Crocus

On the way back from Epsom town the other day, I passed a slightly dishevelled garden with a fine display of blue spring bulbs. It looked very well in the late morning sun, low though it was. I dare say that eventually the bulbs may be swamped by the grass and weeds, but for the moment at least they looked very well.

The snap does not really capture the scene, even enlarged. With confusion resulting from my describing the flowers as blue to BH - which, it seems, rules out crocuses  - which are off white, yellow, mauve or purple, but not blue. Consultation of one of Dr. Hessayon's many books failing to resolve the confusion, with none of the blue spring bulbs on offer meeting the bill. Eventually we worked out that the colour I was carelessly calling blue was actually mauve and that the flowers were indeed crocuses.

There was also the strange matter of my second visit to a TK Maxx store in two days. But I shall return to that in due course.

From where I moved onto more serious economic matters. First, an old headline in the Evening Standard about how our good performance in the World Cup (football that is) had boosted our GDP a bit. Which seemed like nonsense when I first read it, but I now suppose, that in an economy dominated by services of one sort or another, increased takings in bars will indeed boost GDP. Bar staff will have been working longer hours and to that extent creating more wealth.

In which there is perhaps a lesson for today. GDP is a one-dimensional summary of economic performance, and having a big one, while probably a good thing, in no way reflects one's ability to grind out tanks, guns and shells. So the UK, still just about in the top ten on GDP, is poorly equipped for any such grinding, while Russia, with a much smaller GDP, is well so equipped. I associate to a then serving soldier once telling me that we would be stuffed if it ever came to fighting a serious war: we just did not have the necessary manufacturing capacity any more. We couldn't even manage to produce the necessary explosives, never mind the contraptions needed to deliver them. Perhaps our former fat leader should bear this in mind when he starts crashing around in the undergrowth.

Second, a more recent headline, probably in the same newspaper, to the effect that our economy had not grown much, if at all, in the last year or so and that this amounted to a catastrophe. A view which very much reflected our obsession with growth. 

But what is so catastrophic about maintaining our reasonably comfortable status-quo - comfortable that is when compared with many less fortunate parts of the world? For there to be a catastrophe, for there to be lots of losers, there have to be lots of winners, taking an even larger slice out of the cake than they were already. Which may well be the case, but this is a problem of distribution, not production.

Growth has brought us many comforts in the eighty years since the second world war, but it is about time that we started slowing down, relearning how to have a good time without consuming lots of stuff, stuff which the world can no longer afford.

PS 1: while the inflation in energy prices due to the war in the Ukraine is a different problem again. The lesson here being slightly different: if the price of some essential input goes up, the standard of living of most people is going to go down. Only the people sitting on such supplies as there now are are going to come out ahead. Like the people who paid for Arsenal's fine new stadium. Or the Shard. Who are now, one supposes, collecting fat rents on both.

PS 2: with a slightly different light on all this being cast by Credit Suisse, rocked by scandals and losses, by their talking about the big bonus pool which will be available to top management if they do a good job on inflicting substantial job cuts on everybody else... To them that have shall be given... See Matthew 25:29.