That’s right – just now, while we’re still deciding whether to embrace poverty or kill ourselves, we’ve nothing better to do than write headlines with rhyming slang in them (boracic lint = skint, ie penniless).
And while our MPs are industriously fixing the income tax system so its worse excesses kick in about a quark above their salary, the rest of us are trudging round the recession theme park with our heads down looking for small change.However, since I wasn’t born yesterday, or even the day before, I can advise you about how recessions go:
Phase one – Denial
· Wall-to-wall media drivel from soi-disant experts about how to survive a recession and save your job
· Swingeing job cuts in the media
· Applause
· Young people saying life isn’t fair
· Old people saying they’ve seen it all before
· Miserable bastards saying this is the worst thing that ever happened in the history of the world
· Politicians, central bankers, treasury officials etc denying any prospect of a downturn
Phase two – Downturn
· Politicians, central bankers, treasury officials etc saying they’ve been warning about a downturn for years
· Companies going bust
· People having their homes repossessed by banks now partially owned by the people they’re kicking out
· More media drivel, but now with a harder edge, eg: how to live rough / grow turnips / make Christmas presents from gravel / darn socks / go bankrupt / emigrate / beg / shoplift / join the Foreign Legion / become an MP
· Gangs of middle class folk roaming the streets looking for rich people, politicians or bankers to lynch
· Global rope shortage
Phase three – Amnesia
· Sudden realisation that the recession has been over for two or three years but you couldn’t be arsed to go to work
· Credit boom
· Property boom
· What recession?
It’s all about timing isn’t it? By the time anyone’s spotted the problem we’re half way through it, and the only people who ever foresee a recession are those irritating swine who never predict anything else, and are thus as useful as stopped clocks – which are absolutely accurate twice a day. It’s just that you don’t know when.
Luckily I've had the foresight to get my hindsight in early, and I'm already working on the boom after next.
