A View from Hammersmith Bridge

December 2009

The condemned man ate a good Christmas dinner....

Another year living in Hammersmith, another Christmas, another New Year. The turn of the year is a time of sentimentality, of nostalgia for childhood and family security. Routines are followed, cards sent, trees decorated, turkeys stuffed, puddings steamed and presents bought. Two thousand years ago, in this climate, there was cause for celebration: the harvest had been gathered and this was a time of plenty before the hard times of winter really began in January and February. Now, as a Christian festival celebrating the birth of Christ, Christmas in Hammersmith does not have much point for the majority of its citizens. For me, as a Scotsman, New Year rather than December 25th is the date that matters, a time to gather and drink and talk and perhaps sing as Scotsmen with one or two bottles of whisky do. Here, in England, it is almost entirely a family affair. For two days, the English retreat into their houses, lock out the world, eat too much, drink too much, and watch television. On Christmas day itself, apart from the odd diseased pigeon, Hammersmith will look as if a neutron bomb has dropped, and no living thing survived.

While it is a family affair, it is also an affair of the shop. Commercial Christmas is launched in mid-November and expires in late January at the final, cut-price winter sale. Before the Age of Plastic, there were Christmas Clubs through which poor folk saved a little every week throughout the year to buy Christmas presents for their children and provide the illusion of family prosperity for at least a day or two. The pressure to buy presents as an act of generosity is still, as it was then, the engine that drives the Christmas boom. Too many people spend what they cannot afford. Little has changed since O. Henry wrote his short story, The Gift of the Magi.

In total, the country will spend £11 billion on Christmas, a time more than any other that creates debt and distress. According to estimates given by creditaction.org, the average family last year spent £856: £170 on food and drink, £359 on presents, £126 on socialising, £53 on cards and postage, £64 on a Christmas tree and decorations, and £84 on travel. It is good business for debt management and personal loan companies. One in three people confess to worrying about how they will pay for this pointless event. Ten percent, almost five million people, still haven’t paid off their Christmas debts from last year. The great new thing is that they can even shop on Christmas day itself. Instead of listening to the Queen’s Christmas message, her loyal subjects surf the net, looking for bargains from the winter sales.

Marooned in the great shopping season, the bankrupt country clings to its spendthrift tradition, pretending there are no bills to be paid. But there are. In round numbers, the average household in Hammersmith owes £9,000 in addition to £50,000 pounds of mortgage debt. On top of personal debt, there is government debt, expected to rise to over a trillion pounds in the coming year, something like 12% of GDP. The last time the UK went bankrupt, in 1976, it was running a budget deficit of a mere 6% of GDP. These government obligations can only be paid by cutting services (health, education, pensions) or by raising taxes or by devaluing the currency, or a combination of all three. Hammersmith and the rest of the country need a strong leader, willing to be as disliked as was Mrs. Thatcher, but as an election does not have to be called until May 2010, the current prime minister, Mr. Gordon Brown, is doing as little as possible to make himself or his government unpopular.

Reports arrive in Hammersmith of depression in the United States, of deflation and government debt in Japan, of property inflation in China, of economic implosion in Iceland, Ireland, Latvia and Greece, but little news arrives from the central UK government, just a trickle of glum announcements on the radio of plant closures and redundancies, and a gentle 10% slide in property prices, nothing at all compared to what is happening in California. Indeed, only yesterday, I glanced at the prices in an estate agent’s window and found the cheapest leasehold studio flats are still £200,000 and very ordinary 2-bedroom flats, over £300,000. These prices are absurd, although mainly limited to London.

The unemployment rate among young men aged 18 to 24 and not in full time education or training has risen officially to 18%. The general unemployment rate is said to be 7.8%, but no one believes that that is a meaningful figure. It should be much higher to reflect the true condition of the country, the number of failed businesses and the number of people who are going to have to be very determined and resilient in the coming year.

So, reality absent, it is happy Christmas shopping time, though I don’t see people spending with much pleasure. I sense a becalmed country longing for a fresh breeze, but when the elections come in six months time, I fear, looking at the politicians available, the country will be disappointed. There is, this time round, no Iron Lady to order the sails to be set.

Getting my hair cut, I asked the barber how business was. He replied, “Disastrous.” We wished each other a happy New Year. We wished it but we did not really believe it.