'You never had it so good........!

Well, the party’s over.

‘The shouting and the tumult dies,

The captains and the kings depart….’

So that’s it. London and the rest of us can get back to normal, whatever that may be.

It must be said that the Olympiad was  a success way beyond our wildest dreams; even the weather smiled upon us (mostly). The most important result is that it has made the British feel good about themselves after low morale all round because of the economy and our awful politics etc.

Times are really bad, aren’t they?

Er……..no!

We’ve never had it so good.

We are richer, healthier and freer than we have ever been. And I mean the world, not just we Western fat-cats.

The globalisation of trade has raised mega-millions out of poverty in the last 20 years. We get cheap clothing and electronics from Asia and China. They get to eat meat for the first time (good news for American farmers who sell vast quantities of foodstuffs to China; think about that, you Tea Partiers, when you next bang on about a trade war with China for fixing their exchange-rate). They live in houses instead of huts. They have access to clean water and power. They are getting many of the things that we take for granted.

The Millennium Goal on poverty reduction (don’t hear too much about those nowadays) was met in 2008, 7 years ahead of schedule.

That proves the benefits of our huge foreign aid programmes, does it not? Don’t make me laugh. It was economics and trade, not hand-outs!

The doomsayers have been telling us for years that we are running out of energy supplies. Years ago one such predicted 1977 as the crunch year. The truth is that proven reserves of carbon fuels are huge, greater than they  have ever been.

And that we are ruining the environment and concreting-over England’s green and pleasant land. Actually we have more woodland than in 1914.

But what about ‘climate change’? Funny how ‘global warming’ got lost along the way. It’s a myth; but also a racket that pays grants to scientists for fudging the figures, subsidies to ‘clean energy’ cowboys for producing wind-power at unaffordable cost, and easements to farmers of £50,000 a year for each wind-turbine.

The reality is that a modest rise in the UK temperature would bring us back to where we were in AD1000, and help lengthen the lives of many oldies. We might even start producing wine in Yorkshire as we did in the 11^th Century.

What’s not to like?

But the economy is in a mess, surely.

It all depends on which statistics today’s spreader of alarm and despondency  is using. As has been well-said, they use statistics like a drunk uses a lamp post – for support rather than illumination.

A survey using a basket of figures shows that the three strongest economies are Germany, the US and GB in that order.

On that uplifting note, have a good week, y’all!