Guest reaction post from Sarah Maple
I am not a financial expert far from it, it is hard to understand all of the implications that the credit crunch will bring or to predict the effects that it will have. When nearly every article in the papers this year on subjects from fashion to finance include the words ‘credit crunch’ it’s no wonder that most people are a little confused about it.
I even read an article in the paper yesterday about how hem lines are lowering as a sign of the economic downturn. What? I was sure that I only just saw an article in my monthly magazine telling me that very short hotpants were really in right now. See what I mean? Everyone is jumping on the credit crunch bandwagon just for the sake of not wanting to look like there not in with the ‘in crowd’. No one wants to admit that they don’t know what the credit crunch is even if they have to pretend that they believe it’s something to do with lowering hemlines. The resulting spew of articles are ultimately meaningless and barely interesting reading that would only make the pages of the Daily Mail on Saturday (I should know, I read it every Saturday).
That brings me to my next point. Has anyone noticed how the Daily Mail website has turned into the best celebrity gossip website around? Properly researched stories (in the name of journalism) unlike those glossy fashion weeklies grace the home page where you can check out scandals of the rich and famous. You can hang out their and read stories on anything from the effect of the credit crunch on buy-to-let mortgages to Sienna Miller getting harassed by the paparazzi.
I would like to buy an idiots guide to the credit crunch if there ever is one published. I think it would be a great one hit wonder that would sell very well in Waterstones; you would be the only author in the world hoping for economic instability to boost sales. Maybe I should write one myself and make a quick mint on the back of everyone’s hem line fears…
I can’t help but thinking that the more hype and fuss there is over this then the more panicky people are going to get. It’s like the rising price of petrol… Supermarkets have at last seemed to come to their senses and started to lower their fuel prices, of course this may be to offset the rising cost of food which still leaves me with the same choice; food or fuel?
Living in remote areas of the West Country where you have to make sure you have enough petrol to actually drive the lengthy distance to the nearest petrol station makes the proverbial hole in the pocket even larger. I fear that those of us in more lonely towns will have to set up self sustaining communities so that we never need to go into town for food or entertainment.
This idea is almost as good as the book…and I think you know what I mean by that.
