A promotion from Travel, sorry National Express West Midlands, the corp what runs most of our buses in Brum, has the following blurb:
Remember that average West Midlands petrol prices have risen by around 22% in the last 12 months, and with the credit crunch forcing all of us to tighten our belts, dumping the pump and jumping on the bus is the sensible way to save money.
A few years back Private Eye had a series called WarBalls spotlighting pieces of PR puffery that tried to hook 9/11 to whatever product of service they were hawking. While I haven’t read Private Eye for a while now (I’m on a low-fiber media diet) it wouldn’t surprise me if they were doing CrunchBalls or something as I’m seeing this sort of nonsense all over the place of late.
Not only is this classic fear-mongering misery-hawking tabloid bilge but it’s also completely inaccurately. Take me, for example. A few years ago I was living on the edge of my overdraft with some relatively substantial debts I never thought I’d pay off. This, aparently, was a boom time economically. Spin forward to today where we’re all aparently on the verge of financial ruin and I’ve got more disposable income than in living memory. Maybe this is my natural contrariness, my inherent desire to go against the flow like some kind of 50′s bequiffed rebel. Or maybe it’s that everyone’s situations are different.
But what really annoys me about this credit crunch stuff is that it’s being used as an excuse to moan about how we, the great British public, can’t get shit cheap anymore. Not only is a sudden reduction in credit the wrong excuse for why food is a bit more expensive or petrol prices have gone up but it’s immature and selfish. Tightening your belts is something you do when you’re starving and your trousers are in danger of falling down. It is not something you do when you have to buy the own brand cornflakes rather than the posh ones. Sure, it’s a metaphor but if I might extend it these people are like The Fatties from Judge Dredd, shoveling in food at one end and shitting it out the other, unable to move without a belly wheel to support them. In the story there’s a war leading to food shortages and rationing but The Fatties protest. They need their absurd levels of food. It’s their right. That’s what I think of when I hear people moaning about the price of petrol or bananas or whatever. “It’s my right to be an over-consumptive arse because the Daily Express tells me so.”
Chickens are coming home to roost, people. You’ve been getting by with cheap shit and unrealistic loans for far too long now. Time to get real and learn how to deal with not being able to get what you want.
Rant over.
I smell a brewing mayoral campaigning. The “time to grow up” line is gonna trump Chinny’s “It was Bostin in 1954″.
All that aside – well bloody said Pete.
Credit Crunch: The new low fat, high interest cereal from The Government
Yeah, nice one. My thoughts exactly.
“Dumping the pump” just sounds so, soooo wrong.
Hah, yes.
And bilge writing about bilge. Yes.
“Time to get real and learn how to deal with not being able to get what you want.”
let them eat cake? Sorry, can’t get behind this. The credit crunch is undeniably happening, ask one of the thousands of people laid off a week in construction or anyone running a business where they have to pay a fuel bill. Take it you don’t have a family to feed, and you aren’t trying to find a mortgage. Glad to hear you’re so wealthy, but as you say everyone’s situation is different, why’s it so hard to imagine a lot of people are having it hard?
Tom, if people never adopted the credit lifestyle they wouldn’t be feeing the crunch. It’s not about having pots of money and being above the problems it’s about living within your means.
The idea that the government bailed out Northern Rock when a few years ago they let Longbridge close makes me wonder, particularly as Northern Rock cost a thousand times more to “rescue”. Rover workers (and many many more in the close knit community that supported Rover) were hard-working people who got shafted. That is “having it hard”.
“It’s my right to be an over-consumptive arse because the Daily Express tells me so.�
People on lower incomes spend proportionately more of their income on food and energy. Whilst I agree that the CREDIT CRUNCH! stories are getting both repetitive and absurd (much like the GLOBAL WARMING! nonsense in the media) I do know a lot of folks who live on an average or below average income who are finding it hard to make ends meet.
A lot of these people are not Daily Express or Mail readers. They don’t drive big cars. And, working in the public sector, they have had to endure below inflation wage rises for a long time.
So my point (if I in fact do have one) is that you should not confuse the ‘pain’ of a few folks who lived on cheap credit with the ‘pain’ of the people that are really struggling to get by each month and who didn’t live above their means.
focalplane have you considered that hard working people who lost their jobs are probably the most likely to be living the ‘credit lifestyle’? It’s not middle england that’s going to lose out from the credit crunch, we’ll just switch from waitrose to tesco finest and wait for the equity to go back up on our houses.
Tom, I think Pete’s made a fair point badly. Perhaps if we have a run at it from the other direction -
* The fact that he’s doing ok doesn’t mean that some people aren’t in difficulty.
* The fact that some people are having financial problems doesn’t make it ok to pretend that the whole country is going down the tubes.
* Advertising bus use as an emergency measure that you can give up when fuel prices come down doesn’t send a positive message about public transport.
Mmm, I’m not sure you can totally extrapolate from your own situation to suggest there isn’t a serious economic downturn in progress. But I agree with you 100% that people should stop bloody moaning about it, because that doesn’t help.
I just came to the end of a very decent 4.39% fixed rate mortgage on my flat, and the new mortgage of 5.74%, the best I could get according to an independent whole-of-market broker, means the mortgage has gone up by around £200.
But for me it’s a case of, as the Americans say, sucking it up. A less expensive holiday, cheaper groceries, cancel the subscription to the wine club (yes, I am a hateful middle class stereotype, thank you for asking). I imagine there are some people for whom it’s extremely difficult to find extra money in this type of scenario, but I equally suspect they are not the people bitching, moaning and generally carrying on the media.
So to people who are sad about their less expensive holiday this year I would heartily endorse Pete’s timely: SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP!
I’ve been involved in a similar discussion recently on one of the mailing lists I’m part of. Almost exactly the same thing happened. Someone opened the subject up, I was the first to respond on very similar lines to Pete. Others pointed out that there are people who are suffering genuine hardship as a result of rising food and fuel prices.
I didn’t mean to belittle them when I was extolling the virtues of living a more frugal lifestyle, counting one’s blessings and working out what’s really important in life. If prices keep going up and up, I might become one of them myself. Sadly, the way society is structured means that some people will always be worse off than others. I wish it wasn’t so.
But like Pete, I am very fed up with the constant media histrionics when for many people the extent of the “hardship” is a tough decision on whether or not to keep the Sky subscription going. Let’s put that anxiety to good use instead and make smarter investments in sustainable energy, bringing the price down for everyone and reducing the dependence on oil.
Tom, in the past I have hit hard times and had to live off a credit card. It was not “pleasant” and the pay off was, well, expensive. Ironically the hard times for me were due to an extremely low oil price ($10/bbl in 1990) as I work in the oil industry and there were no jobs. Which is counter trend to put it mildly.
I’m not “pumping my dump” for anybody.
Good point about the old chickens Pete. I have always felt guilty of my consumption but the last few months have made me take a good hard look at what I am eating. It doesn’t seem right for people to be eating such huge quantities of meat and throwing away so many left overs and rotting food. I don’t think you should change your lifestyle because the back of a bus tells you, just if it works for you. I am appreciating what I do eat now, making pies with the rest and saving a fortune.
…of course the credit crunch could be just another spin from the banks/government… to get us all fretting about ourselves and our bank balances instead of illegal wars and lending money to corrupt governments abroad.
every now and then, society needs a new folk devil to worry about, in order to avoid the big picture, ie: the UK is turning into a right-wing, authoritarian nanny state, being policed by new stealth laws.
pete, i’m glad you are doing well, i know you are not going to spend the money on a gas-guzzling chelsea tractor…
Thanks for all the comments folks. Good stuff there.
I probably should preface these sort of posts with “this is a rant and therefore not necessarily fully thought out or rational – I’m just venting” so thanks to those who picked up on that.
Sure, I pity those who are losing their jobs and who are trapped with bad debts and mortagages they shouldn’t have been allowed to take. I’m not moaning at them. Though I would point out that people lose their jobs all the time. The economy was rosy when Rover shut up shop, for example.
And I’m about to rant again so I’ll shut up. ;)
I am old enought to have lived through this type of thing before. Look back in history and this type of thing happens over and over again. People just need to think about what they are spending and what they are wasting. I wrote about this a short while ago after hearing a family on the news complaining that they had, had to start growing their own food to make ends meet. And no we are not well off, just careful with our money.
Credit Crunch… is this a new cereal?
It takes something close to one’s own sphere of existence to fully comprehend what this all means. I was made redundant a few years back after being in continual employment for 20 yrs. It took me 9 months to find another job, which unfortunately was a third less salary than my previous job. No, I didn’t moan about it but I am now very sensitive to those around me who may be affected by the current financial situation.