A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don’t need it.
Bob Hope
With the sun vanishing, the greenhouse sorted and the crops blooming, time for a few thoughts from the padded cell.
The big issue for millions at the moment is the ever-deepening cost of living crisis with mortgage rates still on the up. We’ve lived in an era of unprecedented cheap money since the crash of 2008 and, like all good parties, it had to end.
Added to this has been a national shortage of affordable housing coupled with government incentives to buy houses that have only stoked prices beyond the rational.
As used as we are to government intervention, after Covid the pot looks dry. And yet, when our millionaire PM tells us to suck it up, that simply misses the mark with those in the eye of the storm.
Especially when – as they had to – the government bailed out the banks in those dire times back in 2008.
At its peak, the cash cost of these interventions was £137 billion, paid to the banks in the form of loans and new capital. Most of this outlay has been recouped over the years. Source: Wikipedia
Covid presented a different challenge.
Current estimates of the total cost of government Covid-19 measures range from about £310 billion to £410 billion. This is the equivalent of about £4,600 to £6,100 per person in the UK. Source: UK Parliament
So what to do?
Raising interest rates is a blunt tool and one that, I feel, has limited chances of success. A large part of society is still relatively affluent and, after the Covid years, hardly likely to rein it in.
If asset values – namely houses – do start to crash then those with liquidity will move in as before. The haves will have more…you know how it goes.
Banks need to play their part now as the bedrock of our society, despite having vanished from most high streets. So far, nothing I have read strikes me as radical.
Glazed
Perhaps the most irritating radio ad at the moment – now that Philip Schofield has vanished – is a local window company. It goes something like this.
An unbelievably dopey sounding bloke bemoans energy costs “I don’t know what we’re going to do!” – he says, fearing them on the up again. His answer? To blow several thousands on new windows!
Is it me? How can he afford new windows if he can’t pay a gas bill???
Cricket
The game I once loved goes from crisis to crisis. The above may well be true but, then again, you could claim that cricket merely reflects society and all the good and bad bits. How can it not?
Cricket has always been elitist – that bit is true – and it’s governing body – the English Cricket Board – has done much to allow this.
The obsession for the last several decades with the England team as the game became less and less relevant in state schools – as with other sports – and at grassroots level has come home to roost.
The game may well flourish in the leafy suburbs but what chance a scruffy kid like me finding it now?
And is cricket racist? Not in my long experience and all of that in a multi-racial city. To rely on the deeply unreliable Azeem Rafiq as a stellar witness here is folly. If only his bowling had been as economical as he has been with the truth.
Of course there will be a glossy action plan – the ECB are great at producing crap like this – with all the usual soundbites from people who simply have not got a clue.
ECB chair Richard Thompson said: “We will use this moment to reset cricket.”
I rest my case!
Grooving
As Mrs Bird struggled with the gym’s ancient hi-fi stack-system, the token blokes in the weekly Bingo Wings class – Don and myself – remained sanguine as to the lack of music for the next hour.
Alongside me, Pepsi and Shirley were equally unconcerned, their last dance moves belonging to the age of Travolta and not Sheeran.
“Sorry, its not working!” she announced. “You might struggle for rhythm but try your best!”
Don and I knew how that ended.
Footnote
Those who do not rely on Facebook and want notifications of posts automatically will find the sign up provision on the main page does not work. This is all Google’s fault I am told but can be circumvented.
Simply access your internet by the incognito option, type in the idlelord web address and bingo!
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