There was a spectacular display of false consciousness on Radio 4’s Today programme this morning. It happened between Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling and his interviewer Edward Stourton:
Stourton: Could you not at the very least try and introduce some kind of structure which would encourage bankers to think in longer terms? In other words try and ensure the way they make their money stretches over a longer period so you don’t have this phenomenon of people thinking well, you know, ‘by next Christmas, with my bonus, I’ll be in the Maldives for the rest of my life and I don’t really care what happens afterwards’.
Darling: I’m not sure, if you look across the banking industry, it is packed with people who have that sort of attitude. But I do agree with you, whether you’re the board of directors of a bank or you’re a govenrment or anybody else, you want people to look to the longer term and indeed, right across the world, you want governments that are prepared to look to the long term, which is what we’ve been trying to do for the last ten years and will continue to do.
Where to start with these statements so at odds human nature, history, experience and perception? Let’s move swiftly over Darling’s whacko assertion that the banking industry isn’t ‘packed with people who have that sort of attitude’. If it wasn’t, you wonder why so many people want to work in it. At least, unless I’ve missed the announcement proclaiming the banking industry is now a paragon of altruism and profligate selflessness. Just because they’re civil to you over drinks, Alistair, doesn’t make these city types Mother bloody Theresa.
It’s all very well Darling waxing lyrical about the ‘long term’ but he’s been at the heart of a government for the last ten years that’s barely looked beyond tomorrow’s headlines and certainly very rarely any further ahead than the next general election.
One of the reasons that this government is so comprehensively in the toilet right now is that it’s spent all the money. It hasn’t saved for a rainy day. Or even a sunny one. Not one brass razoo. At least not for anyone other than incompetent bankers.
The government wants the rest of us to save for later life but itself has been spending for the last ten years like Viv Nicholson. Don’t get me wrong, I love public investment – we’re not allowed to call it ’spending’ any more in case it upsets people. I just wish we’d invested less in the lavish lifestyles of management consultants.
But really, it’s an expression of staggering naivety to expect people to think of the long term. None of us do really. In the long term we’re all dead. That Stourton would even voice such a water-headed concept marks him more fitting for a job presenting the Cbeebies channel than the BBC’s flagship radio news programme.
No, each and every one of us lives in the short term at the expense of someone else. Resisting instant gratification is extremely dangerous for the economy and thus equivalent to treason. It’s called capitalism and it must have its many losers or else conservatives and libertarians would have nobody to sneer at. Poor people can’t hit back, at least they can’t if you hide behind your desk.
The banker this morning moved some money from here to there and took a step closer to buying his yacht. Long term be damned. That his decision puts someone out of job is neither here nor there. He makes no apology. There must be a loser. There must be a sucker born every minute. Our way of life kills people everyday, we’ve just reached an accommodation with that fact. I’m not happy about but it to suggest even small changes in the systems by which we live is to invite people to shout at you. I’m not an idiot.
The banker is no different from the rest of us. I, this morning, was on my hands and knees looking under the sofa to see if there were any coppers so I could buy a pie for my breakfast. There was. Long term be damned. By moving money from here to there I took a step closer to my pie. Well, I was tuppence short, but the man in the shop was very understanding. That I’ve inconvenienced my future self today instead of waiting until I was really hungry is neither here nor there. I make no apology. There must be a loser. There must be a sucker born every minute. Up yours, future hungry me, I’ve reached an accommodation.
You see? We’re all the same. Banker, wanker, Member of Parliament, thief. Except that it’s only the lowly that should have consciences. The dole scrounger earning a bit of cash on the side must be hounded, a punished and a penitent man. Such earthly considerations are not for the banker and the politician, however. I wonder if they have some kind of lobotomy before entering their professions. Prozac patches? It’s a noble sacrifice, whatever their methods of emotional disconnection. They do, after all, have high, weighty concepts such as ‘finance’ and ‘democracy’ to worry about. You know, the real stuff.
You can’t expect these titans to give a shit about how you put food on the table or whether you’re going to die of cold during the winter of 2030. I mean, what are you, some kind of mental defective? I bet you work for the human rights ‘industry’.
