Momentous Are Those Things That No One is Listening To

We'll listen to bankers saying that the ten-billion costs of refunding unfair charges would have meant that they would charge for all accounts and ATMs, even though they now say that the cost would have been much lower. We'll listen to members of the political media class lying about global warming, and we won't haul them up over peak oil or when their lies are exposed. We'll listen to the Governor of the Bank of England saying that two banks he saved were on the edge of collapse--and not mentioning others.

We'll listen to social workers saying the grotesque child abuse and largely unremarked destruction of working families they perpetrate regularly is unimportant compared to the good that their schemes do. We'll pretend civil unions are really only gay unions and that the idea of a pact of solidarity and equal treatment was never implied into the sale to the electorate of them--even though the House of Commons Library thinks that it originally was. We'll ignore millions of abortions, and pretend that protocol and respect are trivial and that they don't matter. Noise after noise after noise--all this we will put up with.

But--what's this? NASA announcing that there probably was once life on Mars? The Vatican holding conferences on extraterrestrial life, and coming to terms with it? Some Bulgarians in charge of their space agency claiming Aliens have been here a long time and that all they want in us is love?

I would hastily add that a nasty dispute between the President and Finance Minister has developed in Bulgaria over the Academy of Sciences, which may be off, out on the range, as the Texans used to say, when it comes to believability at the moment. The President thinks that the Finance Minister has nicked all his money, basically; it is at once more human and less serious than the dispute in Japan between the Finance Ministry and the Central Bank, which threatens us all.

I wish aliens were here and that they were running LloydsTSB. The strange celestial reasons and behaviour of the visitors would at least explain my bank's delusional psychosis, and those of other financial institutions with which I am connected. One of the reasons I am working seven days a week, teaching and lecturing and paying down my debts, is how unreliable they have become--I'd far rather be blogging, though I do love teaching undergraduates and A-level people. How odd life is. Still, I used the great boom to have a good time and to make myself a Doctor and a Barrister. I really cannot complain.

Mad, I know, but how mad? How much more mad than the determined belief in, say, stock markets, which of course are markets in nominal certificates for stock since no one has ever actually seen or claimed to have seen a share? More mad than the love in the eyes of women I know, or more mad than a bottle of wine?

Oh, who knows. They're here. Go and raise a glass to them, and ask them about Katie Price, or travel via black holes, or whether Jesus really visited Glastonbury before Bruce Springsteen did. These are things that our media think important.

The following song is for an old friend, and the wife of a good friend, whom I have known in death and life and who is in hospital again tonight, waiting for her son and fighting with all the strength of Jewish and Irish and Polish and Scottish blood. I love all of you.