• Financial Crisis x 15 minutes.
• Political stories (usually related to the financial crisis) x 5 minutes.
• Skateboarding horse (or some other “and finally” story) x 2 minutes.
• Sport x 5 minutes.
• Weather x 2 minutes.
• REPEAT

There’s probably a stack of interesting stuff going on elsewhere in the world or even in our own countries but we never get to hear about it because of the dreaded Financial Crisis.  It’s a close call but I think that the Credit Crunch is on course to absolutely destroy the previous orgies of pointless repetition: the deaths of Princess Diana, Pope John Paul II and the Queen Mother.  There should be a Guinness World Record for the number of times the same fact has been repeated on a 24-hour rolling news programme, if anyone actually had those numbers it’d be scary.  Another piece of sloppy journalism I heard the other day was a reporter stating that “because the banks are unwilling to lend money there will be businesses who can’t get loans to pay their staff”, surely one point that stands out there is that if a business has to borrow money to meet it’s own payroll then it was pretty screwed in the first place!

That’s not my sole beef with the media either, I’m still reasonably certain that the media have played a very strong hand in exacerbating (if not actually causing) the current financial brouhaha.  Initially there was a problem with the banks and only the banks, a whole industry of people had sprung up taking crappy mortgages, bundling them up into crappy (but shiny new and exciting) financial securities that were then sold to a bunch of greedy fools.  This kinda went wrong and a few banks became a bit wobbly (notably Northern Rock in the UK).   From this point onward the media was absolutely full of doom and gloom at every turn and has set out on a crusade to destroy whatever consumer confidence the world’s developing countries had left.  Well, it’s worked and they’re still raking in the air-time and the (consistently diminishing) advertising spends from major marketing companies.

In a way I can forgive the media a little bit because despite all the blustering and headlines not much has actually happened.  Sure, a few bankers have lost their jobs but I personally don’t know one single person that’s lost their job or suffered any negative impact from the current financial climate, in fact I have a colleague who just last week walked into the bank and within half an hour came out having doubled their entire credit line (and I’m not talking small change).  Sure, house prices are lousy at the moment but that’s been hapenning for ages – despite all the crap in the news it wasn’t caused by the current state of the economy – if anything it’s an actual cause.

I’m off to see if I can make shoe-leather soup out of Vegetarian Shoes, gotta save those pennies somehow!

Is it likely that the U.S. will have a female president in the near future? In your lifetime? Why?

I hope so, though I really (really) hope it’s not Hillary Clinton.  I’m British and we’ve already had a female Prime Minister (though many would argue that Maggie had more balls than any of her successors).  The Queen is pretty obviously a chick as well but we don’t get to choose her.

America is such a varied country that by the time you’ve chosen a president they end up being a bland widely appealing baby kissing mix of what each section of the population wants, which is a pity.  I would really like to see America have either it’s first female and/or it’s first black president some time in the next 10 years, obviously there’s a possibility this time round so I’ll keep my fingers crossed – I just think that it’d be so dull if you had yet another classic middle aged white-boy in the oval office again.

We’re doing pretty well over here in Europe as Germany is currently led by Angela Merkel and Sergolene Royal is in with a good shot at the French presidency.  The Council of Women World Leaders lists 11 currently serving female presidents, prime ministers and chancellors from countries as diverse as Ireland, Sri Lanka, Liberia and New Zealand so the other continents are doing alright too.

Even though I’m no fan of Hillary I’m a democrat by nature and I’d
still welcome the progress that a female leader would mean for the USA.  The shame is that I doubt enough Americans are progressive enough for the vote either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama into office, even though they’re the favourites at the moment.  Whatever happens I don’t expect it to affect policy, the last two white-boys you’ve had were markedly different (Clinton = awesome, Bush = ass) – it would just send a statement about America as a country.  In reality, I think the best candidate might be Gore, he’s turned into a proper Climate Change Ninja lately and he seems to be pretty popular for it too.