Crack the Crunch with the Crunch Breaker
Recession lows Posts
Barbeque summer …. I hope this isn’t what the recession will do …
August 4th, 2009
They said it was going to a be a BBQ summer. Stock up on sun cream, beers and burgers. It’s going to be a summer to remember.
That was the prediction of the Met Office in April on what to expect this summer – endless sunny days like we had in our childhood. Ice creams and playing on the brach. Hope and all things positive.
Certainly for London, summer ‘happened’ around about June 29th when the temperature hit 29 degrees. Since then it’s been cold, wet and windy. In fact I write this blog as the Met Office issues another severe weather warning – and it’s July 29th!
As your expert meteorologist I hereby forthwith do give you my humble (yet brilliant) prediction for when the rest of our summer is coming. I do predict that we can expect possibly one week of proper sunshine sometime during the second half of August. Perfectly timed for when most of us are nowhere near the UK. And that’s it! Did you blink? You missed it…
So much has been written about ‘green shoots’ and the economy coming out of recession, yet it seems that things are still limping along one year later. Small businesses still can’t get banks to lend to them, mass redundancies are still being planned, and this week Willie Walsh, CEO of British Airways said that at least 20 airlines would be out of business by Christmas. BA are losing over £1m a day and whilst this is good news for consumers as seats are cheaper than ever, a business cannot sustain this for long.
So let’s hope the Met Office got the forecast wrong again and that our summer returns.
Much in the same way that the sunny ‘economical forecasts’ given to us in the Spring may have turned out to be false dawns and we might experience severe autumn and winter storms this year.
Let’s hope not.
A real story – becoming a whore
July 15th, 2009
Here’s a real story. It’s happening in more places than you think.
This recession has many casualties.
‘The housing market was good to me in 2007, but it just dried up in 2008. By 2009 it was looking pretty dire’.
‘My job had gone and I had a £400,000 home with a mortgage of £350,000 to service. Well that’s the value I thought it was before things went pear-shaped’.
‘I had over £20,000 debt on my credit cards. I never imagined that things would grind to a halt’.
‘I was at my wit’s end’.
‘Then my friend Lucy told me about an evening job she’s been doing working as a table dancer.’
‘It was good money, she told me, and not hard work’.
‘So I started, dancing in my knickers in front of groups of drunken businessmen’.
‘I got paid £25 a dance and got to keep £15 of that each time’.
‘Life was good’.
‘But then I wanted more money’.
‘I changed jobs to a quieter club where I poledanced naked’.
‘And then, a few weeks later it happened. I accepted £400 from a businessman to go back to his hotel and do anything he wanted’.
‘I had turned from successful businesswoman and property owner to whore’.
Ethnographic research – Leaptomorrow