Hamish Champ: The economy. It's all my fault
According to a friend of mine the Fourth Estate is largely responsible for the state of the UK economy.
If we journalists wrote good news stories and didn't harp on and on about how bad things were then things wouldn't be half as bad as they are, my chum opined at the outset of the weekend. Writing about the economy being bad inevitably becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, he argued.
An interesting piece of logic, I mused, although I couldn't help be reminded of an old Monty Python sketch featuring a logician played by John Cleese talking about all haddock being fish and living in the sea, but arguing - rightly in my view - that not all fish that live in the sea are haddock. You had to be there.
Anyway, my friend made the further point that despite all the gloom and doom businesses were still making profits and that we, the UK economy, were some way off being in the outdoor lavatory made of brick. We hacks were only making things worse. It was, in effect, all my fault.
I then watched former Prime Minister John Major on a Sunday morning TV news programme talking about the UK economy. He echoed my friend's argument, namely that fear was "toxic" and that it was spreading, in part thanks to journalists and commentators who poured out so many column inches about how close to the edge of the precipice we all really were, although he also pointed the finger at Gordon Brown too, as one would expect him to.
For his part Major said he thought that talk of economic Armageddon was "overdone", although he believed the true inflation rate was not the one being touted by the government, but was much higher, possibly between eight and 10 per cent.
The most obvious factor in true inflation for many people, namely the cost of mortgages, is conveniently forgotten by the government in its preferred calculation - consumer prices index. And with many flexible rate mortgages coming to an end an awful lot of people are going to get a nasty shock when they seek out a new financing deal, me included.
Everything is more expensive nowadays, and while we haven't reached Zimbabwe levels of inflation, whereby between the time you pick up some household goods from the shelves of a supermarket and take them to the checkout the shelf price has doubled, certainly I'm becoming more aware of the soaring price of a pint these days.
Pour example, I visited a newly refurbished pub in my neck of South East London last week and was stunned, nay staggered, to be charged £3.10 for a pint of standard cask ale. £3.10! Not in a Central London pub, mind you, awash with gullible tourists willing through sheer ignorance to hand over a wodge of cash for a beer. This was Lewisham.
But I guess this is the Shape of Things to Come for the foreseeable future. Like thousands of others with significant costs to cover, the newcomers to the pub I visited will no doubt be seeking to recover some of the costs of transforming the place from its former sticky-carpeted glory to its new guise of trendy bohemian hang out, complete with wall art and solid wood bar top. I wish them well in their venture.
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Thanks for all your comments following my blog last week on the smoking ban. I was particularly chuffed to be put right on the film quote I'd mistakenly claimed was from Running Man, when of course it was from Robocop. And I thought I knew my cinema. Others went to considerable lengths to test the arguments vis-a-vis the health debate over smoking. All good stuff. Even if I didn't agree with a lot of it.
Anyway, I'm taking a breather from the subject of smoking this week. But I'll be back…
