The twilight zone

I first became aware that something was amiss when the milkman stopped deliveries.

Apparently, the dairy had run out of pints. At first, I thought the poor man had obviously lost his grip on reality.

But soon I learnt that this wasn’t an isolated lunacy.

A local watchmaker couldn’t repair my watch because he’d run out of hours, minutes and seconds and the time bank refused to extend his credit.

Watchmaker runs out of time?

How queer.

But the delusion really became inconvenient when my electricity and gas supply was cut off. The supplier claimed they’d used up their quota of kilowatt hours.

And I soon realised that the deficit trance was not only contagious but also life threatening when my new house extension collapsed. The builder had cut corners because, he whimpered, he had to “make efficiency savings” in his feet and inches grant.

Locally, a new road stopped short of town because the road builders went bust due to over-indebtedness to the International Mileage Fund. Unable to borrow more miles or even kilometres to repay the IMF loan interest, employees were thrown out of their jobs and eventually their homes.

And losing your marbles, ie a marbles deficit, reached epidemic proportions when the UK government made the bizarre claim that it had to cut public services because it had run out of pounds, shillings and pence.

It had developed selective amnesia on how to create money as a public service – although not incapacity benefit for banking elites.

What is money? A measure, a unit of account? Are cuts in services the consequence of a delusional measurement deficit? Or of a measurable deficit, as government claims?

It’s confusing. However, in an era of IMF-inspired monetary scarcity, we can be consoled by remembering that however much bean counting may depart from reality, certain VIPs will remain deficit immune.

Monty Python reminds us that – when banks seem jolly rotten, there’s something you’ve forgotten, and that’s to Laugh and Dance and Sing.

Thankfully, artists will not have to “save” brush strokes.

Dancers will never use up their ration of steps and singers and musicians need never cut short a song or symphony.

While neo-liberal deficit obsessives are in charge of the asylum, comedians will have a limitless supply of jokes.

RICHARD AKERS Topcliffe Road, Thirsk.