Two Repressed Egotists

So, on Wednesday night I went for a drink with a mate of mine, but ended up chatting to a colleague of his who is, putting it plainly, a very wealthy man. I can't verify this as I'd never met him before, but the guy is a lawyer, was wearing a suit that clearly cost more than I earn in a month (paired delicately with a nicely matching silk tie and pocket corner combination) and he kept self-consciously dangling the keys to a BMW in his hand as we spoke. As well as being a prime example of your modern day twat, it's fair to guess that this fellow does alright for himself.

We were making awkward small talk while waiting for my mate to return from the bar with our drinks, and the topic of conversation inevitably turned to the "credit crunch".Which was deeply unfortunate because I'm already so fucking bored of the 'credit crunch' that it took all my reserves of human decency not to punch him in the face. The credit crunch has replaced the weather as the stock topic of conversation for the sort of edgeless, tooth-sucking complaining that British people do in some vain attempt to endear themselves to people they've just met. I suppose it stems from some desperate innate need to connect, to feel like we're all somehow in the same boat. And for people who relish this sort of thing, the credit crunch is an absolute gift.

It's all anyone in the office ever talks about at the moment. After the shittest summer in memory has finally drawn to a close, you can almost feel the relief in the air that people have another meaningless topic of conversation to 'bond' over at the water cooler. Of course, the 'credit crunch' is even better office conversation than the weather, because it allows people to link their current ennui with their job, thus killing two birds with one stone.

Clearly, lawyers are not immune to credit crunch woes. My new acquaintance told me - with a straight face I might add - that 'due to all this credit crunch hoo-hah' he wouldn't be going out 'on the lash' quite as often as he used to. And to that end, he'd "invested" (his words, honest to goodness) in a 'DVD boxset' (pronounced like he'd only just heard of the existence of such a thing) of Coen Brothers movies which he was planning to make his way through over the coming thrifty winter. So, just so we're clear, in a time of apparent financial hardship this guy has somehow managed to justify the entirely unnecessary purchase of some DVDs as a means of saving money.

I think this is illustrative of a fairly crucial point which everyone seems to be missing. The credit crunch isn't actually the cause of anyone's financial woes. What it is doing, however, is merely bringing to light everyone's general ineptitude when it comes to looking after their own money. Ever astute, the newspapers have been all over this like a pig in shit, and there have been article after article in which people's previously idiotic spending habits seem to have been corrected by the necessities forced upon them by the credit crunch. Yesterday I read in The Guardian that Tesco has reported wildly increased sales of turnips. By now everyone with eyes and ears will be aware that 'budget' supermarkets Aldi and Lidl are riding high as a result of the 'crunch' as people are 'forced' by the economic climate to shun Waitrose and M and S in favour of these discount stores. Today's Guardian food blog even has a recipe for Ox heart (tastes like steak apparently) for god's sake.

Now, I'm all for eating offal (and, to a lesser extent, turnips). But it's irritating to be told by newspapers that the only reason people are doing so now is because they're all so strapped for cash they literally can't afford to eat anything else. I'd even dispute the truth behind these claims. Have you ever met anyone who - due to financial restraints - has deliberately purchased Ox's heart? How much cheaper can turnips be when compared to carrots or potatoes? And, more to the point, wouldn't you, if you were in need of saving money, do better to stop buying expensive things (cigarettes, wine, DVD boxsets) rather than penny pinching over various kinds of root vegetable? Are people really that peculiar?

What's clearly going on here is the collusion of two groups of people who are probably just as responsible for the current 'depression' as the idiots in the City who've pissed away all the money - journalists and PRs. Let's take the turnips story for example. Tesco haven't been in the paper for a few days and so their press officer knocks together a flimsy little press release claiming that turnip sales have increased. He sends it out to a handful of gullible or lazy journalists who decide it will make another perfect addition to their on going portfolio of crap credit crunch stories, and so they print it as news. I think it's time the newspapers gave us a little credit of a different kind - if they don't think we can see a wholly transparent press release posing as a news article, then they're really devaluing our intelligence. But regardless of this, it's obvious that however bad things might get in the City, journalists and PRs are still going to be earning a living writing crap...