Ah..yes the bad old days of nationalisation....
When there was and electric and gas board showroom in every town, where you could pay your bills, get complaints sorted out and everyone paid the same for each therm we used..terrible wasn't it
In a country of abundant rainfall, we had reservoirs looked after by a water board, no droughts or hosepipe bans every time the sun shone, and a water supply we paid pennies for...sheesh dunno how we managed
Plenty of social housing, plenty of jobs
Buses liveried to the town they came from, smart drivers and conductors, inspectors to complain to, reasonable fares and safe buses. Reasonably priced train services
A coal industry and a steel industry
Search and rescue that was the envy of the world, an army with equipment, a navy with ships and an airforce with planes.......
BUT......
Then in the Shire Year of 1979, the Dark Lady who had been resting in the misty mountains of Grantham captured the palace of Westminster and sent forth her black riders led by the necromancer king, who some may know as Geoffrey of Howe, to herald the age of the banker. And lo..did these bankers stop building houses, closed schools and sold off all that was good to the people from across the great ocean. The bankers created much gold for themselves and built themselves the city of Yuppie. Here they did nothing all day but wave pieces of paper at each other and make strange gestures with their hands and arms.
The people of the Shire suffered and begged for work only to be told to get on their bikes, whilst the people of Yuppie rode around in Ferraris and Maseratis armed with a filofax and a communication device that looked like a black brick with an aerial.
The greed of the bankers knew no bounds, the power of the Dark Lady waned, and a man from Sedgefield promised the Shire folk many things, and thus began the 13 years of Grima Wormtongue. He broke his pledges to the folk of the Shire, giving the bankers all that they asked and then making war with many other lands because Saruman the Stupid of Texas told him to. The bankers grew fat, so fat that they did not even check they had enough gold to cover all the pieces of paper they were waving around at each other.
One day, in the town of Northern Rock, one of the Shire farmers forgot to put his money in the bank. This caused great consternation, the bank at Northern Rock did not now have the money it owed to the great bank in the south. The bank in the south grew worried because it could not allow the bankers to wave papers if the shire folk weren't giving them their money to play with. It decided to make an example of the bankers of Northern Rock for being stupid and make them close their doors. But they pleaded, begged and cried so much, that the apprentice of Grima came down from a land in the north called Scotland, he decided to buy the bank using even more of the Shire peoples money and give the bankers in Northern Rock a nice fat bundle of paper to wave at each other, the apprentice of Grima called this bundle of paper a 'bone us'. He told the Shire people that they were 'share holders', but would not get any money for being 'share holders' because the money was needed for the bankers 'bone us'.
It is prophesised that one day, a great light will shine on the Shire, the bankers will wither and jobs, houses, schools and happiness will return to the Shire, but most Shire people think that this is something called a 'con spear I see thee or he' written by someone called the Head Military Band.
Wayy..wayyyy too much time on my hands today
