Sunday, April 06, 2003
HOW MUCH IS THAT DOGGIE OWNER IN THE WINDOW?
A poll conducted by the Spanish newspaper El Pais found that Spaniards regard the war as the second main cause for concern after unemployment.
This is exactly why we won't be seeing regime change in Madrid, Washington, London or Canberra – at least not due to the war.
Whilst it's admirable that millions of people in Europe and, to a lesser extent, America and Australia protested the war, at the end of the day (midnight) they won't be losing much sleep over it.
Midnight doesn’t just see the end of the day but see's all these part-time pacifists turning into pumpkins and voting according to their bottom line – the state of their wallets.
I imagine very few of them will be voting against their governments due to the war. The main issue is the economy stupid and these governments know that – they can fuck around all they want abroad but the real danger to them is if unemployment numbers or interest rates go above a certain arbitrary but psychologically and symbolically important level at home.
War, unlike the economy, is obviously a matter of life or death, so how can people who are so opposed to something as deadly and earth shattering as that not act accordingly politically but subjugate that to prosaic economics and cite it as the second main issue after unemployment?
So Hose Marie Aznar, Tony Blair, George Bush, John Howard et al are safe and can wage war with impunity unless and until Spaniards, Britons, Americans and Australians lose their jobs at pet shops (If Britain is "a nation of shopkeepers", as Napoleon observed, then their former colonies appear to be nations of pet shop keepers – 6 million pet doggies in Australia alone, but the only ones that count are the Boo Boo Dog and The Buddy Dog off course).
Essentially, taxpayers are paying for the war twice – the second time is when their governments buy/bribe them with all sorts of economically unsound sweeteners designed to make them look the other way come election time.
7:46 pm
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