cured

So we can stop panicking now that the banking world has been saved. Phew. My hundreds of thousands of pounds of savings are safe.......ho ho ho ho (that, friends, is the sound of hollow laughter).

The problem is that we seem to still be heading for a recession; inflation is rising, house prices falling (or normalising, it all depends on your point of view) and much more scarily, jobs are begining to be lost.

I lived through the last recession and its various Tory initiated cures, and it was not fun -monetarism could well have been some horrible acronym for Money Over Normal existence, Thatcher Acts Rashly, Its Shit Mostly. To be fair Major picked up the ball and ran with it too, but during the 80's the economy was largely Thatcher's plaything (but like a cat plays with a mouse..). Jobs lost, hope diminished and untold harm done to the country and its spirit.

If only the government and Gordon in particular would spend as much time and trouble protecting normal people from the ravages of recession as he has protecting wealthy bankers from the consequences of their greed. The welfare state is not a sop to whingers and malingerers, its the safety net you need when the world goes pear shaped, pensions need nurturing, social housing needs investment for those without mortgages or without jobs anymore. If we spent a fraction of the bank bail-out on these things, recession wouldn't have teeth. But we don't, we help out rash and greedy moneymakers, while simultaneously threatening the poor and helpless with more hoops to jump through.

I will vote Labour .... there is no alternative, but there's a bad taste in my mouth after all of this and a suspicion that it Business As Usual.... in every sense.