Much has been said this autumn about whether the right thing to do in a recession is to slow down consumption or speed it up. Notwithstanding my happy marriage to a retailer (who, by and large, sells 'necessaries') I found this quote recently:
'What is new is not that prosperity depends on stimulating demand. It is that it cannot continue without inventing new vices. The economy is driven by an imperative of perpetual novelty, and its health has come to depend on the manufacture of transgression.'
(John Gray, Straw Dogs - Granta 2002)
I feel the Bishop of Reading's, 'Do nothing this Advent' homily ringing in my ears. You?
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