Gordon Bennet!!

I didn't believe it when Gordon Brown was assuring us that Britain was best placed to weather the financial storm. Is it a financial storm or financial 'typically depressing British weather?' - I also don't believe the IMF who today said that this will be the worst recssion since 1949 where rationing was a necessity. I expect they will next week announce that it will be the worst recession since the 1929 Great Depression and I won't believe that either. Fact is we generally don't believe many people these days - and rightly so... Who is there to trust? The times we live in are very different to the conditions surrounding all other recessions, so I firmly expect a unexpected outcome from all of this. It's not going to end soon, but neither is it going sink the whole nation. The experts can guesstimate all they want. They don't know. They can't know. There's too many variables, too much complexity.

The problem that helped exacerbate all this? We are now able to hear the experts.

Years ago, when there wasn't the technology there is now, people didn't know all the ins and outs of the global economy. Not the masses anyway. Now, however, the housing market is heavily affected by the perception of it that is portrayed on TV. If the media says the housing market is slumping, more people will choose that moment to buy; if they show us the statistics that prices are rising, people sell, and do so at bloated rates, smelling a quick profit. It's a self-fulfilling prophesy. Much of the current credit crunch is dependent on the buying and selling confidence of the consumers. We were all quickly informed of the difficulties and everyone rushed home to stop spending - thus more shops had to close. Many people were actually better off due to the reduction of VAT but they spent less anyway because "we're in the credit crunch - got to tighten our belts..."

It is an ungodly mess but I am confident we'll come out alive - of that much I'm pretty sure. But what if I am wrong? In a previous blog I have alluded to a difficulty whereby a person in debt over here can be in real trouble...while a person in a developing nation can at least have family around them and space to grow vegetables for themselves. A complicated irony I admit, and one that doesn't describe the whole picture, but what was to happen if this turns out to be worse than 1929? What will a humanitarian crisis look like in the UK? Will they broadcast footage of Mr and Mrs Jones sat outside their Berkshire home, furniture all sold, gas and electricity cut off, no income or savings and even Government benefits unavailable; their two children lying destitute with mal-nutrition pot bellies hanging over the remains of their GAP jeans? It's a bizarre image, but if the worst comes to the worst - what will the worst be? Everyone with a mortgage has their house repossessed and those with fully paid for houses can't sell it for toffee (literally) - or for just some soup and bread. If there ends up people starving, brushing flies off their tear stained faces in charming countryside properties, will they show it across the world? What will the world do? Will they have a big whip round in their workplaces - will there be a massive response? Will school children have a non-uniform day to raise money for the poor starving children in England? Will African nations send planes to drop food parcels on the fields and parks of urban Britain in a dramatic inversion of images seen over the last 50 years?

It is a cliche in the financial world that the most expensive words in the language are, 'this time it's different.' And in Britain it is even worse for us - us who KNOW we will always be alright really. Us who can afford to moan about every-bloody-thing because we are the greatest nation ever. Jesus was English, Mother Theresa was - so was Ghandi and Nelson Madela. We own EVERYTHING. Everything should serve and work for US. Isn't that true?

Our arrogance as post-empire toffs is backfiring - there is a chance that within the next 10 years we could be a lesser developed nation in comparisson to the majority - countries like China far outstripping us as the global powerhouses, politically and economically. Fact is we are already becoming something of a colony for a number of countries like Poland, Pakistan and Somalia who have such numbers gathered in the UK that their culture has influenced and integrated with ours to the point we know see our British identity not as a clear, distinct culture but we can only understand it in terms of being multi-cultural, inclusive and post-modern. Don't get me wrong, I also am embracing this new British identity. There once was a time when the UK had that strong singular culture - but those days are gone, we must now look at what we have as not worse, just different - and good. I would like to have a strong singular culture (like many Eastern cutures still do) but I can't - so I won't cry over it. So in that sense, who cares about my country? Let the world become one country full of a thousand different cultures intermixing and standing side by side... At least that would be a more honest situation than our current suspicion and intimidation. Does it not (with slight despair) remind you of the situation in Genesis 11(?) when 'Man' became so advanced they started building a tower right up into the heavens? The Tower of Babel was a warning sign to God - Man had realised it could achieve whatever it set about doing so God confused Man's language and scattered them cross the earth. This is God saying "I made you an intuitive, creative, inventive race - I gave you the intelligence to achieve, but achieving and discovering and innovating is not the aim of life. Yes, I want you to enjoy it as a byproduct of life, but if you are living for progression and advance you are missing the point." Is that good or bad news for us now, 4000 odd years on; as we invent cures for diseases, fly to space and look out to beyond... as we digitise the world, clone living beings, reclaim seas and build huge cities and... construct massive towers...

The only thing we can depend on is the only thing that will remain after the credit crunch or whatever happens after the credit crunch has destroyed everything - after we have destroyed ourselves there will still be God. ...Love - living in the community of his self. Her self. It's self.

What a bleak picture. Apocalyptic you could say. Perhaps it will happen that way, or perhaps it will be won over slightly more gently; but one thing is for sure, it is down to the Christians to wake up, shake off the religion and the politics and influence the world with generous love, caring people away from depression, investing in leaders with integrity, leading with purity and justice; serving the unlovely; praying with passion and humility; giving financially; working hard at pointing to Jesus as the only institution that cannot be touched by economic meltdown. What I would love to see more than the credit crunch reversed is a u-turn in the church's own recession - will the real slim christians please stand up? Because if the meltdown happens - we will need Christians to bring us food and Jesus while the £200,000 cars rust in the empty factories.