This year in ponders

At some point earlier this evening I had a momentary panic about the date, for I was quite sure it was next year. Wishful thinking perhaps, but I can only assume that the whole thing about time slowing down when you're busy is true, for this week is incredibly long and I've done more this week than I've done in the last 6 months!

I do believe time does literally slow down but that's something my brain doesn't understand.

So I got to thinking back over this year and what it's been. According to the bible, the year 2008, or 8 to make things simpler, is a year of new beginnings and rebirth. 8 being the number after 7, which is how long everything's supposed to take to complete a cycle, based on the 7 days in a week thing and an awful lot of excitement about the number 7. So, 2007 saw the end of the cycle begun in 2000 and 2008 was the beginning of the next cycle.

Brilliant.

So we can look forward to another 6 years of economic downturn and the media being idiotic. Myself, I think I'd like to opt out of life until 2015 and live in a commune somewhere, eating carrots and seeing if I suit dreadlocks.

The economy:

not that great, really. I don't fully understand it all because it's imaginary money. Somebody somewhere said "actually, I'm not going to give you any more "money" because you might not pay it back" and the whole world ground to a halt. Prior to this, everyone just lent pretend money happily in the belief that it would be virtually returned to them later and all was happy, then suddenly they didn't. And everything collapsed. Why they couldn't say "only joking, of course I'll transfer some not-there money to you and look, we'll say you owe me it and they owe you that and we'll all get some new cars".

Now everything's shutting down. Except it's not. It's not the good stuff. It's the kind of rubbish companies that have been winging along on the happy economy. It's not stuff we want or need. It's the dregs. It's the shops that exist purely because they always have. Nostalgia is not a reason to keep something. This here blog post says some of what I want to say, I shall link it instead of badly paraphrasing.

And banks, I don't care. We don't need a million of them. They're all greedy and provide a non-service. Even Nationwide want all their cash back. Standard Life aren't passing on much of the interest rate cut, because hey, the customer can subsidise them.

The loss of jobs is indeed sad, and terrible for those it is happening to, but, erm, that's what happens in a recession. Never mind, only 6 more years!

The Media:

Well, the biggest story of the year has to be the Russell Brand/Jonathan Ross/Andrew Sachs debacle. Whataloadofnonsense. Yes, it was cruel and I don't consider what they did to be funny, but Andrew Sachs had agreed the broadcast could go ahead. So he wasn't that offended. Who are the Daily Mail to be offended on his behalf? Utter nonsense.

The other piece of utter stupidity was the fraca about the turning on of the LHC. Not that many people understood it but the media focussed on the whole idea that this was the end of the world and ignored the actual science. Noone got excited about the implications, apart from that guy from D:Ream who everyone fancied for a day (Brian Cox, remember? no?). It was really important. It could have answered the fundamental questions about life. But it got turned on, we didn't die, it got broken and everyone thought it was quite amusing. It's still exciting and will still be mega when it gets turned on again next year? the year after? sometime? And we still won't die.

People have died, they always do. I'm not even going to try to suggest which deaths were significant, every death is important to someone. Other people were born: 2 little girls and 1 little boy arrived in my little circle, all perfect, all gorgeous and all most welcome.

Myself:

My own year hasn't been all that eventful although I have mostly been a rather rubbish friend. 2009 is going to be the year I stop saying sorry: no more apologising for things I haven't done, and no more doing things I have to apologise for.
The nicest thing that I do appreciate this year knows it.

The other stuff that mattered this year: I proudly and exhaustedly watched my two little guys grow from toddling babies into competent little boys, I turned vegetarian, and I got an iPhone. And I've been 33.

The banks that like to say "duh"

Due to a number of extremely irate secure messages being sent to the wondrous websites that operate my finances, I have two most grovelling messages today:

(a little paraphrasing *may* be involved)

Message no. 1:

We at Cretincreditcards.com are complete imbeciles and realise that we have cost you money because we are incompetent morons that can't actually keep track of what our automated system is doing. We do realise that this system cocked up big time and our morons couldn't help you. Unfortunately for us you do in fact have a series of messages that confirm this, therefore, if you send us a copy of your bank statement, we shall refund all bank charges caused by us.

Subsequent (automated) message :

PS We've already refunded our own charges because we thought we'd look better if we wiped them off your account almost as if we'd never charged them. You didn't mention this and it's nothing whatsoever to do with your complaint but hopefully this'll confuse you and you won't send your statements as previously stated.


Message no. 2

We at Numptycocks Building Society are utterly incompetent and have disabled monkeys working in our customer care centres. Some muppet managed to change your address and even though you told us about this 6 weeks ago, we weren't able to work out why. Now it transpires that it was in fact another member that "misquoted a number" and mysteriously pulled up your previous address. Yes, that's right, the one with the dodgy subsequent tenants and bad credit rating. What a coincidence is it not? Anyway, we're very sorry and it's all fixed now, and look, your account is all shiny again and we've written to Experian for you, just in case. I guess you probably want to complain, so here's the link to do so. Please don't ask any more questions, we're a little embarrassed, but if you really have to, here's the phone number of someone that can string an entire sentence together and knows a little about banking.