Woah. First XL and Lehman Brothers, and now HBOS/Halifax. Lehman survived the great depression and the second world war, but got nuked by the great 21st century recession. Lloyds have now got themselves out of the shit by merging with HBOS. Earlier in the year, Halifax mailed all its employees to tell them what a “strong” financial position it was in amidst all the turmoil. Just watch now - they have twice the number of employees they need, so a third of them will be getting the chop. Enjoy the carnage. I know i will.

Update:
Looks like i was right, as the news only broke this morning.

“Thousands of jobs will be slashed and branches closed as a result of the £12bn emergency rescue of Britain’s biggest mortgage lender (Halifax) by Lloyds TSB, it was revealed today.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1057379

I was one of a number of people who predicted over a year ago that we were on the edge of a very serious disaster when i had heard all the talk in the city of “battening down the hatches”. The bankers knew it was coming a long time ago and all the wealthy in this country who could pay for the advice moved their assets and investments overseas a long time ago.

Memorise this scripture:

“And God caused them to prosper in the desert.”

Even in the desert when everything was going the opposite way for everyone else.

If you didn’t listen to me back then, you had better listen to me now. Sit down and shut the fuck up.

The scary thing is that more and more people are talking of a “depression” than a recession. This is going to be so much more serious than expected, and it doesn’t take a genius to work out why. This may have a cutesy name to make it more palatable for you (the Disney-like “Credit Crunch”), but its a recession. And recession always last a lot longer than we expect them to.

The Western countries bankrupt themselves with 2 Middle Eastern wars, subsequently driving up the price of oil after tightening its supply (with Russia tightening up the supply of gas). China buys up the US and takes over manufacturing. Fractional reserve banks lend out vast amounts of imaginary invisible money (credit) to absolutely anyone and everyone out of sheer greed – many times more than they can lend by law (8x). Governments encourage lending to make their record shine for “prosperity”.

Meanwhile, consumers buy lots of shit they don’t need on credit cards and loans (free money!), but their salaries stay the same. Mortgages are easy to get, so everyone buys and lets out. The economy is based on invisible money nobody has, and can’t pay back. Spending credit drives retail forward, before it contracts again. Eventually the price of living gets too high, and there is no money to pay the loans back. The gap between debt and salary is too much. The housing market isn’t collapsing because of the value of houses (as they always go up), but the ability to repay. Banks will call in all their loans to pay back their own. For money they didn’t have to lend in the first place.

Having more money around in your pocket on the weekend gives you the illusion that you are prospering, even if it is a credit card. Being able to buy more things for your house is an illusion that makes you feel like you’re doing well. Other people around you who have lots more plasma TVs, computers, cars, sofas and clothes is an illusion that makes you think we are all prospering. It allows retailers to make a lot of sales when they wouldn’t normally be able to.

What do you get when you fuel economic growth by encouraging people to borrow from lenders? A collapse when nobody can pay it back. It’s inevitable. The only variable is how long the cycle lasts.

Credit that is tied to fixed assets will always survive as it is exchanged for physical wealth, so mortgages are a safe bet because banks can acquire property by default if you can’t make payments on your house. The Bank of England underwrites all national banks. That’s why we have so many interest-only mortgages – the bank owns your house. That’s right, you are a tenant, and they are the landlord. You pay their usury charge for 20 years and end up with absolutely nothing.

Sell your house now on the downturn and you are a mug because you’ll lose money. Wait and you are a mug, because you bought way too high (ever ask yourself why some land, some bricks and a roof is worth half a million?). You buy low and you sell at the highest point. Supply and demand. Simple rules. If you want a cheap house, wait a year until the market is flooded and the price is at its lowest because all the mugs are trying to panic-sell.

Economic conditions come in cycles, and it’s important to properly understand that. This depression is a cycle we are entering into that must complete. What goes up must come down as it tries to reach an equilibrium. World events push things off balance, but economies are always trying to reach a middle balancing point. The only thing that matters is the length of time of the cycle – the reaction and counter-reaction, and that is determined by world events. Economies are generally slaves rather than masters.

Lending drives up the bell curve of spending, so when the opposite of growth happens (i.e. contraction, or recession), it is the extremes of the economy that survive as the indulgent middle suffers. Rich affluent goods will always flourish as the buyers are wealthy enough to afford them in any circumstances. At the other end are the necessities for survival – utilities like electricity/gas/fuel, and commodities like food and water. Did you ever ask yourself why we have to pay for water when 92% of our planet is covered by it?

So what’s going to happen? The banks won’t be so flexible on overdrafts, and lenders won’t lend you anything after they call in as many of their loans as they can. The government will loosen up bankruptcy laws, and the current cabinet will take the blame for the problems and be driven out (it was a poisoned chalice that Gorgon Brown couldn’t resist). People will cut back on their spending and try to sell the things they have bought. Homes will get repossessed, pensions will be reclaimed and companies will make lots of people redundant because they weren’t really needed as staff in the first place.

The rich will make a lot of money from the contraction, as they always do. Drinking and gambling will increase as people try to escape, and violence will increase as frustration grows. Newspapers will capitalise on fear to sell more papers with nasty headlines. Broadcasters will pump out feelgood tabloid crap to entertain the masses away from how fucked everything is. People will move out of expensive cities to cheaper rural areas and reconsider their careers. Councils will reach for more money in taxes and fines.

Am i the only person who thinks this recession is a good thing?

Seriously, who gives a flying fuck if a bunch of greedy pretentious investment bankers and malingering lawyers lose their jobs? Granted, there will be good people mixed in the cull, but these are the same people who boast about their income at poncy wine bars and determine their whole existence on material crap. Fuck ‘em. None of them give a fuck about you. The financial industry and the usurers who make them up never cared about you and they live in a pathetic little world that is coming crashing down because of their own greed.

Because of this, a generation will learn the consequences of warmongering. If you ravage your economy to pay for thousands of soldiers to invade other people’s countries, you pay the price at home. Maybe if the city flashers have to move back to scale back it will force a lot of them to reconsider what really matters in this life. Maybe if you lose your job, you might be forced to actually do what you’ve always wanted to. Maybe this is a massive blessing and wake-up call in disguise. Maybe it’s time to think about what really matters.

Pointless consumers goods don’t fucking matter – they are sterile bullshit you are subconsciously forced to buy because you mistakenly think it will make you happy. Gadgets, clothes, accessories, flashy status symbols and so on are all just fake, man-made crap that doesn’t fulfil you or make you anything other than yet another gullible fool that has no idea who they are or why they are here. Sd now all that consumer shit is leaving, and the greed city fools are being humbled. Halleluiah.

Tomorrow i will attempt to tell the TV commissioning community something that i believe it has completely missed, and will always continue to miss. Yes, we want to be entertained and be given “uplifting” TV that doesn’t just plunder doom and gloom. But there is a much greater need in the human condition that is witnessed in times of great hardship – we search for meaning and purpose.

What got us through the Blitz was a sense of shared purpose and community. During Vietnam we wrote chants asking what war was for. After 9/11, we wanted to know why they did it. When we connect with other human beings and have relationships, we want to know who they are. We are spiritual creatures living a physical existence, and we are always needing meaning. We need to know why, because understanding comforts us. TV should help us discover meaning, as well as distracting us. It is the experience of people that brings us joy, and helping others is what fulfils us.

This depression may be your redemption. It may be an opportunity. It could be closing a door just to open a new one. It may force your hand, but maybe that was the only way you would do what you had to do. Watch and listen to who is being brought crashing down and ask yourself if you really should pity them. Ask yourself whether you should pity yourself when you knew it was coming and you don’t have to be a victim or something was always inevitable. A lifetime of happiness comes from helping others.

To change the world, you only have to change a small group of the right people. And tomorrow, i start.

“Fairness, justice, and freedom are more than words, they are perspectives. Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn’t there?”

“V For Vendetta“

I may be a red-eyed boy but i’m chipper, which says a lot about how positive my state of mind is lately. I’d call it a calmness; maybe a strange serenity that is smothering me like a very warm blanket. By all accounts i shouldn’t feel that way as the world is running amok as per usual. The rain was so fierce today that i could have sworn we were months into winter rather than at the end of August. I have changed so much and i can’t believe all the things that are going on around me – for some reason when i talk to people they are getting very emotional lately. Naturally i blame it on too much Joel Osteen but i have managed to develop a way of saying the words their heart really needed to hear, without knowing, until they tell me later.

The edit for the commissioners version of “Backstreet Kitchen” was finished this weekend and it’s looking great. I’m halfway into plotting out the other 4 programmes i have in mind as priorities. I get obsessive when it comes to video and making an impact with it. Everything has to be in place, and i just seem to know what i want intuitively without having to think it through. I can’t claim the same joy for casting though, as although it may be fun looking through potential presenters for the first half an hour, after 3 hours of mugshots and CVs it gets a little wearing. But it teaches you a lot about people.

There’s so much i want to talk about as i know i’ve neglected my writing recently. The astute would have picked up by now that i tend to write more when i’m unhappy as i need an outlet for what i’m feeling and thinking. When i’m happy and fulfilled i have no real reason to express it. As the wise say, “full bellies do not great art make”. Wherever you see a beautiful work of creative brilliance, you will find it inspired by the torture of the artist. If you want lots of amazing works, let those who create them revel in their pain and the need to express it.

Quote of the week goes to Piers, who left me literally stunned last week over beers in Putney. The last time i saw him before that, he knocked me over explaining how much he loved Kate and i’ve told him now that he better shut up and tell her instead because none of us know how long we will be here for. As he approaches his 30th birthday, he spoke of the need to make the pursuit of happiness his main goal, and i have to quite him on this:

“I’m going to give myself the best birthday present i could ever ask for: me.”

I’ve been waiting for 30 years to see him accept himself, give up trying to be the big man and just let go. In the last 3 weeks it’s like a set of dormant genes in him have been switched on and he’s finally liberated. As i’ve said in the past, we’re at war until you’re free. And seeing someone who feels like they’ve been set free is a major victory in the battle of this horrid consumer-driven world we’ve managed to find ourselves sinking in.

I think the way i can sum up my feelings of approaching 30 is relief. I feel liberated too. After i left Channel 4 last week i called Nina to talk over some drama pieces and she started to talk about her empire building mission she adopted after getting divorced. Everything started to clear as that resolve in me strengthened.

I’m done with playing around now. I’m not fucking about anymore. Time to get serious.

“You know what Ninns, we’re either going to do this, or we’re not going to do it.”

And that sums it up. There’s no more fuzzy “trying”, or scurrilous grey area anymore. No more trying to avoid hurting people’s feelings like immature 12-year old girls. We do it or we don’t. We make our choice right here and now. This happens or it doesn’t. We commit or we sit down. We change the world or we just give up and settle like the cattle. We punch out or cave in like everyone else would love us to so we can join them at the pity-party. We decide whether this happens or we make the decision to settle by default. We give up like the depressed beaten idiots who don’t have the strength not to act cynically or stop putting others down.

Not to mention the woolly people-pleasers who can’t say no to anyone, can’t assert themselves, can’t deal with arguments, can’t express their feelings, say they will “try” to make it when they are not going to attend, and “try” to do something instead of doing it. These people will have to face the same decisions (if they ever do) and we’ll see them in 50 years or so when they get round to doing it. It will be amusing to listen to the myriad of excuses they come up with over that period though (no money, no hope, fate, bad luck, no qualifications, past failures, no point, bad history etc – the list carries on forever).

And of course don’t forget the fucking fabulous timescales of those who chose that they were to live beaten and hopeless and believe history is biography - it will happen “one day”, or “someday”. No need to put a deadline on something when you are obviously going to live forever and everyone else controls everything in your life instead of you. Dying is too scary to think about anyway, right? Might as well try to pretend it’s not going to happen and then it won’t be as frightening.

It’s a question of identity more than anything else. Do we think we can do it, and if so, are we going to? Do we have what it takes? If we have everything we need and are good enough, are we going to do it? Are we going to be all we can be, and are meant to be?

Shit or get off the pot. Fuck or walk. Do or do not do, there is no try.

The week before i saw Bebs, because i was worried about how she was. And that worry was well-founded, as she’d been having a horrendous time of things. What i told her i can rarely say to many people, and that is the reason she is as astoundingly beautiful as she radiantly comes across is because that despite all she has been through, she is still pure. You’d think that with the trail of terror, desecration and brutality that she has suffered that she would be monstrous. And there are definitely times when she feels it, but ultimately she is uncorrupted and a shining beacon of hope.

As we all come to see, beauty isn’t what we are led to believe it is by magazines and their advertisers. Does a striking mountain landscape or glistening natural waterfall need a makeover, additional make-up or celebrity status to astound you? Does a kitten playing around on a carpet have to wear the right collar before you melt from how gorgeous it is? Does a fresh bunch of flowers need to look like all the other flowers or be dressed in a certain packaging to be radiant with beauty? Then why, when we are so much moiré complex, spiritual, conscious and extraordinary, do we somehow need to be anything else other than we are?

Beauty is something that radiates from inside – it’s your soul that crashes through your skin, lights up the room and blinds others as if they were stunned. When men gaup at magazine girls they’re simply doing what they do to a cheeseburger when they are hungry. True beauty captivates and amazes as n internal force, and is self-evident; it doesn’t need make-up, posing, photoshopping or any other synthetic bullshit a lot of girls are fully convinced they need in order to be acceptable.

One of my favourite films is “Devil’s Advocate” (even if it does have the wooden Keanu Reeves in it), with Al Pacino playing the Devil. Keanu doesn’t know he’s the Devil’s son, and when he’s talking to him about a job, he asks the old snake “Are we negotiating?”, and he replies with a giant smile, “Always!”

Ain’t that the truth. We are always negotiating, every minute of every day with the rest of the world. We are told things, labelled, disagreed with, commanded, given other’s opinions, and we are in a constant hidden dialogue inside as to whether to accept it or not. We’re unconsciously being asked to make agreements with what the world has decided for us – the things we should be in control of and deciding for ourselves.

Let me explain. If someone criticises you, you automatically accept that they are right. That is what you have been conditioned to do. They are supplying you with some kind of feedback (almost certainly biased or driven by pathetic envious insecurity), and you don’t bother to question it. You’re entering into a hidden negotiation where that person is asking you if they can deposit what they think into your heart. We’re always in that situation. We’re bombarded with messages from everywhere that want to be put into our heart, mind and soul.

At that point where it reaches you, there is a negotiation process. You have the choice to agree with it or not, to accept it or not, and/or to grant it permission to come inside. For 99% of people, there is no negotiation – it goes straight in, no questions asked. What we need to do is interrupt the process, and restart that negotiation. We need to show some character some backbone; some resistance. It’s at that point when we decide how tough of a negotiator we are, and get a chance to take control and put up a fight. When a message comes near, we get into that internal discussion and decide how hard we will negotiate, agree, and give it permission.

It’s amazing that the most valuable thing in the world is ourselves, and yet we just let anything do whatever it wants to us without a fight. What do we do if we’re not prepared to do a deal with it, agree with it, accept it, or even negotiate in the first place?

You throw it off the side of the boat. As simple as that.

What’s amazing about Bebs is that she has suffered more than any human i know. Yet she is still so compassionate, loving, caring, gentle, kind, wise and so incredibly vulnerable. She should be battle-scarred, weary, broken, jaded and callous. But she’s not. She’s a miracle. She has such character that it has never beaten her. She has always got up off the ground and succeeded against all the odds, every time.

A lot of people don’t. They are abused, and their response to give in and become like their abuser. They do to others what was done to them. They assume the abuser was right, and are all-powerful. They can’t beat them, so they join them. They start spreading the same evil because they are too weak, frightened and beaten to hold onto their heart. They give it up without a fight and think that bad always triumphs over good, so the only thing to do in life is adopt bad just to survive. So they learn to betray, act cynically, manipulate, lie and abuse, all the time thinking it gives them some kind of power or control. Unfortunately it just poisons their bed, and gives their abuser the victory they never would have had.

It’s a victim attitude, and a deeply sad one as victims and abusers never prosper. They appear to, but they never do in the long-term. We’re not meant to lie down and be like others, we are meant to fight back and keep our hearts. So many have fallen down and given up. Most are so angry that they simply think they will drown in their own feelings if they let them out, so they close up and lock themselves down thinking it will somehow protect them. If you think that locking a cancer inside you protects you, you are high.

When we just accept anything and everything without negotiation or fight, our mind, heart and soul become like a massively overgrown weed patch. Instead of a perfect garden where we choose what seeds are planted and take root to form the beautiful patterns that make us shine, we let that garden become polluted, corrupted, poisoned and wasted by angry twisted fauna that spreads everywhere suffocating anything it can. It becomes so wildly overgrown that we can’t see anything anymore and it is out of control.

And sometimes, someone comes into our life like a very powerful machete that they swing violently to chop all the overgrown jungle down. All we see is the machete flying and we panic, when what is happening is that garden is being re-established. Some of us even try to pave over the soil with concrete, poison the soil or pretend we like the overgrown madness, when the weeds always find a way to conquer. For a new garden to be created in the place of the old one, the bullshit has to be cut down, burnt, and the soil turned over to breathe and settled. Only when it is cleaned out can you start planting new seeds that take root.

For a brief time, the garden is empty, desolate, silent and barren. But it’s because a new garden is being designed, sown and nurtured. The world hasn’t ended – the opposite has happened. A new world is on its way.

Why do people envy? Your success highlights their failure. Why do they tell you to give up? Because if you succeed, the spotlight will fall on their giving up. Why do they put you down? So you don’t threaten them or make them feel bad inside. It’s all about them, not you. The ironic thing is that when we are criticised, gossiped bout or rejected, we think it’s about us, when it never is. The other person is doing it because of how they feel about us and the situation, through their eyes and frame of reference.

These thinks sit in the small and negatively-driven mind; they rot and corrupt those who haven’t developed emotionally or spiritually enough to grasp the idea of interdependence. We are meant to push others up because it gives us strength like lifting weights in a gym. When someone succeeds, it inspires us to do likewise and lights a fire. When someone is kind to us, we don’t have to return it, we are to pass that kindness on so a chain is formed. The more we give to others, the more we get back. When we encourage someone, they encourage us back. When we celebrate someone else’s success, they want to celebrate ours in return.

In Joel’s latest talk he states that people are either self-validating, or they rely on external things and people for acceptance and approval. The Biblical stance on it is very clear indeed. You honour God by accepting yourself as the person He made you as. “Honouring” someone is rarely done these days, but it means to faithfully respect, act and believe in reverence of that person and what they have done for you. Scripture is tens of thousands of words about what God says you are, and we’re meant to listen to the Creator, not the other idiot monkeys of our retarded species who have decided they know better, even though they can’t cure the common cold.

Joel’s analogy is incredible, and it’s about where we get our sense of worth, esteem and value. Why are we worth something? Why am i valuable? Who says? Definitely not you. Definitely not the world – which is your friends, strangers, advertisers, the media, your colleagues and more.

When you look at one of Picasso’s paintings, you stare in wonder when you find out they are sold for millions and millions of dollars. How can that be when all they are is canvas, oil, nice framing and some clever auctioning?

The answer is simple. They are worth that much because they have their creator’s fingerprints on them. The fact they were created by their creator as something that came from him makes them worth that much. If it was random stranger in the street who made them, they wouldn’t fetch anything at all and would probably end up in the bin. The fact it was Picasso who painted them and was their creator makes them immensely valuable and able to command the respect, value and price they do.

And so it is with the Father. We are his masterpiece and His creation just as the paintings were Picasso’s. It is our creator that determines our value and our value comes from who our painter is. Scripture says He breathes life into us, which is the same as the brushstrokes on the canvas – but Picasso could only put a layer of oil, whereas our creator breathes a piece of Himself into us, the essence of life itself. Listen to the world and it will tell you at every opportunity that you are worth nothing. Listen to the creator and He has a very different idea, which is why in the same scripture it says that you either see it through God’s eyes or believe the world’s version.

Right now in this day and age, the world’s idea never seems too appealing.

“And there’s no destiny when everyone’s your enemy
Take your jealous heart and cast it into stone
You’ll regret it all. living behind your wall
And you’ll never fall in love
If you don’t fall at all”

“Broken Hearts, Torn Up Letters And The Story Of A Lonely Girl” by Lostprophets