Going Nuts- Consider the Squirrel

Just Some Innocent Fun- No Squirrels Were Harmed In Writing This Piece

If like me, the mind numbing drudgery of everyday life, makes you wonder why you bother getting up in the morning- spare a little thought for the squirrels.

What have they ever done to deserve the credit crunch, freak floods, freak storms, global warming, HIV and radical Islam?

I was passing a squirrel just the other day, gnawing on a nut. As I handed the nut to the squirrel, I decided that on reflection it’s probably a preferable option to be a squirrel as opposed to a human fighting their way through the shit-storm of everyday life.

The very next morning, I climbed in a tree and began working my way through a bag of mixed nuts. By eleven AM, I was beginning to suffer vertigo and was developing a terrible thirst from all the nuts I had eaten. That’s when I got to thinking. What do squirrels drink? In fact, come to think about it, I had never seen a squirrel drink anything before. Perhaps that’s how squirrels die.

I woke up an hour and a half later, nursing a large, throbbing bump on the back of my head and picking bits of tree out our my hair. It was then that I decided I wasn’t cut out for Squirreling.

So I walked back into work, and tried to convince them to give me my job back.

“But your exact words were, ‘Shove your oppressive job up your capitalist arses and go fuck yourselves’. No I don’t think we will reconsider your hasty ‘resignation’. “

So much for sympathetic management.

Death of A Salesman

So its official, we are all going to hell in a handbasket (what a phrase). At least for anyone lucky enough to have been tuned in to BBC1’s special this evening on the state of the economy. Determined to squeeze the last drops of the will to live out of a fearful nation crowded round their wireless tellyboxes, Jeremy Vine and co, told us how a) Our fate is in the hands of incompetent jugglers between the Banks and the government. b) We are powerless and were probably always unwitting patsies to the global credit conspiracies. c) Theres no way out of this and we will all be wearing sackcloth and eating ashes until the end of days (which is probably scheduled for next week).

I dont agree with all of this scaremongering and badgering the public into feeling helpless victims. It is another example of media irresponsibility scaring the public into not spending their money anymore and thereby worsening the financial recession. But perhaps the biggest act of irresponsibility is towing the line that the banks and governments are the criminals whilst the consumer public were unwitting victims – a line of thinking that I find hard to accept.

Each member of the public knew what they were doing when they signed a credit agreement. Each member of the public should have known whether or not they could afford their mortgage. But, yes, I am willing to conceed that not all of us knew that our savings and pensions would be swallowed so quickly by this finanicial holocaust.

The fact is that a lot of us are waking up feeling like Willy Loman these days. The rules have all changed. There is no security in the things we held as being true and indestructable. Thousands have been given redundancy notices and millions already in unemployment.

So where does it end? Well we all know what happened to Willy Loman, but I cant see that happening here. What we need to do is move on and start taking responsibility for our individual and in turn, collective, actions.

The UK have to stop relying on the media to dictate their spending habits and beliefs about the financial system, and start realising that we all understand the basic rules of business whilst we’re at it. The US have to make the right decision in November and vote Obama into power. If anything, this will at least affect an air of change, if not proper change itself. The world needs a change, and the US needs to wake up in November to hope and not some angry white old man with a military history.

World take a note from the story of Kind David. Kind David was denied the opportunity to build the temple in Jerusalem because he had so much blood on his hands from waging so many wars. There is a lesson in the responsibility of governance here: An effective politician and leader cannot lead build for peace and the future with a background of war. There is always an alterior motive and agenda in their policies. McCain will undoubtedly be a rash decision maker and war mongerer far worst than the current administration (although given Bush’s military history maybe this theory has been proven wrong).

Lets begin effecting change, lets begin taking responsibility: for our finances, for our environment and for our actions. The alternative is Willy Loman.