GALLOPING DEBT

We are told that the present economic crisis results in many parents being unable to cover their expenses by the end of the week. This has led to a considerable increase in the number of applications for short-term loans. These are all too easily the first step to financial ruin, but many who take this path often seem to have little sense of what they are becoming involved in. It is very easy for those who are not in this fix to cry 'Don't do it!', but the pressures on young people with growing families must be enormous.

Many companies set up to supply this demand profess to have genuine concerns for the welfare of their debtors. This may be so in part, but the existence of advertisements such as the one above lead one to doubt it. In any case, if they cannot charge extravagant rates for unsecured loans they will hardly stay in business long.

The borrowers also seem to have strange ideas of what is essential to their way of life; many would include television, electronic games, cigarettes, a pint in a pub, a car, plastic toys.... All these may seem to them highly desirable; but perfectly happy lives have been, and will continue to be, led by many of us who have done without them.

There is clearly an urgent need for advice about how to cope with all this. Some help is available, but it's not at all easy to find it. Meanwhile, the government does nothing to stem the frighteningly rapid growth of mountains of debt by those least able to handle it. Much more, widely publicised, counselling must be available quickly.

In the mean time, could not some statutory requirements be introduced to bring home to the financially inexperienced exactly what they are taking on? For example, all forms of application for short-term loan should carry, in a font at least one size larger than the rest, the message THINK! IF YOU CANNOT FIND THIS MONEY NOW, HOW ARE YOU GOING TO REPAY IT PLUS INTEREST AT THE END OF THE WEEK? This seems to Tiresias to be the inescapable crux of the matter.

Secondly, all such forms should be required to show clearly, in separate boxes, what repayment will be demanded at the end of the week, and, if full repayment is not made, what the debt plus interest will amount to after 1 month - 3 months - 1 year. The figures will be astronomical.

This may seem like brutal treatment, but it would be better than allowing people unused to simple finance to stagger blindly into disaster.

VERY WELL - ALONE!

So, Europe has at the last moment been sufficiently scared to take on the might of the bankers and the widespread corruption of some governments, and draw back from the brink of financial disaster with the only plan of rescue that would seem to have the slightest chance of success.

And Britain? We have stood aside yet again, and missed yet another chance of becoming at last an integral part of the continent to which we so obviously belong. To please whom? Well, there are the London bankers, whose inordinate greed has contributed to our own internal shudder, and who must still be allowed to rob the till. But above all there are the die-hard Tory back-benchers, who can be seen alive on TV crying for the government to adopt a 'bulldog' attitude to the insidious attempts by the Germans and French and other untrustworthy ethnicities to infiltrate the perfection of the British way of life.

Perhaps they have a muddled awareness of the spirit of the war-time cartoon at the time of Dunkirk, and ache to do an imitation Churchill act. But Churchill for all his quirks was a man of true greatness, operating at a time of our near-extinction, and their cardboard cut-out histrionics ring flat. Little Englanders to a man.

Another echo from the past: 'I took my harp to a party, but nobody asked me to play....They might have said Play us a tune we can sing, but somehow I don't think they noticed the thing......' Ah, the ancient folk-wisdom of the music-halls.

SIR TERRY CASTS A COLD EYE ON LIFE, ON DEATH

And immediately unleashes a volume of hate mail for doing so. Only to be expected, I suppose, but it would be encouraging to feel that critical comments were well founded.

Not so. The Care not Killing Alliance complains that the programme was 'propaganda'. Well, what else do they exist for if not for the dissemination of propaganda? Only Our Sort, the right sort, of course. As usual, care for truth is the first thing to go out of the window. 'There was no presentation of the alternative.' Untrue - we were shown one patient who had chosen to reject anything to do with euthanasia, and was well satisfied that in relying on palliative care he had made the right decision. Sir Terry made no comment.

And in any case we are surely well past the stage when every broadcast had to be 'balanced'. If an individual or a group wish to present a point of view then they have a perfect right to do so (within the bounds of generally acceptable decency). Those who do not agree are equally entitled to make their own programme in reply. No politician, for example, feels any need to present the views of his opponents - and very confusing it would be if he did.

And the dear old C of E? Here is a bishop, brought out of retirement to tell us that 'life is a gift; we do not have the right to take it'. Well, that is an opinion, and he has a perfect right to hold it. What he does not have is the right to impose the force of the law on those who, for good reason, utterly disagree.

So the obstructionist forces are still out there, hard at work. But could we hope that the increased shrillness of their utterance might just indicate that they are at last aware that their case is crumbling?

NO-ONE DOES IT AS WELL AS US.

We weren't going to waste time watching the royal wedding, were we? Well, only a quick glance, just to see the interior of the Abbey. And suddenly, there it was, in all its vertical splendour. And so - we spare a little time for the ceremony.

The silver snarling trumpets 'gin to chide*. And you're hooked, and the tears spring to the eyes, and the slow archaic ceremony begins to unfold. Here is the Dean of the Royal Peculiar; here is Cantuar himself, in High Anglican vestments. Here is the groom, in a totally impractical scarlet jacket, and here the best man, befrogged and aiguilletted beyond endurance.

Here comes the bride, in a long straight stream of pallor in the dark interior, deviating, as is only right, in deference to the Unknown Warrior. And suddenly it all seems so right, with all the authority of ancient truth, and you bask in the certitude of it. Archaic it may seem, but it is surely based on immemorial truths, and Anglican truths at that.

And then the mind wanders, as it is all too prone to do in such circumstances, and you begin to listen to what is being said in such measured tones. '...ordained by God in the time of man's innocence....' And as such participated in by Adam and Eve? Who published the banns?

'.... to have and to hold, till death do us part.....' This in front of a whole row of royalty who have slipped in and out of marriage with the dexterity of lampreys. And how many in the audience - sorry - congregation, had straight down the middle of the road married lives behind, or indeed in front of, them? Do they believe the Bible's references to the subject? Water into wine? As Rowan Atkinson says, 'You should go professional.'

So it's all very moving and impressive, but at times it seems to owe more to the Royal Shakespeare Company in a lush historical production than to fundamental reality. We do it better than anyone else: the French always look as if they have just escaped from an operetta, and the Americans as if they are doing a Historical Re-enactment in a charitable cause. But what precisely is it that we are doing?

*Only the Police Trumpeters, unfortunately, rather sub fusc. The cameras, very wisely did not linger. But the sound did the trick.

I SURRENDER!

Constant readers of this blog will know that I have conducted a long campaign to protect the English language from decay. I should like to report that there has been some improvement in usage generally. But clearly this is not so - the reverse is true. Despite my protestations, and those of even more distinguished academics, the viruses seem to be increasingly well embedded; beyond hope now, I think, of eradication.

On radio and television speakers of education and culture seem not to notice that they are using vulgarisms such as (my own favourite targets) CONtractors: PROtesters: kilOMeters: REEsearch: WestMINNster.....

As for other sloppy pronunciations, the letter t seems doomed to eradication. Americans. of course, pronounce it as d, as in the wader poured the wine, but even that is better than the glottal stop, as in bread and bu''er, or mili'ary. Final t has become silent already - Christmas presen'. This gives rise to the fascinating thought that the word knight is destined to become the first in the English language to have more silent than pronounced letters.

Incidentally, the protests at the proposed closure of libraries formed part of a necessary and urgent campaign, but one can't help feeling relieved that the media are now free of constant references to libaries - especially during Febuary.

And so it goes on; a constant blurring and mumbling of language. Sam Johnson laid it down that dictionaries should reflect the language as it was really used, rather than dictate, but surely he was referring to the use of educated men. Dictionaries now scoop up any old rubbish and give it the authority of print. It's a long time, for example, since they gave up defending the valuable distinction between imply and infer; so muddled thought is reinforced.

The time has come for all old codgers to retreat into their ivory castles, and meditate on why they prefer to write an historian rather than a historian. 'But nobody says an horse!' - precisely; and if you didn't have tin ears you could hear why.

INTERNATIONAL FUN & GAMES

There it is, a stupid, ugly, meaningless logo typifying an increasingly irritating branch of show business. Much is made of the global camaraderie inspired by the Olympics. We hear little of the accusations and counter-accusations of what must be increasing levels of the sly use of performance-enhancing drugs. It passes belief that the human body has steadily improved in performance over the decades - evolution doesn't work like that. What has improved is the camouflage of dubious aids.

The Olympics are supposed to inspire young people to participate in sport. Certainly people of all ages identify with favourite young contestants - we watch with great pleasure the career of our Tom Daley. But at the same time as we hear of the millions being invested in providing temporary accommodation for international athletes we also hear that a local local leisure centre, complete with a pool where scores of children learn to swim, is in danger of closing. Presumably the children will have to be content with watching a handful of top stars doing their swimming for them. This seems to typify this celebrity-based approach to getting youngsters off the sofa.

We are told of the economic benefits of the expected surge of tourists to this country, but Tiresias wonders exactly how the figures are arrived at. Do they fully include the cost of the massive security operation that will be necessary? And what price do we place on the tensions created by the congregation of activists for various causes, not to mention those who, disguised as fans, are present in the hope of a really good punch-up.

It seems a pity that the Olympian Games did not confine themselves to the area of Much Wenlock.

So far the vocal opposition to the whole sorry enterprise seems to be confined to Ian Hislop, Janet Street-Porter, and myself - an unlikely trio, you may think. We can only hope that the cause will gather momentum. But then, Tiresias warned a deaf world to the dangers of credit run mad long before the current financial crises, and nothing was done. So - here we are. Don't blame me if there are tears before bed-time in 2012.

MORE ILLUMINATION

Here it is, then - what I have been doing while I have not been blogging for some time. Some improvement, technically. I think the calligraphy requires a good deal of practice, though.

Click to enlarge, if you want to criticise.