KEEP SPENDING! KEEP CONSUMERLAND ON COURSE!

WORDS: JILL KERBY

As a fully-fledged citizen (or resident) of Consumerland, you will know by now that shopping has supplanted just about every other activity in this country — other than drinking perhaps. The buying of stuff we don’t need, with money we don’t have, keeps Consumerland workers in jobs, businesses in profit, shareholders (especially bank shareholders) happy and successive Consumerland Ministers for Finance even happier. Tax returns have never been greater, and the old national debt that we’ve been dragging along like Marley’s chains since the 1970s is finally getting lighter and lighter, even if we’re taking on individual mink-lined chains of our own.

Judging from all the stories in the mainstream press, it is positively patriotic to shop — even if you trade your euros for dollars and spend them on Fifth Avenue. When we were just ‘Irish’ people the Yanks felt sorry for us. Now that we’re nearly as rich as the Japanese (well, that’s what Bank of Ireland claim) we’re the most popular visitors to the Big Apple, the mecca of shoppers. Irish patriots may have once carried guns and the flag; now they carry shopping bags, the flag and are armed with credit cards.

Read more about Tanya Airey in the February | March 2007 issue of WMB, subscribe now.