Where do we stand?

Email:

Lishman.

It’s been three months now. I think it’s time we talked about where we stand, don’t you?

Anyway, I’ve got some news for you. Come to the mountain this weekend.

Diane

Xx

Ps Give my love to Kitler

The 65-hour question

Why has the EU issued a directive allowing its citizens to work a maximum of 65-hours a week?

When the economies crash, inflation surges, interest rates rise, those with mortgages, debts and mouths to feed will be begging their employers to let them work longer hours just so they can keep their heads above water. This way lies slavery.

It's very considerate of the EU to slip this one in just in time for the predicted autumnal economic collapse. Just a coincidence, I expect.

Solutions 29 # : pay off your debts, stock up on food, talk to your colleagues, inform your community.

Storm clouds gather

“It’s as if they want us to work just so we can eat”, said my friend Sergi, the economist, when I visited him yesterday.

I pointed out to him that for the first time he’d used the pronoun ‘they’ as if describing a group of people who somehow engineer events, which made him sound a little bit like a conspiracy theorist.

Sergi shrugged his shoulders and said, “ Well, it could be that events are conspiring to reduce people to poverty or there’s a group of people whose interests are served by plunging Western economies into depression. I have no more answers. Either way, it’s happening.”

His sister Anna, the bank manager, added, while pouring out the tea, “I remember the peak oil crash in the 70’s, the recession in the early 80s, and the crash in ’93, but none of them moved as quickly and with such virulence as the one coming now. Everyday I hear the same horror stories from my clients: ‘Nobody’s buying’. ‘Bills are coming at me from all angles I can’t cope’. It’s really frightening.”

Anna’s words made me think of the present economic collapse as some kind of rampant bioweapon spreading quickly from city to city, rusting tills, decimating banknotes, destroying savings, contaminating food - leaving people hungry and exposed.

But while it destroys the possessions and assets of ordinary people, it bolsters their financial enemies: the tax office, the utilities, central banks, debt collectors, mafias, globalists and oil companies, who like parasites or cancers grow fat off their beleaguered hosts.

It’s a double-edged sword. And even if you know that it’s coming soon to a cinema near you, it’s still hard to avoid its dread precision and deadly effects.

“What can we do?”, I asked, breaking the two-minute silence that we’d all fallen into, perhaps due as much to the stifling heat and humidity as to the sense of doom.

“Keep breathing”, said Anna, “Breathe through the pain.”

Solutions # 28: run for office.