Last night's Mock The Week would more appropriately have been called Mock The Old or Mock The North, since it featured people who either were or thought that they were young, and who had decided to have a field day about Northern Rock's investors "wandering around Northern town centres with tartan trolley-bags full of cash" and what have you, from variously faux Cockney, ever so Home Counties, gentrified West Country, Glaswegian, and Irish vantage points. How the London student audience roared with laughter!
Well, those people worked for a living, and some of them still do. In their tartan trolley-bags are your enormous debts, which have given you the lifestyle that you think is owed to you by the world in general and by the lower orders in particular.
It is high time that someone looked into just how much flashy Southern and/or middle-class credit is dependent on discreet Northern and/or working-class thrift. And, of course, gilded youth is only gilded at the expense of middle and old age. So why doesn't anyone ever point out this fact?
As Janet Street-Porter said on Question Time, we are beginning to realise that there are two Britains, the Britain that borrows and the Britain that saves. The latter pays for the former, so the former should show some respect.
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"It is high time that someone looked into just how much flashy Southern and/or middle-class credit is dependent on discreet Northern and/or working-class thrift."
ReplyDeleteYes. How much? And how does that work?
We all know who borrows the money, not least because they so often make such a song and dance about what they do with it. Well, who do you think deposits it? We are beginning to see the answer to that, a question we had never previously thought of asking.
ReplyDeleteHello Dave,
ReplyDeleteNot that I'm usually the sort to fish for blogvertising in spam-comments, but I'm a fan of your blog and I've just posted a piece that I would be intrigued to know your opinions on (being Britains arch socialist-unionist.
Whats your thought, David, on the Belgium-Wallonia issue as applied to Scotland and Catalonia?
Damn right David, (speaking as a Northern saver, although thankfully not with Northern Rock).
ReplyDeleteEdwin, no British or Spanish Prime Minister would ever permit either Flanders or Wallonia, as a secession from an existing member-state, to join the EU, because of the precedent that that would set in relation to Scotland, Catalonia or the Basque Country.
ReplyDeleteYet, even though everyone knows this, we are still facing the quite plausible impending dissolution of a country whose capital has a direct rail link to central London and contains the headquarters of the EU, and whose Royal House is even called Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.
Latins (nay, very Francophones) might declare UDI at any moment. Is it conceivable that France and Francophone Africa might recognise such a declaration? Is it conceivable that they might not!
And they might very well be joined by Italy, Spain, Portugal, and every country where either Spanish or Portuguese is spoken. Meanwhile, UDI in Wallonia would light the touchpaper for UDI in Quebec.
Or Teutons might declare UDI at any moment. Ever since the incorporation of the Catholic South, there has been a certain inevitability about the eventual annexation of Flanders to the Netherlands should Belgium ever fall apart, even if that would have to be on some sort of federal basis now.
Could Germany stay out? She could not, and ever since she disastrously recognised Croatia and Slovenia in some cack-handed attempt to restopre Austria-Hungary, it has been clear that has no desire to stay out of such matters.
Not least, the eastern-most part of Wallonia is German-speaking, and was part of the Kingdom of Prussia until the Treaty of Versailles. Think on.
And then, if this all kicked off, there is increasingly divided and unhappy Switzerland...
At the present time, is there any crisis in Europe more significant than this one? Are there very many in the whole world? And look how very close to Britain it all is.
However, I can't think of anywhere on earth that would recognise Scottish, Catalan or Basque independence. Except, perhaps, secessionist Flanders or secessionist Wallonia.
Now, can we get back on topic, please?