Tuesday 28 October 2008

Boris: Partying in the face of gloom

Q: How does someone who earns 15 times the average salary refer to the recession?
A: "What recession?"

Hot on the heels of complaining about people whingeing about house prices, Mayor Johnson tries to make sure people know he is as out of touch as possible:

"Eat, spend and be merry - this is not the end of the world"
Telegraph.co.uk, 28/10/08

"This isn't some disaster movie about a virus from Mars. It's a recession, a downturn, a correction of a kind that is indispensable to any kind of human activity, and it does not require us to go around under a special kind of credit-crunch pall. It does not mean we have to cancel all parties and talk in hushed credit-crunch tones... This is the moment for a life-affirming splurge..."

"...if we ban holidays for the British Establishment, where will it end? What about restaurants? What about taxis? What about going to a film on a Saturday night?..."

"...There is nothing remotely impolite, in these circumstances, about spending money and being seen to spend money. Far from it."


On that basis, I'm going to log off and go to the pub. For those of you with debts, who have been made recently redundant or struggling with mortgage payments, I say: f*** you all.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Recession is in the eye of the beholder :-/

Anonymous said...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/aug/24/1
"Those of us who sit round worrying about the subtle implications of arguing x at the same time as y will probably never change anything." I think Boris' thing here is to say that there are some people who's mood has been affected. Perhaps these are some 'overly serious' people who are spending time trying to figure out how to keep living their life the same. They won't get anything done. It's the people who go out and act who will. People who go out and party? Right, maybe, perhaps their escaping into titillation is something commonly seen as a desireable trait, in that are responding to a 'need for change', maybe: Mao, Clinton, Ghandi.

Anonymous said...

Achim Steiner, UN Under-Sec General and UNEP Exec Director, said: "The financial, fuel and food crises of 2008 are in part a result of speculation and a failure of governments to intelligently manage and focus markets...

But they are also part of a wider market failure triggering ever deeper and disturbing losses of natural capital and nature-based assets coupled with an over-reliance of finite, often subsidized fossil fuels...

The flip side of the coin is the enormous economic, social and environmental benefits likely to arise from combating climate change and re-investing in natural infrastructure - benefits ranging from new green jobs in clean tech and clean energy businesses up to ones in sustainable agriculture and conservation-based enterprises," he added.

But, if you do actually want to go out, like Boris, rather than thinking about serious stuff like doing sustainable business:

Planet Ark (http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/50106/story.htm) has got a story on a Dutch club where dancers generate power lighting the floor, they use recyclable cups, and toilets flush with rain water through transparent pipes.

Aim to export the idea, presumably not to Monaco, Cannes, SW11, Shanghai(?)... who knows, maybe the new '(small) green collar' workers'll have to drink organic white wine from reuse bio-plastic with their clients?

Anonymous said...

Las Vegas has signed the Urban Environment Accords, which means it's committed to within seven years reduce the city’s peak electric load by 10%, through "energy efficiency, shifting the timing of energy demands, and" (this is the best one) "conservation measures". I think I am more confident of their renewable energy targets, but will not blame anyone for being ambitious!

Anonymous said...

I thought this was a regular blog? Chop Chop!