Ciabatta munchers and (credit) crunchers

We've fallen in hard times, apparently. The poor, put upon, badly treated Middle Classes are reducing to rooting through bins and raiding the hedgerows in order to keep themselves in Chelsea Tractors, and up and down the country, the Stepford Wives rejects, the orange and blondes are bemoaning the fact that they cannot have the latest Prada handbag or Jimmy Choo shoes. Probably in order to attract another husband before this one goes bust. In this society, it's very much for better, OK, for worse- I'm off with the female of the species.

The Paper Millionaires which abound have just had a hard dose of reality after 30+ years of living stupidly. Predicted by me some time in the mid 1980's, but never mind. As John Pilger put it so well: "A few got very rich, some did alright on credit, whilst the rest were disposessed in the American way". In other words, a few real multimillionaires, lots of paper ones, and the invention of the Underclass, who don't exist until the Government wants to scare the rest of us with them. All three main political parties exist for, and are filled with, middle class, Ciabatta munching greedy bastards with all the self interest, selfishness and hypocrisy that afflict that class.

Home ownership has been an insane obsession here ever since Thatcher. Yet, many extremely fundamental facts have been consistently ignored: but watch, as Brown and his cohorts wheel them out:

1. A basic prerequisite of life is a home. Especially in the Northern Hemisphere.
2. House prices are relative. If your home goes up in value, so do most seller's houses. Ergo, you have to pay more to buy a replacement.
3. You don't own a house until it's paid for, and for most people, this used to be a life's work. 25 years was the norm.
4. If house prices rise to the extent where whole swathes of the population cannot afford one, then a crisis is waiting to happen. See point 1.
5. When, (as has happened), the shit hits the fan, Government can point out these fundamental facts plus the simple fact that no matter how much your house has devalued, nevertheless, you still have a home. Unlike a sizeable chunk of the population. See points 1 & 4.

Greed, as ever the hallmark of the Middle Class, is to blame. Thatcher, Major, Blair and Brown know their beast, and if you want to catch a pig, appeal to greed. This is what they did: keep the middle classes happy by letting them think that they're well off, and have their heads in the trough. So long as the "Credit" (see below) keeps on coming, then the day of judgement can be postponed, oh, until someone else is in office. Such is the problem of democracy where (a) the ruling class are so corrupt and (b) the electorate are so stupid. Plato was right!

Every damned morning, as soon as the poor husband is out of sight, the pampered orange and blondes get treated to programmes about houses. Buying them, selling them, houses here, abroad, at auction. Legions of the pseudo middle class, (the Working Class who believe that they're fully paid up Ciabatta Munchers), now fancy themselves as "Developers". A house is no longer a prerequisite of life, it's an "investment", a "property", a "project" or a "development". A Middle Class piggy bank where, ironically, they are allowed to charge more in rents to people too poor to buy their own house than the mortgage payments would be on the same house! Such pigs thoroughly deserve a dose of reality. Let's do some maths, which is not my strong point, but here we go:

In my area, the average home costs £200,000.
A newly qualified teacher, for example, would earn approx £20k

Hence, their mortage, if 100%, would have to be TEN TIMES their annual income. Even if they had a partner on the same income, the standard rules supposedly advised (4 times dual income) would still put the house out of their reach. And they'd still have to run the house!

Now imagine the situation for legions of other British citizens, those on National Minimum Wage and up to £20k. Massive swathes of the population cannot buy a home, whilst the detestible Middle Classes bleat as soon as their "property" devalues. This, they call the "Feelgood Factor"- the impression that one is wealthy, on paper at least. In reality, one is up to one's neck in DEBT. See below........

What's in a word?

One of the more glaringly obvious examples of the stupidity of the Middle Classes is how bad terms have been turned on their head to present themselves as positive terms- and no-one has noticed! Apart from me, at least.

Let me explain. Credit is simply where one is in the black at the bank.
Where you owe them money, this is called Debit. Otherwise known as Debt.

Take a look at your last bank statement: there, you'll find no ambivalence: it'll say "Debit" if you owe them.

A symptomatic advertisement had some moron gleefully and cheerfully loading himself up with yet more debt by "Consolidating his Credit" into one large lump, and explaining cheerfully and casually to the camera that "at least now we have all our credit in one place", before yelling to his wife that "I've sorted out the credit" She's overjoyed, too.

For those of us who speak English, and not Advertisingmanese, what he's actually done is put all the money he owes into one place, and commited himself from now to doomsday to paying it back. What power there is in words, and to quote Hitler: "if a lie, no matter how preposterous, is repeated often enough and loud enough, it will eventually be accepted as truth". Like "Smooth" beers: what's in a word? "Smooth" actually means "bland".

Now, it's reached amusing levels of hysteria. The poor old Ciabatta Munchers are struggling, and, in a level of hypocrisy only the stupid Middle Class can achieve, they want Socialist measures from NuLabour. After 30+ years of gloating about the "beauty" of the Free Market Economy, where the rich get richer and the poor stay down, (wealth NEVER filters down, but that's a whole new rant), now they want their banks and homes saving by Central Government. Funny that only as they look like losing them do their "Properties" and "developments" actually become homes.

Car manufacturer Rover was told to get stuffed when it wanted a Government bailout. Likewise a lot of other manufacturing companies between 1979 and now. But banks who presided over and encouraged the most stupid episode in British social history, copying their even greedier pals in the USA, and who have made vast fortunes over the years, and hence should have contingency plans, well, they get a more or less bottomless pit of taxpayers money thrown at them. So that they can then sit on it. What a house of cards that was.

Meantime, no-one yet has seen the lunacy of allowed the so- called City of London free reign over the economy. Running an economy via the Markets is akin to playing Russian Roulette with an automatic instead of a revolver. (Guarantees a bullet through the brain). Listen and be told: banks exist only to enrich themselves. They're out to make profits, and their shareholders are all that matters. When that profit is under threat we get.... a situation like today. Brown can pump as much money as he likes into the banks- it will avail him nothing, because they will simply sit on it until he puts interest rates up again. And remember, the fool just lowered them to "stimulate the economy". Banks take their lead from the Bank of England. Or, is that the other way around?

If nothing else, the astute should know, and the rest should learn, that several lessons can be learnt from this:

1. The Middle Class haven't changed, and are still the enemy of the (admittedly dwindling) true Working class. They've rigged the system from top to bottom to apparently suit them, and largely at the expense of the Working Class. They are more insistent, more complaining, more hypocritical and immensely more greedy. Make no mistake: their gains are not at the expense of the truly rich.

2. Old fashioned principles about money and ownership should be applied. Don't buy what you can't afford, keep your wife or husband in check, don't borrow or lend money, and remember that its not yours until it's paid for. The Working Class were once scathing of those who lived off easy credit, second mortgages were seen as a desperate and irresonsible act, and strutting about when all your money is purely in paper, and hence liable to disappear at any time, was seen as laughable.

3. One cannot trust Big Business. We're now paying the price, literally, of selling off our utilities, our railways, and most of our banks are in the hands of other countries or the Multis. Soon, more chickens will come home to roost as another of my predictions comes true: we'll regret closing the coal mines. And I made that one at the time of the Miners Strike, were Government callously destroyed not just people's jobs, but their communities, their social cohesion, and any hope of a better future. To the cheers of the Ciabatta Munching Middle Class, who now ironically want the same state to bail them out. What goes around, comes around, and personally I'll shed no tears for them.

4. Government is absolutely the last thing you should trust- about anything. If those bastards can lie about a war, and fail utterly to ever explain why we are in Afghanistan, or even to claim that they're fans of the Arctic Monkeys (and then not be able to name one of their songs), then nothing is sacred. As they used to say in the Soviet Union: "don't believe something until it is officially denied".

5. The Media, ever the good little lapdog of Government and bloody Murdoch, talked us into this attrocious state- every bit of it. Don't expect them to tell the truth about the whole sordid business. (See "No Alternative" for more on the British Media).

The best one can do is to apply old fashioned notions about money, posers, and a healthy dose of cynicism about the stupid and greedy Middle Class, and be amused as they flail about and whine that little Tarquin and Clamydia can't go to the prestigious (but no better) private school, where they'll learn vital social skills such as Advanced snobbery, speaking in a ridiculous, fake accent, and hone their sycophantic and complaining skills. Just like mummy and daddy did. They deserve all they get, it's long overdue.