The kids are alright

I must be a bit dim, and I certainly ought to read some kind of idiot’s guide to Economics, but I absolutely fundamentally don’t understand how banks lending inappropriately and losing money means that we now have to cut basic services and benefits and ramp up tuition fees. I don’t. I’m not being coy or rhetorical or faux-naïve or anything. It seems to me like if you say you don’t believe in fairies a fairy dies, and everybody’s suddenly decided they don’t believe in the money markets at the same time. I was hoping never have to dig out the Dummy’s Guide To Why Capitalism Is Fundamentally Unsustainable but perhaps that day has come.

Down with this sort of thing!

Anyway, here are students protesting in Cambridge and having a sit-in at the central admin section, the Old Schools, in the Senior Combination Room, which is the Old Schools café (I use this term loosely). I imagine this has confused the Old Schools hugely because, on a point of etiquette which I can assure you would have been a bit much for Jane Austen, you are not actually allowed in the Senior Combination Room unless you are an Officer or have a Cambridge MA (or are invited and accompanied by one), and now they have got people who aren’t even technically BAs sitting about knitting and twittering. Someone in the Old Schools must be frantically writing a sub clause in the rule book somewhere (Paragraph 311 clause f: non-MAs may exceptionally be admitted into the Senior Combination Room in case of sit-in, revolution, plague, breakdown of society as we know it or the M&S café across the road having run out of millionaire’s shortbread). Go students!

Anyway, I do think everybody’s wasting their time getting riled up by poor old Nick Clegg when honestly he’s only doing what he has to do, and he’s actually set us all a really fine example. Indeed, those of us who sell things could make direct use of it to sell lots of stuff and try to prop up our economy. I myself feel quite inspired. So to recap, Nick Clegg was voted in on a pledge that the Lib Dems would oppose tuition fees, and now obviously he’s, like, in actual power, and he’s realised it’s not really that practical. Well, that’s fair enough, isn’t it? Anybody can rethink things and realise they wouldn’t really work. So I’ve been thinking about things myself, and I want you to know that if anybody buys anything from my etsy shop between now and Christmas I’ll send you a free bar of gold bullion and a Maine Coon kitten. Completely free. No, really, I will do. A great big shiny 24 carat bar! And I’ll make sure Fluffy’s all housetrained and brushed nicely and everything. And I’ll come round and hug you. Personally. Sorry? What’s that you say? You don’t believe I’ll actually do it? Look, just paypal me the money, OK? We’ll worry about the details later.

/ end sarcasm ;-). / end Lib Dems as well though, probably...