Health of the nation

If the UK’s finances were a person, you would have diagnosed a potentially fatal illness a year ago. The patient was mortally wounded, bleeding heavily, and it was only after extraordinary and emergency resuscitation at the last minute that the danger of death was averted.

The causes of the organ failure were it seems due to the patient bingeing in an unprecendented way, consuming large amounts of unsuitable sustenance, a poison in fact.

Any medical practitioner having regard to such an illness and the excesses of the patient, would administer to the recovered - and hopefully contrite patient - a stern lecture on the evils of over-imbibing. A doctor would explain in words of one syllable the consequence of similar excesses and would spell out in very certain terms the very likely danger of death if such behaviour happened again.

A sensible patient, having had a near-death experience, would then mend their ways, choosing instead of their usual excesses a more frugal existence and avoid, like the proverbial plague, the very behaviour which had brought them so low.

I don’t see any of that in the alleged resurgence of financial health. We seem to have side-stepped the issues and the patient, if anything, is being encouraged to carry on as before. Consumption, growth – these are the terms we hear commentators crowing about, as if they are anything to be proud of.

It looks to me as if the patient still has not received the message. I fear that it will limp along, becoming increasingly over-weight, talking the talk but not desisting temptation nor doing the walks and the runs it should. And as Greenspan says, yes, it will all happen again, the patient will never really learn.

There's no Plan B

It's only 9.05 am and already I'm rather hot under the collar. I keep reading about green shoots everywhere and how we're on track to getting back to where we were.

Why don't the politicians get it? We cannot go back to where we were - it's broke. It didn't work. It ain't worth saving. The endless growth of spending and consumption has to end if life is to continue on this planet. Up to this morning I couldn't quite understand why politicians don't seem to realise that.

Now I think I know the answer. The reason politicians, economists, business leaders and all the vast heaps of quangos keep banging on about green shoots and growth is that they know nothing else. They can't imagine anything else. It is beyond their comprehension that life could be other than an unmitigated drive to growth and consumerism. So if the economy is not growing and consumerism is not flourishing, well they hope it will soon. They are not looking for any other model or solution.

Even the 'Thought for the Day' speaker on Radio 4 spoke about the use of that word "consumer" today and what a sad reflection it is on our modern lives that we categorise ourselves as consumers, people who eat up resources.

To illustrate how I think those that rule don't understand the plot consider this. I've just read the introduction of a leaflet from Her Majesty's Government entitled "Real Help Now For Women" - a Central Office of Information publication it appears. There's a whole page - the second one in the introduction - which is just singing the praises of the government, it's nothing to do with helping women. And we are paying for that page with all its white space around the words. We are paying for that political propoganda at a time when we're in a recession and everyone's tightening their belts. Obviously the COI is not.

This leaflet is a symptom of the problem. It illustrates the unwillingness or inability to change ways for working, for this juggernaut that is our government to do things differently. Why not cut the design element, cut all the white space and stick the information in that leaflet onto a couple of sides of A4 and save thousands? I don't suppose it ever occurred to anyone.

The COI is doing what it's always done, government is doing what it's always done, the politicians are crossing their toes and fingers and hoping that the economy will eventually do what it's always done. So that means setting up initiatives, web sites with lots of links, beautifully designed leaflets, lots of spending that can be flagged up in the intro to yet more leaflets. It's all so predictable and I suspect completely useless.

Somewhere along the way those who seek to lead have lost that ability to think outside the norm. They just cannot grasp that all previous models have failed and we are in unknown territory so we need to do something different.

There is no Plan B and at the moment there's no comprehension that we even need one. I think that's the biggest problem we face, there is no Plan B.