Here was an entire economy built on the admiration of the male body. The town existed to create and praise beautifully sculpted and physically perfect young men. Once, the local economy was entirely supported by this pursuit as now it is supported by the tourists who come to marvel, like me.
This last week, the defence industry has been winding up it’s propaganda, making sure that they get first pickings in the Public money feeding trough. They tell us, with straight faces, how the economy would collapse with out them.
I don’t think this is so. We choose to be a militaristic country and so we spend, and waste, billions on defence procurement. But It’s not for defence. We spend and waste billions fighting other people’s wars that we really should have nothing to with. We choose to do this because we like to see ourselves sitting at the top table, punching above our weight, and all the other clichés they trot out.
We could choose to do something else. We could choose to repurpose the economy to the production of cheap fuel from sunlight and create cheap, clean transport systems. We could choose to lead the world in these technologies, and so become the oil baron’s of the future. The USA did this with the Apollo mission. They chose to do something extraordinary- they put everything behind it and achieved their goal. That’s what a really big business does.
The Government likes to talk about Britain, PLC. Well the board needs replacing. All the profits that we make from dodgy or non-existent financial instruments are squittered away in Iraq and Afghanistan by the defence business without any hope of there ever being a return on the investment. In fact all we get from these “investments” is an ever growing negative equity – the hatred of those who would do us harm in return for the harm we do to them.
with a different mind set we could get out of the recession in a trice. We reap as we sow.