Taxi Drivers versus the Financial Times

I have been in Liverpool for a few days to visit a ship and came back with the impression that Britain is not really in the grips of a recession at all. I couldn't find a hotel in Liverpool, seems that everybody wanted to go there and the place was jam-packed with shoppers all carrying bags filled with recent purchases.

After four days of work on the vessel I left from Liverpool Lime Street on a train bound for York and then home and as the journey progressed I managed to dispel the images of crazed shopping, of a population desperate to spend every penny they have and more on credit before being maxed out. To further this return to supposed reality I gave my self a liberal dose of the Financial Times newspaper. I sweated page after page of trauma and desperation, of woe and collapse. I drip fed my brain with words like recession, retrenchment, redundancy and rationalize and I gave myself a suppository of bank and retailer projected failures over the coming months and years. I overdosed on worldwide unemployment growth statistics and swallowed large pills filled with 'experts' freely giving opinions on 'how deep and long', of 'historical comparison' and 'record breaking firsts' before finally feeling sedated with a check of my shares which have now all but reached Australia in their downward plunge.

I was just drifting off to sleep when a loud voice behind me interrupted my happy induced state. The loud voice emanated from a young hyped-up girl in the seat behind and her conversation went something like this:

"It's really "s**t" you know, my whole world has fallen around my ears. I've lost my job, really s**t you know. It just suddenly happened without warning, shit, nobody f**k told me, as the bitch in the office said to me, your fired!. I've packed my bags and left. Anyway, next day I had to take a mortgage out on our second house to cope, s**t, and then anyway, I'm so stressed that I'm going to our holiday home up North to chill out and think about things. S**t, f**k, might take the horse out for a ride and try to forget all about this. Lost my job and I don't know what to f****g thing anymore - will I be able to go on that holiday to Barbados - was taking three months out for vacation and its all paid for - s**t. Might go and get that Guchi bag I like so much to make myself feel better. Anyway; I got the caviar and champagne for tonight - its gonna be a great party." S**t though, my world has fallen apart.

She had with one simple phone call presented me with 101 good reasons why its hard to accept that Britian is reportedly in the middle of a recession. Here was a young lady that represented all that is bad and all that needs to be cured in the UK. To me she was not the victim of the downturn but an example of the cleansing that needs to be done. Not sure if I would have hired her in the first place but anyway, she managed to destroy my happiness for the rest of the journey. I have no doubts that she will survive well without having to dispose of the holiday home, change caviar for cheese or champagne for wine and I'm sure that she won't be out of work for very long - she just needs to stop swearing for ten seconds for daddy to be able to work his magic on some other poor and unsuspecting employer.

What puzzles me is that the only signs of recession (although this has not yet been confirmed yet) that I can find is that given freely in newspapers, on news channels and from the occasional little miss rich kid who shouldn't have been employed in the first place. Daily life around is one crazed arena filled to overflowing with open wallets and elbow-barging shoppers with manic gleams in their eyes.

Then there are the Taxi Drivers who are typically excellent barometers of current situations
and without doubt they are a superb source and indication of economic turmoil and upset, locally and nationally. Being self-made spokepersons on the state of the UK without much asking Taxi Drivers often give me lengthy reports on topical matters that have occured down-the-road or acroos the pond yet over the last few months the many cabs that I have had the pleasure of sitting in have not reverberated to the sounds of woe and misery and lost trade due to the lack of freely flowing cash hanging around. And why is this so? I have often asked a driver who allows me to get a word in edgewise about the credit crunch and how it has affected trade and the response has always been muted or along the lines of "business has been good guv" or "not around here mate". A woman driver in Liverpool even said "been busier that usual love" and then proceeded to tell me all about the ten-bedroomed family home that she was restoring back to original.

Are we really in the midst of massive downturn that drastically affects us all or is this just another massive journalistic train journey of hype and drama that has been blown out of all proportion? I think I'll treat the Financial Times as excellent fiction and tittle tattle and spend more time listening to the wisdom of the cabbies.