Extraordinary, really. You write a post about nothing much – as I did recently – and it delivers you a quite breathtaking number of visitors and views. So a big thanks to all the snorkellers, trotters and standards who came, in your droves, to read about me falling asleep on an aeroplane. Who, quite literally, woulda thunk it? Mind you, and I’m not being picky here, not a single one of you left me a comment to remember you by. Not even a simple ‘what kind of a mook are you?’ I’d be offended if my internetual skin were not as thick as Kerry Katona.
So today, o great and influential audience mine (do you sense that you’re being flattered?), I’m going to get back to stuff with a meaning, stuff that adds value, stuff that encourages thought, stuff that moves the argument along.
Firstly, on the nature of the current hard times that we are all – certainly in my parish, anyway – suffering. Austerity is the new flamboyance, sackcloth the new cashmere, ashes the new warpaint and – thankfully – black is back as the new black. Inflation is on the rise, prices are spiralling upwards, interest rates are set to increase, house prices are continuing to fall (interestingly enough, falling to below the price paid for the house, thus plunging homeowners into ‘neggers’, but not falling enough for non-homeowners to stand any chance of purchasing one – this cannot be random, can it?) natural disasters are shaking the world (quite literally, in Scotland) and there’s martial law in Tunis. If you looked at it in the round, from an holistic point of view, you’d be hard pressed not to come to the conclusion that the end of the world, if not nigh, exactly, is certainly somewhere in the general vicinity.
So it was with raised eyebrow and general bewilderment that I read a piece in the London Evening Standard last week (and forgive me, I am unable to find a link – not that any of my snorkellers ever follow the links I so thoughtfully provide) in which the journalist implied that. amongst other things, the rise in prices that we are seeing is in some part due to a shortage of cauliflower. (Affected by the weather, I presume.) Admittedly, the journo also said it was due to the failure of Russian cereal crops – but I don’t buy it. (Much like I don’t buy cauliflower. Or Russian cereal.) No, the reason we’re suffering higher prices and austerity and our holidays are being cancelled are fourfold:
- The bankers fucked it up
- Governments tried to save the situation and fucked it up
- Businesses are businesses and primed to seize every opportunity for profit – thereby fucking it up
- The middle classes are now paying for the fucking of it up
Cauliflowers. Do these people think I am stupid?
Which, of course, I may be – but not quite as stupid as the non-US investors who’ve been stuffing money into the garter of Goldman Sachs in the hope of getting some of the sweet Facebook action. And it appears they have it all to themselves, because the Vampire Squid has been told in no uncertain terms that it must not approach its US investor base, for they have been tainted by the ill wind of propaganda about GS’ invesment in the Face, and, ‘sides, it’s either an IPO or it’s not.
What this means, of course, is that when the bottom drops out of social media, and the GS Facebook investment vehicle turns out to be another Abacus 2007-AC1 – only non-US markets will be exposed to it. And who’ll be laughing then?
thewordmonger 