CAPITALISM ISN'T WORKING AND 10 REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL BY TOM

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Oct 19, 2008 | by TOM SHIELDS

1: Be cheerful on my behalf that my money has been totally unaffected by the crisis. I did not buy shares in HBOS or Bradford & Bingley. I spent it on shoes for the children, travel, fine dining, wine and wild women.

Well, one wild woman mostly: the wife.

2: Be cheerful when you think of all those friends and relatives who criticised your financial frivolity while they lived frugally to invest in HBOS, Bradford & Bingley etc.

3: Be cheerful that George W Bush will not be president of the USA in three months.

This is nothing to do with the credit crunch.

Just be cheerful that George W Bush will not be president of the USA in three months.

4: Be cheerful that you will receive much less email spam urging you to buy penny shares and retirement homes in Costa Rica.

You will probably continue to receive the same number of emails offering to increase the size of your penis by four inches.

5: Be cheerful that the property correction should see an end to those TV programmes where a Home Counties couple sell their house and use the proceeds to buy a castle in Spain, a gite in Normandy, a duplex in New York and a pied-a-terre in Wester Hailes.

6: Be cheerful that a reduction in disposable income will give you a chance to get healthier. Now that the BMW has been repossessed, jog to the buroo.

7: Be cheerful that with the cutbacks (alleged) on bonuses in the City, there may be a merchant banker somewhere who is worse off than you.

8: Be cheerful that, with the crackdown (alleged) on bosses allocating themselves huge bonuses, MPs will also declare it is inequitable that politicians should be the last sector of society to set their own rates of remuneration. No?

9: Be cheerful that the Great Depression has finally given Gordon Brown something to smile about.

10 : Be cheerful that you now have the opportunity to use such phrases as: what does not kill us makes us stronger; we've never died during a winter yet; and to hell with poverty, chuck another lump of coal on the fire.