spend, spend, spend
So, later this afternoon in his end-of-conference speech, Mr Cameron is going to exhort us to pay off our credit card bills, settle the balance on our store cards and spend, spend, spend. Thanks for that Davie-Boy and if ever you wish to show your complete lack of understanding of, and empathy with, today’s populace, please feel free and go ahead. And which bit of the fact that this approach got us into the current mess in the first place does he not exactly get? But hey, that’s just me nit picking again I guess. What I really want to know is what happened to last year’s pet idea of measuring the nation’s well being, the ‘happiness index’? Oh, that little piece of gimmickry? Oh, we dropped that one months ago when it became evident that a period of austerity cuts, rising unemployment, wage-freezes, public sector disquiet, not to mention the onset of the double-dip recession, perhaps wasn’t the best time to measure anyone’s glee!
Whilst it has to be said that ‘anyone who doesn’t think money can’t buy you happiness…is shopping in the wrong stores’ is a great throw-away line, we all now know it to be wholly untrue and risible, though I do fully subscribe to the notion that if you’re going to be miserable, then you may as well be so in comfort! All indices, reports and statistics point to the fact that true happiness and contentment have nothing to do with what we have, what we buy or what we aspire to materialistically and this has never been more visible than via the effect today’s society has on our kids.
The best advice anyone has ever given me, and for once I’m being entirely sincere on this, was when Tom had just been born and I was told to ‘spend half the money and twice the time’. At the time it struck me as being sensible and rational but with hindsight, the sentiment is gold-plated and profound. They are indeed words of wisdom. A recent UN recent which studied children’s perceived happiness during 2007 has revealed that we have unwittingly created a generation of kids who are wallowing in materialism when all they want is a bit more of our time and the opportunity to go out and play with their pals.
As a nation we are reaping the consequences of society’s one-upmanship and material obsession. The world many inhabit is no more than a giant shopping centre where their sole responsibility is to covet (and acquire) the goods on display. Any free time is spent within the shopping congregation and the average ten year old can now apparently recognise and name-check in excess of 400 brands. Small wonder that in this vicious (and learned) circle, parents have grown to believe that can buy their children’s love and that the way to make them happy is to support them in the never-ending quest for the next toy, video game or gadget. Anything, in fact, to avoid the harsh reality of what we have indeed created.
