Was ever a serial on TV ever more appropriate than the recent showing of the excellent BBC dramatisation of Little Dorrit? As banks have been crashing in global reality so we watched as greedy men queued at Mr Merdle's door and observed the bank bubble bursting to leave the characters in penury.
We observe today's mighty - global corporations - being brought low as the humble poor become exalted - well in my book anyway. The global situation - and not just in finance - is echoed in other great literature too, even bible references.
I have sung psalms for many many years. "Moab is my washpot; over Edom will I cast my shoe" is a phrase engraved upon my brain - goodness knows why. So when the journalist threw his shoe at Bush it made a great deal of sense to me.
What baffles me is why Bush didn't understand the action or the context. Surely if you are going to dabble in the affairs of another country to the extent of invading it, you really ought to have an extremely good grounding in its existing culture. Events since the invasion have shown how little the Americans understand.
But I digress and will return to the Dickension reference with which I started. It seems that every day brings a new relevelation which, apart from the value of the currency and the obvious advances in the standard of living generally, reflect with a sharp reality how little we have moved since the days of Queen Victoria.
We can see in Dicken's Mr Pancks the employee of the large financial institution, benign in its public persona but in reality a money-grabbing monstrosity with no heart and no true concern for its customers. The inhabitants of Bleeding Heart Yard portray a striking resemblance to the victims of Equitable Life or the Icelandic banks.
And then of course there is the Circumlocution Office - round and round it goes and nothing is achieved. Funny how the FSA and other government regulatory bodies come to mind.
