in the hippie sandals I was wearing with the Heavens micturating all over me like that. In the aforementioned Golden Triangle of Northampton, Kettering and Wellingborough I did some internet work, some journal writing, sat in the park, toured all the charity shops, bought a copy of Francis Bacon's essays, avoided a couple of people from the old days I couldn't handle speaking to, and tried not to think too much about the past. I am haunted by the spectres of the old days--old girlfriends, places I went with my Dad (in that car park I laid in his car with an ear infection while he visited the office of Motor Cycle News)-- but I don't think it's a good thing. What am I going to have to remember from now if all I do now is remember?
3 comments:
It's not just your Labour Government dear, it's the majority of goverments in power over the world. They can't handle the current economic stress, they're giving in to the major players, giving them more money and as a result living more comfortably that the majority of the population. (Goverments and the rich bastards)
Once again I'm flat broke, I've got about 20 cigarettes to last me until thursday morning. Coffee supply is dwindling. Ecch. And have a few slices of bread left.
I've always known poverty. Known to have remnants of old milk and no bread, tobacco shavings and having to make damper from scratch, from what little flour left in the cupboard.
Each Federal election in Australia, the Howard Government kept warning about what would happen financially to everyday Australians if Labor got in power. But in those years, especially after 2001, our economy reached it's exponential growth and is starting to slide. Labor wins power last November and already people have forgotten that our economy has been in crisis for years and have put the blame on Kevin Rudd.
Of the recession in the early 90s, former Prime Minister Paul Keating said it was the recession we had to have. I remember those days were extremely tough on us growing up. An immigrant family that just bought a house, father was retrenched and became an alcoholic, and 5 mouths to feed. You know what? Come to think about it, he was right, because after a couple of years money flowed in and we could live much more comfortably.
Bring on a recession! At least I'll be able to buy a home in a few years.
Yeah, you're right, of course. The economy can't be blamed on Labour. According to those who understand more than me it was the fantastic greed of the banks that brought on the credit crunch, coupled with some seriously bad input from Alan Greenspan, who I think was head of the US Treasury (or something). I don't know, I'm conscious of my ignorance on these matters.
The only thing this Labour government has done wrong, it seems to me--and right from the start--is that it has consistently tried to be too much like the Conservatives; and under Gordon Brown that tendency has got worse. Now the SNP in Scotland has stolen most of the good old traditional socialistic Labour policies and extrapolating from the results of the Glasgow bi-election, Labour look set to lose all of its seats except one in Scotland come the election (Gordon Brown's will go too, on current results). This, of course, will hand the election to the Tories on a silver platter.
And if we think it's bad NOW, wait till David Cameron sits in Number Ten. There may be a temporary upsurge in national morale when the dour Mr Brown departs--and the election should come just as we are drifting out of recession, according to the forecasts--but even if we have more food on our tables and more useless goods to play with after dinner for a little while, the country will be screwed in every other way almost immediately. I lived through Thatcher, and I will never forget it. And I don't believe the Conservatives will ever be anything other than clean-shaven, blue-suited thieves and bigots.
Thatcher was the main reason my family immigrated to Australia. There was no future for us kids. We might of still have been poor but at least we have had opportunities here.
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