About 15 years ago I worked with a German in Nairobi. Herman Schmee was his name. Short, squat, rotund and greasy, he looked like a troll. He was a creep—and he had a thing for me, the kind of thing which, till this day, gives me the shivers.

Nairobi is not the kind of place you'll find much of in the way of luxury, so I am certain you'll appreciate why I cherished the Swiss chocolates my boss brought me from his European trip.

I unwrapped the beautifully presented red-bowed box and hid it in the bottom 'personal' drawer of my desk. I treated myself to only one chocolate every day. After three days I found eight chocolates had in fact been removed, but I could only account for three of them. I knew who had taken the rest, of course, but would have difficulty proving it: Schmee the Shmuch! He was always scratching about in my office, but he hadn't reckoned on me knowing. He had recently gotten hold of my 'little black book' which I left at work by mistake and called all the phone numbers listed next to the male names, asking how they knew me and if we had, at one point or another, had a relationship. I found this out because he had called both my brother and my cousin. So, with this still fresh in mind, a plan of action began to form. I put the box of chocolates in my handbag and spent the rest of the day planning my revenge.

Bankers are counting their losses but we're all paying for the risks they took. In the UK (pop. 52-million) unemployment is dangerously nearing 10%. There are more 'For Sale' signs up than lamp posts; home repossessions are running at +100 per day; 45% of UK households have negative cash-flows. Every 5 minutes someone is going bankrupt; our consumer debt tops £1.4-trillion--more than our entire GDB, and the highest in Europe.

Thankfully our Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, promises British jobs for British workers; then promptly okay's an Italian company bringing in Italian and Portuguese staff to work on a £200-million UK contract. No wonder our skilled workers are angry.

And as for overcrowding the country with more foreigners--do you have any idea, other than in a vague theoretical sense, just how desperately jam-packed Britain already is? Did you know for instance that to achieve the same density of population in the USA you would need to uproot the entire population of Illinois, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Michigan, Colorado and Texas and pack them all into Iowa?

Do I have your attention now? 

We, the sag-brained British public, take a special delight in wallowing in disaster. Baghdad, bomb, insurgents, helicopter, bomb, George Bush, bus overturns, flood, earthquake, bomb, fire, ravages, price increase, industrial action, superbug kills, Darfur, economic crisis, war crimes, judge wrong, cold front, Gaza, refugees, killer flu, police brutality, Rumsfeld,  Home Office balls-up, bird flu, price slump, more Home Office cock-ups. Did you know it's possible to record TV news on say Monday and play it back on Thursday without having to be aware that any time has passed? Any day you like, fully transferable news from Tuesday to Friday, or any other day. It's all bad. Good news is non-views.

Do you realize that the only time in our lives when we like to get old is when we're kids? If you're less than 10 years old, you're so excited about aging that you think in fractions. 'How old are you?' 'I'm four and a half!' You're never thirty-six and a half. You're four and a half, going on five! That's the key.

You get into your teens, now they can't hold you back. You jump to the next number, or even a few ahead. 'How old are you?' 'I'm gonna be 16!' You could be 13, but hey, you're gonna be 16! And then the greatest day of your life! You become 21. Even the words sound like a ceremony. You become 21. Yesss!

But then you turn 30. Oh, what happened there? Makes you sound like bad milk! He turned; we had to throw him out. There's no fun now, you're Just a sour-dumpling. What's wrong? What's changed? You become 21, you turn 30, then you're pushing 40. Whoa! Put on the brakes, it's all slipping away. Before you know it, you reach 50 and your dreams are gone.

The apparent increase in our standard of living stands in direct proportion to the absurd things which are there to make us pay for being better off. Like the manufacturers of motor vehicles that make cars capable of eye-watering speed, while the government imposes 'safety cameras' to stop them going fast. Or teachers who are absolutely not allowed to punish children by hitting them, on pain of prosecution, while children are allowed to kick, spit and hit teachers half to death, with impunity. Then there's the government pouring billions into education-education-education while the standard of literacy and numeracy drops steadily and growing numbers of first-year university students are found to be functionally illiterate.