Real Televisions Have Curves – David Baldelli

The featured image is from the fabulous polyp 
Let’s all get rich, the new iPhone is out, yours for only £45 a month over two years. That telly of yours looks old, you can get one which is curvy now, because real televisions have curves. Get a new wife, I’m not sure what a ‘real’ woman is supposed to be anymore but your two year contract is way overdue and there is an offer on. 
At risk of sounding like a killjoy and a masocist it was kind of nice for a while, consumer confidence was low, house prices were down, the thought of going to war was unpalatable because wars are an indulgence. We knew the banks were skint, we didn’t even seem to mind lending them some money. Nobody panics when nobody is taking any risks. The good times never last though, soon everyone has money again and the government think the poor are rich enough to be a bit poorer, and the rich are rich enough to deserve being a whole lot richer. They start brokering deals transnationally between corporations whose taxes they slash, give them peerages and listen to their woes during lobbying sessions over 12 hour all expenses paid lunch/dinner/breakfast dates. We get sold on the idea of getting rich quick, The Post Code Lottery, a game everyone plays regardless of their gambling habits, The National Lottery, a game so indignantly bereft of respect for its players it can’t even grasp simple statistics in its adverts. (You do know by playing I can’t actually hinder Piers Morgan’s chances of winning himself, do know that don’t you? Oh you do! Oh it’s cynical marketing, good just so we are clear) 
By making the poor, really poor you generate desperation, by making the rich richer you generate an ever rising ceiling so tantalising you attempt to taste it once in a while with faux plastic chrome kitchen goods masquerading as quality products or embark untrained on carpentry projects called Björn. All you have to do is sell the idea of a dream, an import so American it might as well wave a gun in your face. Go get that dream, all ya’ll gotta do is work hard! this idea is so imbedded in UK politics the founding fathers (the Tories) can push welfare cuts and inheritance tax reforms in the same budget, Labour (they are supposed to be the opposition) are running 75% of their potential leaders with the view that those cuts are probably in everyone’s best interest. UKIP are so scared the dream is under threat they want every Eastern European rounded up and screamed at. (Although UKIP don’t have any money anymore so with luck they turn on the Tories soon in a sort of babushka doll of grinding economic servitude.) 
I have a mate who recently left his job at the Socialist Party, a Party that want to abolish money altogether. This might at first glance seem like the perfect solution to our problem. Everyone forced to live on their wits, their skills and chutzpah (I don’t know how it works) A week later I saw in the news that The Socialist Party HQ in London was now worth an obscene amount of money as property prices had gone up a bit since the 1800’s when the party was founded and the area in London it was in was now quite trendy. Now anyone will tell you who lives in London there are no non-trendy places left to live, never mind run a Political Party who’s dream is to go back to bartering with magic beans, but it is ironic that even those vehemently opposed to the idea of excessive wealth are unwilling whores to it just as we all are.