[mos6507]

I dunno. It's one of my pet peeves when someone is presumably reviewing something and they spend 9/10th of the word count on following them around like a freaking reality show. Like a movie review where you get a long description of how hard it was to find a parking space or how expensive the popcorn was. Get on with it, man. Clarkson should leave the doomer porn to EnergyBulletin.

[oowolf]

Yeah, the London Times is getting radically doomerish lately. Seems the Brits are bit more psyched about the impending implosion-probably because of their hopeless dependence on the global economy. They've been living on borrowed time since the 17th century.

[da23]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Madpaddy', ' ')However, there is a very very real sense in Ireland that we are in for some desperate times but as they are not quite here yet we might as well enjoy the present.

[Armageddon]

I think mainly this is because the government is not telling us the truth. It’s painting Gordon Brown as a global economic messiah and fiddling about with Vat, pretending that the coming recession will be bad. But that it can deal with it.

I don’t think it can. I have spoken to a couple of pretty senior bankers in the past couple of weeks and their story is rather different. They don’t refer to the looming problems as being like 1992 or even 1929. They talk about a total financial meltdown. They talk about the End of Days.

Already we are seeing household names disappearing from the high street and with them will go the suppliers whose names have only ever been visible behind the grime on motorway vans. The job losses will mount. And mount. And mount. And as they climb, the bad debt will put even more pressure on the banks until every single one of them stutters and fails.

The European banks took one hell of a battering when things went wrong in America. Imagine, then, how life will be when the crisis arrives on this side of the Atlantic. Small wonder one City figure of my acquaintance ordered three safes for his London house just last week.

Of course, you may imagine the government will simply step in and nationalise everything, but to do that, it will have to borrow. And when every government is doing the same thing, there simply won’t be enough cash in the global pot. You can forget Iceland. From what I gather, Spain has had it. Along with Italy, Ireland and very possibly the UK.

It is impossible for someone who scored a U in his economics A-level to grapple with the consequences of all this but I’m told that in simple terms money will cease to function as a meaningful commodity. The binary dots and dashes that fuel the entire system will flicker and die. And without money there will be no business. No means of selling goods. No means of transporting them. No means of making them in the first place even. That’s why another friend of mine has recently sold his London house and bought somewhere in the country . . . with a kitchen garden.

These, as I see them, are the facts. Planet Earth thought it had £10. But it turns out we had only £2. Which means everyone must lose 80% of their wealth. And that’s going to be a problem if you were living on the breadline beforehand.

Eventually, of course, the system will reboot itself, but for a while there will be absolute chaos: riots, lynchings, starvation. It’ll be a world without power or fuel, and with no fuel there’s no way the modern agricultural system can be maintained. Which means there will be no food either. You might like to stop and think about that for a while.

I have, and as a result I can see the day when I will have to shoot some of my neighbours - maybe even David Cameron - as we fight for the last bar of Fry’s Turkish Delight in the smoking ruin that was Chipping Norton’s post office.

I believe the government knows this is a distinct possibility and that it might happen next year, and there is absolutely nothing it can do to stop Cameron getting both barrels from my Beretta. But instead of telling us straight, it calls the crisis the “credit crunch” to make it sound like a breakfast cereal and asks Alistair Darling to smile and big up Gordon when he’s being interviewed.


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/drivin ... 292547.ece

[marq=left]topics merged by wisconsin_cur[/marq]

[bodigami]

A reboot?! Do you believe that after collapse there will be some magical solution?

[GreyFox]

I'm not sure I agree with the total collapse scenario. However, I do believe we are headed into a Greater Depression that will be worse than the one in the 1930's. Deflationary at first, then hyper-inflation later as the government attempts to print and bail their way out of this scenario. The Yankee Gubbernment will destroy the value of the Dollar in it's reaction to the Greater Depression for which it is responible for creating.

[Armageddon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('bodinagamin', 'A') reboot?! Do you believe that after collapse there will be some magical solution?

[Jotapay]

I don't know about total collapse. But I would prepare for the worst, nonetheless. I think anyone who does not prepare for the worst at this point is foolish.

[Arsenal]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Jotapay', 'I') don't know about total collapse. But I would prepare for the worst, nonetheless. I think anyone who does not prepare for the worst at this point is foolish.

[Kaj]

I'm not saying he is necessarily wrong, but you should know Jeremy Clarkson is a rather simple-minded TV celebrity, obsessed with fast cars and prone to using exotic hyperbole every other sentence.

He admits to getting a U (so bad that it was unmarked) in economics at school. I would look for more reliable sources of information.

[Quinny]

Red Rose rules UK.

[davep]

Clarkson is far from simple-minded, despite his overplayed persona. In one small article he has shown more insight than a lot of people here. His problem is that he's a cynic and will keep on doing what it takes to bring in the money. And who can blame him? Otherwise, given his media exposure, he will be cast as another David Icke.

[bodigami]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ReverseEngineer', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', 'I')s that really a doomer rant? Clarkson lays on the sarcasm so thick you don't know what the hell he really thinks. Isn't his job to review cars? There is hardly a review here at all. He's not doing his job for sure. All I know is he's a global warming denier and a internal combustion lover so it's unlikely that he has or will ever accept the idea that "happy motoring" is dead man walking.

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('davep', 'I')n one small article he has shown more insight than a lot of people here.

[billg]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('GASMON', 'R')eboot, total collapse, your joking. Won't happen. Too much money involved with TPTB

SHTF yes, the working man, taxpayer WILL suffer, but those bastards at the top will be OK.


Gasmon