Last Hurrah for 2008

So, how was it for you? Christmas, that is. I've come through it more or less unscathed, although, as always, I'm left feeling that I should have enjoyed it more than I did. Nevertheless, here we are, on the other side of Christmas, in that peculiar no man's land that exists between it and New Year. For a while I thought that 2008 was as exhausted as I felt and wouldn't have the energy to come up with any unpleasant last minute surprises, as years tend to do during their dying days. But then Israel attacked the Gaza strip. I really don't know what the newspapers and TV would do to fill up their bulletins at this time of year without these things. They'd otherwise be left with the half-baked pronouncements that domestic politicians are prone to at this time, in a desperate attempt to stay in the headlines. Obviously, nobody is going to launch any major policy initiatives over the festive season, so instead politicians tend to make TV-friendly pronouncements they think will pander to the prejudices of middle England (who are all home watching the telly over Christmas). So it is that we have the Culture Secretary wittering on about the need to certificate websites in order to protect our children, the Tories pontificating about knife crime and the Prime Minister telling us that we need to rekindle that 'wartime spirit' in order to get through the recession.

Invoking the spirit of World War Two has become fashionable of late, despite the fact that it is clearly inappropriate with regard to the so-called 'War on Terror' or, even more absurdly, the economic downturn. If we were actually at war against an enemy which directly threatened our sovereignty and political, social and economic institutions,our very existence indeed, then such calls might be relevant. But, whilst the 'War on Terror' at least presents us a threat which can cause a nuisance on the home front, it is hardly on the scale of Nazi Germany. Trying to use the 'spirit of the blitz' to fight the recession is utterly ludicrous. The credit crunch isn't even a real, tangible threat. It was a lot easier for people to pull together during the 1940s when the Luftwaffe was bombing them nightly and the Wehrmacht gathering on the other side of the Channel, ready to invade. The bombs were also indiscriminate as to who they fell on - ordinary people could see that the well off were also having their houses destroyed by the Germans. Even Buckingham Palace was bombed. Such incidents make it much easier to instill a sense of 'togetherness' and to strengthen social cohesion in the face of adversity. Sadly, in the current recession, it isn't the wealthy bankers and financiers who will suffer - they've already misappropriated enough of other people's money to see them through any difficulties. It is the people at the bottom who are more likely to lose their jobs and consequently their homes, as they accumulate debt. Unless it turns out that the Queen has taken out a loan using one of her palaces as security, resulting in it being repossessed, I don't see there being much hope of people responding to the recession with that good old blitz spirit.