See, my earpiece-thingie isn't totally daft

A restless night, last night, probably due my GGS (Galloping Grumpiness Syndrome - see previous post) and so, as I told you previously, it is my habit to reach for my radio earpiece-thingie.  Recently I have abandoned Radio5 because they are totally obsessed with that drug-fest in Rio and I have retuned to Radio4 which at midnight switches to the BBC World Service.  Of course, there is always a chance that you will pick up a snoring-boring programme about 'Wogga-Wogga-Land' where the 'Wigga-Wigga' tribe are slaughtering the 'Wagga-Wagga' tribe for reasons beyond explanation but at least after a few minutes of some frightfully intense and worried BBC reporter explaining the details you find yourself snoring away quite happily.

However, last night I hit on a talk from the Hay Literary Festival by an American lady called, confusingly, Lionel Shriver.  Apparently, she was born Margaret Ann but in a fit of teenage, tomboy rebellion she changed her name.  According to Wiki, she has lived in Nairobi, Bangkok and, er, Belfast - yeeeeeeees, quite!  Anyway, the lady, who is married to a jazz drummer, has written several books which have become increasingly popular.  Last night the BBC World Service played a recording of a public interview she gave at the Hay Festival in which she talked mainly about her latest book The Mandibles.  This, apparently is a dystopian novel charting the problems of a previously wealthy American family who are trying to survive in a world where the American debt has become so unbelievably huge and incapable of ever being paid back that the US government has walked away from it and invented an entirely new currency.

Ms. Shriver came across in the interview as a very witty and intelligent lady.  The book is set mainly in 2029 and the President of the US is actually Mexican and his address to the people is first of all in Spanish and then an English translation is provided.  In her book, Ms. Shriver, with very sly humour, tells us that it is the Mexicans who have built a wall across their border with the USA!  This the first paragraph of a review of her book in The New Yorker:

If you think times are tough now, just wait until 2029. The good news is that the United States has hung on for another thirteen years. The bad news is everything else. “Dryouts” are commonplace, though it’s not clear whether scarcity of water or the dilapidation of the infrastructure meant to distribute it is to blame. Americans are still reeling from the Stone Age of 2024, when the electric grid crashed, wreaking technological havoc: pileups on unlit roads, airplanes dropping from the skies, pacemakers pumping double-time, looting and riots from sea to shining sea. But those disasters are minor compared with the latest: an economic collapse set in motion by the introduction of the bancor, a new global reserve currency meant to replace the dollar on the international market and backed by a coalition of countries led by Russia’s ruler-for-life, Vladimir Putin. Furious, President Alvarado, America’s first Mexican-born head of state, announces that the U.S. will default on its loans. The Fed goes into overdrive, printing new money to cover its debts. In short order, a greenback is as worthless as a Weimar cigarette rolled with a fifty-billion-mark note. Hard-earned savings go up in smoke. A meager cabbage costs thirty dollars one week, forty the next, and that’s when there’s still cabbage to buy. So long, superpower nation. Hello, hyperinflation.

You get the idea and frankly I don't think it is too fanciful.  Yesterday I read an article on the subject of current-day Illinois (and Chicago) and its hopeless, unstoppable debt problem which seems to have gone well past any effort to correct it.  Anyway, I'm grateful to my 'earpiece-thingie' and I will get busy on my Kindle to see if I can buy a copy Ms. Shriver's book..

 

 

Comments

[Whitewall]

Illinois soon, or Venezuela today:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/javier-corrales/venezuela-government-hunger_b_11429014.html?utm_hp_ref=world

Debt works wonders until it becomes a noose.

[Bob]

You're baiting me, aren't you David? As you already know, I was raised in and around Chicago. Budget battles are a structural feature of Illinois that result from the different political and economic interests predominate in the city vs. the rest of the state, which is largely agricultural.

Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner took office at the beginning of last year and immediately rammed through a decrease in an income tax surcharge which had produced $7 billion in new revenue every year. The expected budget short fall this year will be somewhere around $8 billion. This could be a coincidence, but not likely. Don't give up hope. Similar problems have been solved dozens of times before.

[Cuffleyburgers]

Well, all I can say is thank god for Brexit.

Now, where're the keys for me conboine 'arvester?

[David Duff]

No, no, Bob, I had forgotten your Chicagoan background, so no baiting intended. Yesterday I read a detailed article on the dire condition of the Illinois/Chicago budget which seems to been controlled by the public service unions. I thought I had saved the damn thing but obviously I must have clicked the wrong button, and now I can't remember where I got it from. Anyway, the essence of it was that all those 'pie in the sky' pension schemes that the unions rammed through in the Democrat budgets are never going to be paid, at which point, cue brown stuff hitting the fan. In the meantime I will continue to search for that damned article.

[JK]

Golly Bob.

Y'all Ill&annoyings need to impeach that Rauner guy and re-seat the Blagojevich obviously.

Need me to put out a BOLO?

(For my foreign friends, there's a reason y'all never hear a plaintive "Oh we'll just retire and move up Nawth" because even tho' us Southerners helpfully tells all the newcomers "that road leads both ways" but it never does no good.)

[David Duff]

FOUND IT! I shall blog further, later!

[Bob]

JK, if your point is there are crooks and incompetents in all political parties we are in agreement. History might show some have even come from the South. My guess is it's got something to do with a thing called "the human condition".

[Laban]

Ms Shriver writes some interesting stuff - in the Guardian too!

http://ukcommentators.blogspot.com/2005/10/were-not-having-kids.html

"To be almost ridiculously sweeping: baby boomers and their offspring have shifted emphasis from the communal to the individual, from the future to the present, from virtue to personal satisfaction. Increasingly secular, we pledge allegiance to lower-case gods of our private devising. We are less concerned with leading a good life than the good life. We are less likely than our predecessors to ask ourselves whether we serve a greater social purpose; we are more likely to ask if we are happy. We shun values such as self-sacrifice and duty as the pitfalls of suckers. We give little thought to the perpetuation of lineage, culture or nation; we take our heritage for granted. We are ahistorical. We measure the value of our lives within the brackets of our own births and deaths, and don't especially care what happens once we're dead. As we age - oh, so reluctantly! - we are apt to look back on our pasts and ask not 'Did I serve family, God and country?' but 'Did I ever get to Cuba, or run a marathon? Did I take up landscape painting? Was I fat?' We will assess the success of our lives in accordance not with whether they were righteous, but with whether they were interesting and fun."

[Andra]

Spike Milligan's parents used to live in Wagga Wagga and then they moved to Woy Woy - or vice versa.
I'll bet you didn't know that!

[JK]

Agreed it is then Bob.

And funnily enough, why just today ...

http://www.arkansasnews.com/news/20160812/mistrial-declared-in-suit-against-state-treasurer-staffer

(For y'all English, our TV show 'Sanford & Son' was stolen from y'alls Steptoe &.)

[Andra]

Well, I may not be English but I certainly know that Sanford & Son was stolen from Steptoe & Son - the latter was by FAR the better show and still holds up. Can't say the same for the USA version.
Another Milligan in the Arkie tale I see. I doubt he's any kin to Spike though.

[TheBigHenry]

Laban,

That's a heck of a quote from Ms. Shriver. If only a fraction of her allegations are accurate (and I do believe many of them are), that amply supports the contention that human nature is not only not perfectible but also easily corruptible.

Once the majority of a society has been assured of their basic needs, it's off to the races for -- wait for it -- more! So the latter is no longer just the long-awaited answer to the age-old question, "What do women want?"
:)

Ladies: Please be advised that I mean that last remark in a nice way. If that doesn't cut it, please -- I'm just kidding! That little smiley emoticon proves it.

[Andra]

Oddly, I am halfway through reading an article about this person (Lionel Shriver, nee Margaret Ann). I first read this article a couple of years ago and I've recycled it and some others to read when I'm on the toilet for my morning, ahem, poop.
I am of the opinion that this lady is a raving lunatic.
There's no more to be said, really.
I have spoken.

[Loz]

Post-Brexit Britain would've been a more plausible target.

Funnily enough I'm just crimping one off as I write too, must be the colour of the D&N site gets everyone moving!

SoD

[JK]

What in the hell you two doing in my bathroom?!!!

Damn Hillary and those doubly-damned-transgendered-comfort-station-wreckers!

Democrats!

[Whitewall]

D&N is more healthy than I imagined! My morning coffee tastes better when I have it with D&N first off.

[Laban]

It must be that our host has now reached "a rough age".