Recession: A Nation Spends A Bit Less
By Paul Creasy

When Throat Edgbaston started writing "Recession: A Nation Spends A Bit Less" he intended to produce a single article on the economic downturn and the subsequent unravelling of the British social jumper. However, as soon as he began his assignment he realised that he could not possibly sum up the poordom he had encountered without engaging in a lucrative multi-part investigation. The vastly inflated wages Throat will now receive have meagre value compared to the enlightenment he has given us all by poking at Britain's seamy underbelly for the benefit of voyeuristic broadsheet-reading rich tossers.

To protect the feelings of all involved, the following articles are written in fluent journalese.

Part I: The Graduate

I arrive early at the train station. This is not unusual in itself - I have been to many train stations before, some of them operational - yet this one feels somehow different. The sign on the platform says "Walthamstow Central" but it may as well say "Britain's Economy", if that didn't make things unnecessarily complicated for train drivers. "How can this be?" I hear you tut. Well, allow me to explain. I am here at this colossus of platform and vomit to meet a young man who symbolises Britain's recent economic woes: a 22-year-old recent University graduate we will call "Colin Davies". Actually, we won't, because that's his real name. We'll call him Steve Smith. Steve left University last summer with a 2:1 in History, a respectable trinket but one which has not allowed him to impress his learned paws on the world in the manner he would have wished. I am here to ascertain why that might be.

As I ponder existence, a wiry, French-looking young Turk ambles towards me. He dresses as I once did, all angles and cravats, yet his exterior betrays a nervousness and savagery quite distinct from what one would expect. I think this may be just the young failure I am expecting.

"Steve?"

"Actually, it's Colin."

"No, but for the article..."

"Oh, right."

"Do you know anywhere we can talk?"

"Well, there's a café up the road."

"I don't really like cafés. They bring me out in toast."

Just minutes later we are sipping coffee and wondering just how Steve's life could have fallen into such a bassless funk. He looks wearily into the middle distance as he starts to recount the tale of his University stint and the high hopes it brought him. "Me and my friends used to talk in the common room," he says, sadly mistaking his anecdote for an interesting one, "about our futures. We all used to joke that we'd end up cleaning whores for a living. Now that doesn't seem so far-fetched." Steve emits a self-pitying, hollow laugh. I feel sorry for him and venture an arm by way of consolation, but he doesn't accept so I'm forced to pretend I've put it there in order to keep my balance. This will be a great source of pain to me throughout the interview. Steve eventually continues, "I just always thought we'd be able to make something of our numerous days. Now the only wages we collect are the wages of war. I'm not sure what I mean by that, but it sounds intelligent so please keep it in."

How did this happen to the young not-up-and-comer? How did a young man who was lauded for his painting in Year 5 ("I could always do perfect circles," he admits in a rare moment of happiness) end up being failed by the very government which governed him? Well, we won't put our shoes on before our socks - this article is the first of a lucrative series, after all - but Steve has a good idea of who is to blame. "Banks Brown Thatcher," he says at once in a concise manner not always associated with those of his age and hair. I ask if the still-lingering spectre of recession has put him off politicians for life, but all he can offer by way of a response is a sad stroke of his mug - this is an unhappy turnip, and one those in power would do well to uproot before he can poison the soil. "What they should do," he offers at last, "is set up some reasonably-paid apprenticeships and subsidised government programmes to get young people into work at a time when companies are scared to take on more staff." A youthfully idealistic and wildly improbable idea, of course, but it is hard not to be taken in by his untainted sky-blue eyes and creased legwear. We were once like him, but we didn't have this economic Bungle to offset our fiscal George, Zippy and Geoffrey.

After our coffee I follow Steve home, mostly with his consent, to glean more details of his almost certainly futile existence. When we arrive his mother Jean is in the kitchen baking bread, but she takes the time to greet me with a passionate kiss. "He's just such a smart boy," she asserts sadly, "it's awful to think of his talents going to waste. Did you hear about his circles?" I reply in the affirmative. Clearly this is a woman distressed at her fruit being canned and sold to the highest bidder. "I do worry about him. He says he wants to be a journalist or another sort of twat, but are those really jobs for a young man to be getting into? And how will he clean his teeth?"

I leave Jean to her bread after another lengthy kiss and follow Steve to his room, a place in which he often sleeps and lives. He is currently in the process of using the time he has on his hands to rearrange everything he owns alphabetically, and he shows me with a wry smile the placement of his deodorant next to his diary. Emboldened, I ask if he is currently close to intercourse with anyone; sadly, I receive a less-than-response. "It's just difficult," he replies, already showing a lack of linguistic imagination that would serve him well in journalism, "when I have no money. I asked a girl out last week but I only had enough money for a half-date. We ate half a chicken and drank half a bottle of wine, then we took half a taxi home and I kissed her half-awkwardly on half of my doorstep before going inside and masturbating while thinking about one of her breasts. Do you understand?" I assure Steve that I do, more than I can admit to in print. I feel I should offer my arm in sympathy again, but in fear of repeating the café scenario I elect to withdraw. Nevertheless, I cannot help wondering if this room somehow represents our generation's failure of our youngest and brightest; we may well be the semen-encrusted tissues on this young man's floor, and there's no hoover in sight.

I finally embark from Steve's house several hours later under the quite serious threat of violence. As I run toward the train station I ponder worryingly how I, with my heavy sub-prime investments and bumper sticker saying "I Love Debt", might have in some small way contributed to this bludgeoning of youth, this urination on a tricycle. Steve and his contemporaries, of which I assume there are at least twelve, have had their future quite literally farted on by a gaggle of want-it-now, of-course-I-can-pay-for-it, what-do-you-mean-no-more-moneys. Have we taken the time to look at our shoes and apologise? I glance at my credit card collection and emit, if not a sad, then at least a rueful tear.

Then suddenly, it hits me like a toxic mortgage: if this recession is having such an effect on graduates, its impact on actual people must be greater still. I forget such trivialities and hasten to London Victoria, ready to plumb even greater depths on my econo-journey.

Part II: The Hard Done By Middle Class Family

A kettle boils. A newspaper opens. A caged parrot squawks. An onion is ruthlessly freed from its brown cage. The rain teases its way over a Ford. A boy is referred to as "Henry". These are the sounds of a Middle Class Family on a Saturday morning, and this Saturday is no different for this one of those, in this case called "The Hatches". They are a somewhat archetypal example of this particular bacteria in the social petri dish; two parents and two children make their nest in Hatch towers, the genders are equally represented and the family is blessed with both feline and bovine companionship. However, they insist that they are far from unexceptional. "I've got a small tattoo, and my husband once saw a poor person," asserts Jean, the fearless matriarch, her golden hair bristling slightly at the suggestion of idyllic family bliss. Of course, she has good reason to react in this manner - there is a recession on, and not even those whose house has its own postcode are immune. But we will come to that.

The Hatches are, as I have said, fourfold: David, 44, is a man and husband; Henry, 5, is a doting son; Emily, 8, is a superfluous daughter; Jean, 38, is a woman we've already met and judged. As I watch them going about their weekend-start I am amazed at the way in which their despisal of each other is deliciously repressed - truly, this tolerance of existence underpins every effective family environment. However, there is a storm on the horizon and an effective shelter may not yet have been constructed from corrugated prudence. The recession is already evident in the non-organic food stocked on the family's shelves and the inelegant shoes bestowed upon their children, yet mother Jean fears it will not end there. "What's to stop them," she asks unprompted, "from coming and taking our crab salad for tax purposes? You can't be too careful in these times of milk and muesli." David, however, is more relaxed about Britain's ripped economic trousers: "We've had to tighten our belts a bit, of course, but my company's doing very well in the circumstances and we've budgeted well for this eventuality. Recessions come and go, but we'll be fine in a couple of years' time." Jean shoots him a withering glare - clearly, this is not an issue on which they butter the same bread.

Jean later confides in me over croissants that she is looking for another job out of belt-tightening necessity - her current position as Head of Science at a local school just isn't filling the children's clothes and she feels she should be the one to book tickets for the Employment Cruise. Waters are choppy, but she insists, "It's now got to the point where we can only afford to go to the supermarket once a week. If this goes on for much longer we could conceivably have to send the kids to state school, and then where would David be with his budgets and rationality? No, I've decided that I've got to look for something that pays more - I've got an interview with a major chemical company on Monday, even though I'll be lucky if they look at me twice." Her reservations notwithstanding, it is certainly a shuddersome sneeze of ambition - Jean is under no illusions about the recession's effect on those of middling class. She continues: "I tried to have an affair a couple of weeks ago but I couldn't even afford that - the taxis, the hotel rooms, the constant secrecy and so on." "Come now darling, that never stopped you before," David interjects cheerily, but Jean is having none of it. "He just doesn't understand," she sighs, wiping the last French crumb from her lip, "how hard it is for people like us."

My investigation into Hatch-flavoured recessiondom has now taken an unexpectedly interesting turn following Jean's revelations; having spent an incident-free Saturday morning with the family, I ask if I can follow her on Monday on her quest for gainful-er employment. She is reluctant at first, but the promise of fat renumeration and a brief stay in a hotel room soon win her round and I arrive at the Hatch household early on the appointed day, just in time to catch Jean and David readying the children for school. Without wanting to digress, it is worth noting that the words that spill from their mouths as they undertake this time-honoured task are strikingly assertive, untouched by the spectre of economic badness:

"Do you have your lunchbox, Henry?"

"Yes, mother. You've attached it to my head."

"Good good. Emily, what have I told you about taking daddy's shotgun to school?"

"Sorry, mother."

"OK, let's go. David, leave the cow alone."

"Right-o."

With that Jean boards the car, ready to take her seeds to be nourished by learning-water. The atmosphere in the vehicle on the way to school is jovial; however, the thaw reverses as Jean drives to the interview that provides this article with a much-needed narrative thrust. I first sense she is feeling nervous about the coming jobterrogation when she accidentally deposits the car in a ditch; this feeling is only compounded when she punches the AA man who comes to rescue us. When we eventually arrive at the interview three hours late she is positively shaking with shakes, and she confides in me once again regarding her low expectations. "I won't get this," she squawks. "Companies are laying people off at the moment, not taking them on. Frankly, I'll be lucky if I last long enough for them to bring up my sex crimes." Nevertheless, I wish Jean the best of luck as she is waved into the room by a smiling man with a bulging suitcase.

A matter of some minutes later, the interview is over. "So," I cheekily enquire of a downbeat-looking Jean, "how did it go?" She replies slowly, as if every word is a child. "I was certainly offered the job", she intones, "but I won't be taking it. They...they could only offer me £20k a year more than I'm making, and frankly I think I need to be more ambitious. I mean, yes, I'd be able to go the supermarket twice a week, but I just don't believe in compromising my children's futures. Children are our future, after all, and that makes their futures sort of...super-futures." I agree and offer my condolences as we begin our bus journey back home in near-silence, punctuated only by a brave and prescient comment. "It's hard for everyone, Throat," Jean eventually whispers, barely able to comprehend the injustice. I nod along sagely. As I drop her off with only the promise of a stable job and an idyllic family life to console her, I am not ashamed to say that I find myself choking back a tear. We say our goodbyes - barely adequate at a time like this - and she goes inside, never to hear from me again until I call her the next day for follow-up questions.

As for me, well, I cannot say my experience with the Hatches hasn't been an enlightening one. So often in my profession we focus on people who are actually suffering while ignoring those who have petty complaints but more money; if I do nothing else in my career, I hope that I can make people realise there is still time for society to right this terrible wrong.

Part III: The Sacked Banker

Of all the casualties of this recession, bankers have been perhaps the most high-profile tossers. Who could forget the moment when, upon hearing of Sir Fred Goodwin's pension, Samsung Mobile seized the opportunity to rename their latest model the "Thieving Jizzflute"? Or the small town in Lancashire which, upon hearing of the Northern Rock collapse, hired a fleet of tanks and drove into Westminster holding up children dressed as money? Or, for crying out indeed, the fact that anyone with a share trading past is now given an immediate 20-year sentence? It seems that our ire for these money-using individuals has a copper bottom. But hang on there, Amanda; just who are these basically-gamblers that mostly didn't resign in a pile of disgrace?

Who?

Hmm?

Who?

Eh?

Who are they?

Who?

FUCKING WHO?

Terence Purse is a 43-year-old from Middlesex or Basingstoke. He was a high-flier at Brown-Ha'penny for ten years, but he was laid off last November when it was discovered that he had personally cost the taxpayer £2bn by making a nasty face at a Japanese trader. When I meet him at his now-reasonable dwellings, however, he is unrecognisable from his previous incarnation as a pinstriped man of wonga; as he opens his front door I am confronted by a remarkably humble and Chinese individual, his previous career discernible only through the erotic pictures of Mammon adorning his walls. "Come in, come in," he chirps as I ready my notepad for some quite pristine interviewing - we are to get to the bottom of him and the greed that led The Guardian to describe him as "Quite possibly the worst person ever to do anything. An unrinsed cock."

I start by asking the former Mr. Purse how he's adjusting to life outside banking. "It is difficult, you know," he says, and I do, which makes for a promising start. "However, I used to have a little sign above my desk saying, 'There's no such thing as society', and I've taken a lot of comfort from that recently." He smiles and picks up a photograph of his buxom wife and three childy children. "It's at times like these that you're grateful to be able to fall back on your family, of course. Not literally, I mean I...not again. But I really don't know what I'd do without my wives and children." Wives? "Yes, my 34 wives and 200 children. I really don't..." At this point, I regrettably have to step in and point out the realities of the aforementioned portrait. "That's right, yes." He pauses. "What did I say?" We move on.

Terence has kindly allowed me to follow him as he goes about his post-banking malarkey. Unemployment hasn't dimmed his spirit; quite the opposite, he claims with an encouraging lack of hellish despair in his voice. Interested in his adjustment from the world of braces and gurns, I accompany him to the newsagent's as he picks up the classic staples of milk and bread for his family; sadly, I cannot be prepared for what takes place. (A relief, incidentally, as I tend not to prepare for anything.) The trip starts well enough: Terence negotiates the establishment's narrow aisles with rare skill, and his basket technique is exemplary. However, our trip falls apart somewhat when he is asked to pay for his yeast- and cow-based products. Behold, the word-exchange between he and the man of shop:

Terence: "That should come to about £35,000 then."

Shopkeep: "Sorry?"

Terence: "Oh right, yes. £40,000."

Diddles. I step in to correct him, of course, but the damage has already been done. We travel home in a shameful silence only broken when Terence walks into his wall, an action he will later tell me was motivated by his belief that he has three front doors.

As Terence assumes a new shirt and prepares for a job interview, I feel that I should point out the obvious flaw I have already noticed in his character; after all, it would be far crueller not to. Who, after all, remembers the name of those who did not point out the Emperor's lack of clothing? I must instead assume the role of what's-his-name, the one who was good. "Terence," I venture, typically cutting straight to the heart of the matter, "that's a terrible shirt." Strangely, however, I soon realise that there is something almost as important to ask him. "Oh, and how did you ever get into banking? Your skill with numbers is so..." "So?" Terence replies, bouncy as a sofa. He is clearly an insecure beetle with a shell of blackest denial. I poke further. "Well, to be blunt, you don't seem to be able to count." Terence at first looks defiant, then he collapses in a torrent of purest waaah. I have broken him, and the only thing greater than my elation at the journalism prizes inevitably coming my way is my desire to hear his story from the beginning. "Come," I say, "it is time, petal."

When Terence finally calms down he is measured and forthright about his days of poundy recklessness. "It just all seemed to happen so quickly," he says quite wrongly. "Somehow, through either hard work or the fact that I knew an incredible amount of influential people - I forget which - I was in banking. Before I knew it, Gordon Brown was meeting us all in 1997 and telling us that we were fantastic and that he'd happily suck all of us off if we just voted New Labour. I think that might have encouraged us to be a bit reckless; it wasn't unheard of, for example, for some of my colleagues to bring a fresh tank of lobsters to work every day, just because they could. A few of them even employed very small men to do their deals for them, just for a laugh. With that sort of attitude it's no wonder that we're all out of a job now. Well, I am. There's probably someone else too. Brian, or someone." What are his memories of the day he was fired? "It just all seemed to happen so...actually, no, it was quite unnecessarily drawn-out. They wanted to make it look like they were taking action so they made me clean my cubicle out five times, wearing different disguises on each occasion. By the end of it I was exhausted and upset, but I was in sad clown make-up so nobody could really tell. When I got home I felt so low that I felt like killing myself, so I poured a glass of water, took a paracetamol and waited for oblivion."

After such goodness-me-inducing memoirs it hardly seems appropriate to follow Terence to his job interview, but in the call of duty I decide to pick the anchovies from my ethical pizza and plough on. He is applying for an advisory post at a local sleeve-making business, hoping that he can help them to learn from some of his mistakes in the world of all that is moneyed. "The most important thing," Terence tells me as we high-tail it in his practical German, "is that they don't exceed their means. The worst thing they could possibly do at the moment is expand into collars, or buttons. If I can stop them doing this I'll definitely consider uninstalling the torture chamber I've had erected in the spare room. Oh, I meant to ask, have you followed anyone to a job interview yet so far? It seems like a bit of a cliché, for a recession article I mean."

Suddenly I have a complete change of heart and decide not to follow Terence to work, electing instead to wait until he returns home to hear of his perilous return to the Dome of Employment. He returns from the task excited, and seems ready to proceed with his day; I gather his shake of job tree has landed him an employment coconut. "Did you get it?" I ask, but he replies, "No, no." As I stand moderately aghast, he continues, "But I've realised something - basic numeracy is an adventure I need to undertake if I'm to better myself, and there's no time like the present." "What about two seconds from now? That's a lot like the present," I reply, but he persists in talking: "I'm going to enrol in my local school and see if I can't crack these 'numbers' I've been hearing so much about." With that revelation hanging in the air like some gravitationally-ignorant washing line, I sense the time has come for Terence and I to part company - I thank him and reflect on what his story could teach those of us never to have shouted at some Japanese futures or invested in a trading floor. He gives us all hope - what better time than a recession to overcome your fears? And what's £2bn between friends? Indeed, if we all sprinkle a little bit of Terence on our breakfast each day perhaps we'll beat this blasted thing after all.

Part IV: The Homelesses

Some sort of man once said that one can be lying in the gutter, yet staring at the stars. This is technically true, of course, but as those of us with a comfortable income know, stars do not actually have any monetary value. Therefore the British underclass clutter our streets, asking solemnly for renumeration while maintaining themselves at a shabby level that does them no favours at all.

The issue of our less-than-fortunates is supposedly a pressing one in a time of recession, of course. Those of us who believe in the magic of trickle-down economics know that those on the streets simply aren't trying hard enough to catch our watery pennies, yet many continue to insist that it is in fact the homelesses who are currently feeling the brunt of our country's outwardly-turned pockets. With this in mind, I take to the streets of my local area* to put a social thermometer up these supposed "victims" and see if they really are the squashed fruit at the bottom of Britain's badly-made economic trifle.

I decide first to hold my nose and talk to Jimmy, the pungeant gentleman I usually ignore on my way to work, kick in the face or ask to amuse me by doing a poor-dance. Time after time he tells me he's not actually homeless and is in fact a divorced man with a perfectly passable menial job, but he can't fool me - nobody that poorly de-odoured could possibly be anything other than a streetling. There's no avoiding my first question to him; it must be asked early and hard.

"Why are you a shit?" My eyebrows raise as I pose this interrogative Henry. He looks a tad unsettled by this, yet my uncomprising veneer remains. I am, to most extents, Christ. "I don't really agree with that, I have to say," replies young Jimothy slowly, showing a defiance I haven't seen since I last tried to tread on him. "The recession's certainly had an effect on my job prospects, life and last remaining hopes of any sort of happiness, but I'm not a homeless person. Even if I was, I'd still have more dignity than those people who pissed all our money away." Poor Henry. If he had as many vested interests in the financial sector as I, he would realise that our current money-gosh is actually the fault of the poors and homelesses, resolutely refusing to take the non-existent jobs they are being handed on gilded plates by the employment-butlers. But I don't have to tell you this, o well-informed reader. I break it to the Jimster gently: "I'm afraid you are actually a shit." He looks unimpressed; I decide it is best to move on.

If the streets of my town (let's call it Rondon for argument's sake) were a person, let's face it, let's not arse it, they would be screaming out for help. That is a given; we cannot un-give it. Yet what are we doing to help the poor unfortunates (not the homelesses) on her surface who are most affected? Not, it seems, a lot. In fact, it seems, we are doing less than a lot. Why, it seems, is this? Well, I have the answer. In a word, sir? Greed. Bare, naked greed on the part of poors like Dave Thr'barker, a man I met between meals on a naked Thursday. "I actually find your views offensive," he burps out from his malformed and money-light face, untouched by claret or bowtie. "What you've done is completely misattribute a problem. People like you should be shot, or at least go into politics." Dave's voice is just the latest in a cavalcade of bleatings we have had to endure of late from the so-called "unfortunate", those who wish to put their problems down to broadly-recognised and peer-reviewed sociological problems rather than stuff that I reckon is true. I, for one, have had enough of it.

Emboldened, I decide there and then on that sainted day to leave these so-called "victims" who can't even be bothered to withdraw some made-up money alone and return to the real victims of this banknote-based booboo - the Middle Classes. Where else to do this but working with a Tory MP?

Where else indeed.

So I leave and do that.

You can read about it in my next article, probably.

So do.

What? I'm finished.

Oh come on.

Go away.

Turd.

*Name withheld in case anybody wants to talk to me.

Most recent

Most popular

More