Watch out East Grinstead
Slice through the layers (a dream for some people I’d presume) of this sanguine calm exterior and you’ll uncover the same seething, anger fueled furnace that roared and raged in the halcyon days – when stroppy young lank haired miner jacketed monkey booted reactionaries would protest about the ills of apartheid and the colour of orange juice with equal fervour.
Even as middle-aged respectability sets in, occasionally the temptation to dust down the metaphorical tank and park it on some no-marks stripey lawn is just too much to endure.
I’ll fess up. Having come from a background of promoting fizzy pop and ladies hygiene to the masses, a life in financial services marketing has been, well, an education.
For as most of the business we call FS has wised up to the fact that in the minds of the punters they carry around an pungent fog smelling for all the world not too dissimilar to eau de dead rat, others seemingly don’t give the aforementioned rodents rear end about who of what they screw.
I say ‘nuff respect’ (as us young, hip and groovy things do) to all those doing the right thing in FS to give the industry the air freshening it needs. To those sharks, shysters, scallywags and slippery eels who continue to make the repair work like pushing proverbial up the hill – take my advice. “Remove your prize gnomes from your gravel path because caterpillar tracks can really eff up their day!”
Like the unconscionable arse representing hedge funds on Newsnight last week. The host's incredulity was abundantly obvious as this wedge-haired, wide-tied, lecturing, hectoring, badgering, blabbermouth tried to justify the actions of his type in Greece’s latest malaise. His defense being that the activities of unelected hedge funds in sending Greece’s financials up and down with greater rapidity than a lonely gentleman’s right elbow was doing less damage to ‘real’ people’s lives than the elected EU.
Like the regrettably named Crispin (London trader) I had the misfortune to meet before Christmas last at my friend’s pre-nuptial libation. I would have had him blindfolded and propping up a wall waiting for his bullet the minute he bellowed ‘KKKKRRRRRRUUUUUGGGGGG’ at the top of his voice frankly, but it was the theory he posited about him being ‘more valuable’ to society than a nurse on the spurious grounds of the amount of tax he pays on his bonus. Needless to say, he works for one of those we all own – if you know what I mean?
This is why I dislike the bracket FS so much. Too big. Too wide. My paternal Grandad (working class hero) was a tremendous philosopher. He opined that “there are two types of people in the world. The total bastards and the rest of us”. I rather like working with those on the righteous side of this industry and will give them all the time they need to make wrongs, right.
To the rest, I’ll be making contact with my old Wolfie Smith Popular Front battalion tonight. Camouflage jackets cleansed of blue-mold, WD40 guns primed to loosen the caterpillar tracks. Look out gnomes of East Grinstead!
